Separating School and State

 

Psalms banned, but witchcraft OK

Supreme Court endorses 'hostility' toward Christianity

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Posted: January 19, 2010
10:46 pm Eastern
© 2010 WorldNetDaily

A lower court's "hostility" towards Christianity will stand after the U.S. Supreme Court today refused to intervene in a school district's censorship of a kindergartener's choice of literature for a class reading.

Donna Busch accepted an invitation to visit her son Wesley's kindergarten classroom at Culbertson Elementary School to read a passage of Wesley's favorite book to his classmates in October 2004. Wesley's teacher had invited Busch because the boy was the featured student of "All About Me," a school event to feature a particular student and emphasize the student's personal characteristics, preferences and personality in classroom activities.

During the "All About Me" activity, a child's parent may read aloud from the student's favorite book. In this case, Wesley, a Christian, chose the Bible. His mother planned to read from Psalm 118.

But when Donna Busch prepared to read from the Bible, Wesley's teacher instructed her not to do so until Principal Thomas Cook could determine whether it would be acceptable.

According to the Rutherford Institute, the principal "informed Mrs. Busch that she could not read from the Bible in the classroom because it was against the law and that the reading would violate the 'separation of church and state.'"

Then school administrators offered Wesley's mother an opportunity to read from a book about witches, witchcraft and Halloween. She declined the invitation.  [read the whole story]

Kent comments:

Some think this problem will be solved within the framework of government somewhere.  It will not.  It stems from a very serious error made in some parts of our country as early as the first part of the 19th century.  That mistake was allowing a connection between governments and schools.

While it sounds very noble to say that every child has a ‘right to an education’ and then create a system in which governments own most schools to ‘insure’ that right, this kind of result should have been expected all along.  We were more than naive to think otherwise.

BTW, isn’t it odd how a ‘right to an education’ is so easily translated into legally mandated attendance at schooling for people of a certain age?  Does the right to free expression, for example, demand laws requiring people to speak their minds?

When governments own schools, the content of the schooling there will always tend toward the preferences of the bureaucrats who administer those schools.  While that does not by any means imply that all such bureaucrats are evil people, there are untold dangers in placing schooling in the hands of the government.  It is too personal, it is too influential, it is too easily abused to trust to any government.

The fact that the Bible cannot be read in a government school proves this point beyond any doubt.  But the solution is NOT a campaign to get the Bible back into government schools.  The solution is to get government OUT of schools.