First Amendment – Dare to Teach and Learn

Texas Again and Again!

I keep wanting to tackle other topics in this blog, but the Texan culture warriors just won’t take a break, so I won’t either.

Despite the assertions of too many, the United States is not and has never been a Christian country. Our founding fathers, particularly Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, advocated for a separation of church and state to protect religious freedom and prevent government overreach into religious affairs. They believed that the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”) and Free Exercise Clause (“or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”) created a “wall of separation” between government and religious institutions. The 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause incorporates the First Amendment’s protections, including the Establishment Clause, to the states, ensuring that state governments cannot infringe upon religious freedom.

Yet Texas continues to push Christianity in schools. In 2021 Texas passed legislation requiring schools to display “In God We Trust” signs as long as they are donated by a private foundation. Last May Governor Abbott signed a bill requiring schools to post the Ten Commandments even though last June a Federal Court found a similar bill from Louisiana unconstitutional. And this session lawmakers are even pushing bills to allow a religious study or prayer period in schools. (texastribune.org)

All of this would be bad enough, but last November, Texas adopted Bluebonnet, a bible-infused curriculum, making it, “the first state to introduce Bible lessons in schools in this manner, according to Matthew Patrick Shaw, an assistant professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt University.” Critics maintain that even with recent revisions, the lessons remain biased toward Christianity, are sometimes misleading, and teach complex topics better suited for older children. Others warn that the materials overstep parents’ rights to make decisions about the role of religion in their kids’ lives. (abc7ny.com)

Texas won’t even reveal the authorship of the bill or its cost, claiming that the work falls under a disaster declaration that the Governor used to speed up the delivery of supplies during the pandemic. This clearly intentional lack of transparency and this rationalization have not satisfied some state Board of Education members, who say the curriculum borders on proselytizing and promotes a distinctly evangelical view of American history. The curriculum extends its Christian focus and is not always age-appropriate or accurate. For example, “A teacher’s guide for a third-grade lesson on ancient Rome, for example, devotes eight pages to the life and ministry of Jesus — presenting many of the events as historical facts, scholars say. But the Islamic prophet Muhammad isn’t named anywhere. A kindergarten lesson on “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” draws parallels to Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. And an art appreciation lesson walks 5-year-olds through the creation story from the Book of Genesis.” (www.the74million.org)

Other concerns have been identified by Mark Chancey, a religious studies professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, who said he submitted over 80 comments to the state. He points out distortions in the story of Queen Esther, and his analysis showed that the authors relied overwhelmingly on a 1978 version of the Bible that he called a “distinctively evangelical translation” that was “made by evangelical scholars for evangelical Christians.” (Ibid.)

And the bill is suspiciously similar to others produced by Christian right bill mills in a national push to provide model legislation to help states embed Christianity in their schools. (www.the74million.org2)

Proponents like Jonathan Covey, director of policy for Texas Values, argue that the First Amendment “does not demand strict governmental neutrality towards religion…There is nothing the U.S. Supreme Court has laid down requiring equal time or equal treatment among religious sects.” (www.the74million.org3) https://www.the74million.org/article/in-close-vote-texas-approves-reading-program-laden-with-bible-lessons/?utm_source=The+74+Million+Newsletter&utm_campaign=fb1300fd77-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2022_07_27_07_47_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_077b986842-fb1300fd77-177359832 The courts have often disagreed, so lawsuits will continue to be filed.

There is some good news. “Texas won’t force districts to use the materials, but is offering up to $60 per student — a total of $540 million — to any that adopt the program. That’s an incentive many are unlikely to turn down at a time school systems are projecting deficits and calling for tax increases to offset them.” (www.the74million.org) Indeed, many of the largest districts in Texas are choosing not to adopt this reading program or to use only parts of it. Texas has 1200 public schools and about 600 charters, but between May and late July, only 144 districts and charters had ordered the materials, and only one of the 20 largest districts intends to use them. (www.the74million.org4)

Yet the Texas Education Agency continues to push the program. It insists that free state support will help students perform well on tests, and it made the materials available months before other options. State lawmakers authorized contracts with businesses to “promote, market and advertise” Bluebonnet and appropriated $243 million to districts to help with implementation costs, like coaching for teachers. (Ibid.)

So: a reading program infused with Christianity that is biased, non-inclusive, inaccurate, not nuanced… what could go wrong? The hypocrisy of leaders and parents who insist that parents should decide how to raise their children in all arenas, including religion, while they embed a specific religion into state curriculum, is staggering. And Texas is not alone in this pursuit. Our constitution and basic rights are being assailed, and we need more public reaction to stop it.

Caught in the Crossfire

The research I do for this blog has driven my concern about teachers being “handcuffed” by micromanagement and censorship in far too many states. Texas and Florida may lead this unhelpful pack, and my growing frustration sought an outlet.

Until now, my writing has been non-fiction, but nearly two years ago, a creative and talented teacher named Claire Peters started pestering me in my dreams, in the shower, on long car rides. My mythical colleague had a story to tell and hounded me to tell it. Reluctantly, I let myself be drawn in. Claire’s story led me to research schools, communities, and laws in Texas, to merge real places and issues into this telling. Although this novel is fiction, it’s grounded in what happened to teachers in Texas during the 2022-2023 school year, interference and micromanagement that continue to this day. The realities drew me in, and I hope they draw my readers in, too.

I didn’t know the ending when I began. I just let Claire lead me, and this is where we landed.

In hindsight, a conversation with a fellow writer reminded me that I, too, had experienced this kind of micromanagement in my very first teaching job, an experience so challenging that it nearly ended my teaching career at the start. You can read all about it my teaching memoir, Tales Told Out of School: Lessons Learned by the Teacher.

I was lucky. I was pregnant with our second child when that school year ended, and we were committed to my being home with our children once my husband finished graduate school. Taking care of our sons gave me a five-year respite which created the space for me to try teaching again. Decades later, I’m grateful for that second chance. But that first experience clearly pushed Claire’s story for me.

I give you Claire Peters. She isn’t me, but I think we’d be friends if she were human. And I’m grateful for her pushing me to tell this story. I hope you found her as compelling as I did.

And I hope her story generates conversations about what it means to be a good teacher in a system that discourages good teaching. I believe that the best teachers coach learners to ask open-ended questions and then seek answers for them. I believe that the point of studying the humanities is to better understand people and lead to better decisions in the future. I believe that history teachers help learners discover the past so that we are not condemned to repeat its mistakes. How, then, can a teacher caught in the cultural crossfire coach learners effectively? How can that teacher encourage questions and independent thought when history is whitewashed and connections are discouraged?

I don’t have answers, but I will always pose questions. We need to protect independent thought, to raise independent thinkers. We cannot do that with our hands tied.

Note: My book is available through Harvey’s Tales in Geneva, Illinois [https://harveystales.com/] and on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Here We Go Again!

My relief about last month’s Supreme Court’s decision not to allow Oklahoma to open the nation’s first publicly funded Catholic charter school may have been premature. I knew the decision was narrow and ended in a tie, with Justice Barrett recusing herself, but at least the court “affirmed last year’s Oklahoma Supreme Court decision that the concept of a publicly funded Catholic charter school is unconstitutional.” (oklahomavoice.com)

The first amendment to our Constitution unequivocally states, “”Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The Court’s tie ruling, however, suggests some openness to dismantling that separation. Our current administration insists that we are a Christian country despite the clarity of the amendment’s statement.

In 1980 in Stone v. Graham, the Court found that Kentucky’s requirement to post the Ten Commandments in schools “violated the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. The Court found that the requirement that the Ten Commandments be posted ‘had no secular legislative purpose’ and was ‘plainly religious in nature.’ The Court noted that the Commandments did not confine themselves to arguably secular matters (such as murder, stealing, etc.), but rather concerned matters such as the worship of God and the observance of the Sabbath Day.” (www.oyez.org )

Despite precedents like that, a year ago, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry signed a bill into law mandating that the Ten Commandments be posted in every classroom in the state and said, ““I can’t wait to be sued.” Last November, U.S. District Judge John deGravelles that “the law is ‘facially unconstitutional’ and ‘in all applications,’ barring Louisiana from enforcing it and adopting rules around it that obligate all public K-12 schools and colleges to exhibit posters of the Ten Commandments.” (nbcnews.com)

When this case reaches the Supreme Court, the outcome should be a no-brainer. Constitutional law scholar Sanford Levinson warns, however, that the current Court’s willingness to dispense with past precedents may lead to a different decision. (hls.harvard.edu )

And Louisiana is not alone. This fall every school in Texas must post a copy of the Ten Commandments, and they will not be permitted to post any alternatives: “the bill requires every classroom to visibly display a poster sized at least 16 by 20 inches. The poster can’t include any text other than the language laid out in the bill, and no other similar posters may be displayed.” (texastribune.com)

Other states have climbed on this bandwagon. In 2024, Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs vetoed a state senate bill that would have permitted posting the Ten Commandments in schools. Last summer Utah passed a bill “adding the Ten Commandments along with the Magna Carta to a list of approved historical documents and principles allowed to be studied in public schools.” The final watered-down version that passed removed the requirement and made the display optional. (abc4news.com) In Oklahoma, House Bill 1006, which failed last year, has been revived and would require a poster or a framed copy of the Ten Commandments to be posted in a conspicuous place in every public school classroom in Oklahoma, the same state where Education Superintendent Ryan Walters “ordered public schools to keep a copy of the Bible in every classroom and incorporate the Christian text into lesson plans. Several district leaders have said they won’t comply, and a lawsuit is challenging the order.” (oklahomavoice.com)

The Supreme Court has weakened the doctrine of separation of church and state before. In 2005 in Van Orden v. Perry, a lawsuit about a monolith displaying the Ten Commandments being placed at the Texas state capitol after being donated by a private group, the Court determined that, “The Establishment Clause does not prohibit per se all forms of government action that may have religious content or a religious message.” (supremejustia.com) In the 2019 Kennedy v. Bremerton case, the Court determined that the football coach had the right to pray on the high school football field after a game, where he could be joined by players. (www.law.cornell.edu)

I fear that the current US Supreme Court will continue to make decisions that erode the separation of church and state. Mandated posting of the Ten Commandments excludes other religions along with atheists and agnostics. It has no part in our public square. Our founding fathers were not anti-religion, but they sought relief from the enforcement of any single religion. I believe in an inclusive and welcoming space for all learners. Religious instruction has been a private matter and must remain so.

Yet Another Assault on Freedom of Speech and Thought

My absolute opposition to book banning and censorship is not new, but the latest news from the Naval Academy’s library has me back on my bandwagon. Nearly 400 books were removed last week after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office ordered the school to get rid of works that promote diversity, equity and inclusion.

I’ve written before about my experiences and core beliefs:

Growing up in a home where I could read anything I wanted as long as we talked about it showed me the breadth and depth of books and made me a better thinker.
Reading controversial work is nowhere near as dangerous as ignorance.
Parents who want some say in what their children read need to accord other parents the same grace instead of forcing their decisions on all parents.
Adults should have the freedom to make their own choices.
Reading books that offer different worldviews and beliefs does not threaten us. Instead, that should cause us to clarify our own worldview and beliefs.
Public libraries should remain free and accessible.
Standards of appropriateness should be even-handed and not driven by ideology.

That’s why Hegseth’s recent move is so appalling to me. His order “resulted in a purge of books critical of racism but preserved volumes defending white power.” (nytimes.com)

Culled books include I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, “How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi, Bodies in Doubt by Elizabeth Reis, and White Rage by Carol Anderson, Half American, about African Americans in World War II; A Respectable Woman, about the public roles of African American women in 19th century New York; and Pursuing Trayvon Martin, about the 2012 shooting of the Black 17-year-old in Florida that raised questions about racial profiling. Other books that deal with gender identity, sexuality and transgender issues were removed, including books about topics such as African American women poets, entertainers who wore blackface and the treatment of women in Islamic countries. (www.cbsnews.com)

“None was banned outright — just rendered ‘not immediately available,’ a Naval Academy spokesman, Cmdr. Tim Hawkins, said. The books, he said, had been placed in a room where patrons could no longer access them.” Katherine Kuzminski, director of Studies at the Center for a New American Security, complained to ABC News about the lack of criteria. Other officials added their voices. Richard Kohn, a military historian and former chief historian for the Air Force, said, “You can’t make ideas safe for people, but you can make people safe for ideas. If you don’t mentor students in the academies to understand what’s going on in American society, you don’t really educate them.” Retired U.S. Air Force Col. Thomas Keaney, a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced international Studies, added, “I don’t think anyone is going to be hurt by reading anything—however nutty or outside their own culture it is. You’re not harming people by exposing them to ideas. On the contrary, you’re training them to be discerning leaders. Give them a chance. Don’t leave them to deal from ignorance.” (abcnews.com)

Although Trump’s January executive orders banned DEI content in K–12 schools receiving federal funds, military service academies were exempt since they are not classified as K–12 institutions. (foxnews.com) Yet the Pentagon has said the academies are “fully committed to executing and implementing President Trump’s Executive Orders.” In January, federal government websites were scrubbed to remove diversity-related content. (www.cbsnews.com)

I find the double standard especially. Why are these books removed while Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler and The Camp of the Saints, a book that envisions immigrants taking over the Western world, a book embraced by white supremacists and promoted by Stephen Miller, remain? Why are frightening ideas from the right not indoctrinating the students whom they insist they want to protect? If reading materials are so dangerous that we must purge books, how do these hostile volumes get a pass?

Adm. James G. Stavridis, an author, academy alumnus and former commander of all U.S. forces in Europe, pointed out that no students are forced to read these books and questioned what we fear. He had specifically cited Maya Angelou’s book as a “valuable resource for helping military leaders understand the diversity of viewpoints that make up the armed forces. Book banning can be a canary in a coal mine and could predict a stifling of free speech and thought,” he added. “Books that challenge us make us stronger. We need officers who are educated, not indoctrinated.” (nytimes.com)

Representatives Adam Smith of Washington and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, both Democrats, wrote a letter on April 4 to John Phelan, the Navy secretary, denouncing the move as “a blatant attack on the First Amendment and a clear effort to suppress academic freedom and rigor” at the school and “an alarming return to McCarthy-era censorship.” (nytimes.com)

Other assaults on free speech, due process, and constitutional protections have already flooded our capacity to respond. I don’t know how to stop these assaults, but they do matter. Aren’t they important enough to prompt us to call our congress people and write letters to the editor? The time is now. Let’s hope it’s not too late.

Trying to Imagine

One of my favorite Chicago Tribune columnists, Heidi Stevens, wrote a moving piece on the Abundant Life Christian School Shooting this week. She focused on the contrast of schoolchildren in their holiday pajamas being escorted from a crime scene. Her refrain, “I’m trying to imagine…,” repeatedly hammers home the senselessness of these avoidable tragedies. Two lines particularly hit home for me:

I’m trying to imagine what it would take for policymakers to stop wasting their time and ours arguing about trans athletes or what parts of U.S. history can be taught or whether rainbow flags are allowed in classrooms or whether dictionaries (dictionaries!) should be allowed in school libraries and start doing the hard, morally imperative work of protecting kids from guns, their No. 1 killer.

I’m trying to imagine how in the world we continue to justify this setup. (chicagotribune.com)

But there is no way to justify this set-up. “Thoughts and prayers” do not stop the shootings. They do not protect schoolchildren from frightening live shooter drills that unfortunately remain necessary. They do not repair the trauma students face, especially those who’ve endured such fear both in public school and again in college.

And not to be too gloomy, but this is only one of the pressing issues plaguing schools today.

Free public education serves not only students and their families – it is the path to an informed citizenry with self-efficacy. But schools struggled to meet that need before the pandemic, and they generally haven’t become more successful since. We know much of what we need to do. Why do we settle for failure?

What would a 2025 that showed progress for schools and their communities look like? So many changes are overdue. I used to tell my students that “If I ruled the world” – getting groans aplenty – what I would do in situations. I don’t rule the world, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting things to improve.

My initial 2025 Education Wishlist, in no particular order, no doubt missing some important pieces:

Gun control/keeping kids safe
Support for students: mental health, behavioral issues, attendance problems
Support for teachers dealing with the above
A continuing and even greater shift to student-centered classrooms with hands-on learning
Focus on critical thinking and lifelong learning
A continued emphasis on STEM skills without displacing the Humanities
Communities within schools
Communities that support their schools and respect their teachers
Positive [not overbearing] parental involvement
Removing the culture wars from education and focusing on real learning

With gratitude to Heidi Stevens, I’m trying to imagine a country where we summon the will to make these changes, hard and time-consuming though they will be. I’m trying to imagine a world where teaching and learning thrive in an environment free of fear. I’m trying to imagine an American people who care enough to make that happen.

Threats to the First Amendment

The United States is not a Christian country, despite constant conservative assertions to the contrary. Our founding fathers sought freedom of religion. In 1789 they adopted the Bill of Rights, whose First Amendment states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Although many of those who call our country a Christian nation often assert the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment, they are too often ready to ignore the very first line.

According to Cornell Law School, as the third president of the United States, “Thomas Jefferson referred to the First Amendment as creating a ‘wall of separation’ between church and state…The term is also often employed in court cases. For example, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black famously stated in Everson v. Board of Education that ‘[t]he First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state,’ and ‘[t]hat wall must be kept high and impregnable’” (www.law.cornell.edu).

The 2022 Supreme Court breached that wall with their decision that a high school coach could legally pray with his players and others on a school field under his First Amendment rights to free speech and free exercise of religion. Now we face further breaches. The Louisiana legislature passed HB71 in June, giving schools until January 1, 2025, to display the Ten Commandments in all classrooms. They must be shown on “‘a poster or framed document that is at least eleven inches by fourteen inches’ in every classroom. The commandments have to be the display’s ‘central focus’ and be ‘printed in a large, easily readable font’” (washingtonpost.com).

And Louisiana is not alone. Similar bills have been introduced in Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and South Carolina, though they have not yet become law. After Texas allowed chaplains in public schools in 2023, more than a dozen states are now introducing legislation to bring chaplains into their public schools. School voucher programs have expanded rapidly in GOP states, bringing billions in taxpayer dollars to religious schools (Ibid.)

I absolutely support the right of Americans to practice their religion if it does not impinge on the rights of others. Posting the Ten Commandments, an inherently religious document, impinges on the rights of all students who do not subscribe to it. Highlighting one religious doctrine as if it were universal excludes students with other beliefs. “‘All of these students will be forcibly subjected to scriptural dictates, day in and day out, including: “I AM the LORD thy God”; “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”; “Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain”; “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy”; and “Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee,” the complaint asserts. ‘This simply cannot be reconciled with the fundamental religious-freedom principles that animated the founding of our nation’” (www.the74million.org).

Louisiana officials claim that James Madison, the fourth President of the United States, stated that we “have staked the whole future of our new nation…upon the capacity of each of ourselves to govern ourselves according to the moral principles of the 10 Commandments.” A lawsuit seeking to overturn this law claims the quotation is fabricated, that Madison instead wrote, “‘The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries’” (Ibid.). Madison also wrote, “Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects?” (thehill.com).

State Senator Jay Morris defended the bill, claiming it “is not solely religious.” “And the text of the legislation deems the Ten Commandments a ‘foundational document in our state and national government’ that was ‘a permanent part of American public education for almost three centuries’” (Ibid.). Such claims are disingenuous and do not meet the burden of separation of church and state. Nor are other foundational documents required to be display, including the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

This is not the first time this issue has been raised. In 1978, Kentucky passed a law requiring “the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms, paid for by private funds” (www.wkyt.com). Challenges in court reached the Supreme Court in 1980. That Court struck down the Kentucky law as a violation of the separation of church and state. The decision reads:

Held: A Kentucky statute requiring the posting of a copy of the Ten Commandments, purchased with private contributions, on the wall of each public school classroom in the State has no secular legislative purpose, and therefore is unconstitutional as violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. While the state legislature required the notation in small print at the bottom of each display that “[t]he secular application of the Ten Commandments is clearly seen in its adoption as the fundamental legal code of Western Civilization and the Common Law of the United States,” such an “avowed” secular purpose is not sufficient to avoid conflict with the First Amendment” (supreme.justia.com).

These battles are not going away. In June of this year, Oklahoma’s State Superintendent of Education official ordered all public schools in the state to incorporate the Bible into their curriculum as a historical text. Yet two days earlier, the Oklahoma Supreme Court struck down a publicly funded Catholic charter school about to open. “The Court found the concept of a religious, state-funded school is unconstitutional and a violation of state law” (oklahomavoice.com).

Public schools need to honor the First Amendment. Students should feel safe and included. I agree with the lawsuit filed in Louisiana that this law “pressures students into religious observance, veneration, and adoption of the state’s favored religious scripture. It also sends the harmful and religiously divisive message that students who do not subscribe to the Ten Commandments … do not belong in their own school community and should refrain from expressing any faith practices or beliefs that are not aligned with the state’s religious preferences” (nbcnews.com).

Isn’t it interesting that many of the same leaders who argue that parents should control the upbringing of their children want to force feed their preferred religion in violation of the Constitution? We cannot allow them to succeed.