Written by Don Byrd
In the Washington Post’s Answer Sheet blog today, educator Adam Laats discusses the potential impact of bills recently passed in Missouri and New Hampshire that give students broad rights to opt out of assignments on religious grounds. Using the wall of separation metaphor in a different way, Laats makes a powerful argument that isolation is not a good model for public education.
Students can’t learn this way. Schools can’t work this way.
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A student could write a research paper about evolution in which he only consults the story told in Genesis. Parents could opt out of any literature in which characters express doubt about God.We do not want schools that bulldoze over religious objections — but weneed to include in one learning community all students, parents, teachers and administrators. Most importantly, we must not sidestep the issue by building new walls of separation, dividing each student one from another.
Religious belief is not incompatible with a proper education in science, history, math, literature, art and music. Our goal should be to increase interfaith communication, not decrease it; to show that people of all faiths can participate in society, not create school structures that suggest education is hostile to religion, or that religious students must operate in their own separate sphere.
