by Ken King

This month my interest was peaked once again by a string of posts running on the forums concerning religion, specifically religion being taught in public schools.  This argument has been going on since the inception of our great country and will probably continue for years to come.  I feel we were lucky to have this nation founded by those people.  They had foresight that has not been matched by anyone else, at least in my mind.  They knew this would be an issue and rapidly corrected their oversight by including it as number one of their amendments to our Constitution. 

These men, and their families, had left very religious countries.  They chose to come to an unknown world to escape the suffering and horrors of their homeland.  The problem they faced, for the most part, was that religion was being dictated by whomever was in control and those choosing to exercise another concept of religion were readily and summarily dealt with.  Here they hoped to be able to exercise and practice their form of religion without the interference and fear that they had been subjected to.  They were well aware that the emotions of religions and the need for a free society meant that they should protect the government from possible religious control.  To do this they established that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” which in affect built a wall of separation between church and State. 

What was the mindset of that time, and my current belief, is that religion is a matter that lies solely between a person and their God; that they owe no accounting to anyone for these beliefs, faith, or worship.  They also knew that the legislative powers of our government were designed to reach actions only, not formulations of opinion.  They knew if religious opinions were allowed to be expressed by the government that the democracy they were creating would be destroyed. This is why they added the amendment.

Think about that a minute and now focus on the content of several postings subscribing to teaching religion to the children in public schools.  Immediately what comes to my mind is that if you are going to teach religious beliefs you will have to teach all religions so as not to show favoritism to any one practice.  Is this possible?  Who picks which religions are taught and when they are presented in our children’s curriculum (what grade)?  Next, you will have to teach the kids that it is allowed not to believe in any God, if that is your choice.  They would be taught that you can believe that your family and friends are all fools for believing in a power that is greater than all without any proof of its existence.   What would this do to these young impressionable minds?  What about the over zealous teacher that thinks their religion is the best and that the students would benefit more from being converted to that faith? Could we tolerate that?  I say no.  The problems increase the longer you look at this type scenario.

Now don’t get me wrong and think that I am an atheist, I’m not.  My preference is my choice and I choose to keep it private.  I am not against schools designed to teach religion and if someone chooses to place their children within private religious schools that is their right.  However, I am against a plan to utilize a public entity to instruct a religious point of view.  This violates most of everything that helped create this country.  If we give into those that think this would help make our children and the schools more peaceful it will chip away a large chunk of the foundation of our freedom.  Such a large chunk could topple this great country as we are truly held together in a delicate balance of control and freedom.

The place for teaching OUR children religious beliefs is within your home, family and church.  It is the responsibility of the parents to teach their children proper societal conduct.  It is our government’s job to define that conduct.  Some of us have done our part and our children show that rearing.  You’ve seen them; they are the good kids.  The ones that don’t disrupt their classes, fight, or become an issue.  Others haphazardly raise their children, or allow the children to raise themselves, and we see that result also.  Because of this some of you feel that the schools should pick up the slack and teach kids how to behave.  That religion is the key to a well mannered, well behaved, and successful child.  This might be true but no more than strong parental guidance and supportive methods in the home.  This is a job for parents and not teachers (some of whom are just kids themselves).  If we could get the attention of the parents with the problem children they could start correcting the problem before it is too late.  Sadly, however, what I have witnessed recently is that no matter how hard a school tries with a kid if the parents don’t support it nothing changes.  Until this is addressed we will continue to have unruly kids in our schools and society.  Parenting isn’t a part-time job; it’s a life long career.