Review of Current Religious Thought: December 20, 1963

The church-state-school controversy with respect to religious exercises anti observances in public schools promises to be a continuing affair, and the most any discussion (including this one) can hope to do is to lift some aspects of the question into a place of prominence where they may in turn shed some light upon the substantive issues involved. One of the interesting aspects of the discussion has been the claim that in relieving the public schools of the nation of the responsibility for conducting religious exercises, the courts have left the schools free to inculcate without bias the moral values upon which our society rests.

Underlying this contention is the supposition that our religious pluralism comprises three major traditions and no more. Actually, thoughtful persons recognize that, as Bernard J. Kohnbrenner notes in School and Society (May 20. 1961, p. 241, there are four visible pluralistic elements in our society: Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, and secular humanism.

The self-conscious spread of the fourth of these, secular humanism, vastly complicates the problem at issue. In place of a situation in which the public schools are left free to be creedally neutral, we have in point of fact a series of strictures upon public education which actually foster the avowed creed of secular humanism.

But, someone is heard to object, may not the values which we prize be transmitted to students by a neutral public school, and in such a manner as to avoid all sectarian difficulties? Or, another asks, may not any influence upon the lives of children in the public school be accepted as part of God’s pervasive activity in behalf of children? Yet others will prefer that nothing of a religious nature be mentioned in the public school, thereby leaving a clear field to the religious educational facilities of the three major religious traditions.

The first of these objectors assumes that our basic values stand in their own right, and require no spiritual undergirding. He does not ask, “How shall our children’s spiritual needs be met?” but assumes that the schools’ inculcation of moral values will be effective without reference to supernatural concerns. But can we assume that educators who themselves are without spiritual anchorage will interest themselves in wholesome ethical values, much less teach others such values? We think not.

Far from reassuring, for example, is an article in School and Society, issue of Summer, 1963, entitled, “The Function of Schools in a Changing Society.” Written by Grace Graham, professor of education in the University of Oregon, the article takes for granted that “values” are completely fluid, and that in such times as these, the transmission of adult “beliefs, values, and attitudes” to the young leads to total irrelevance.

The article further assumes that children and youth (presumably of all ages) are capable of discovering adequate value systems for themselves, if only their minds are developed “in many directions through different kinds of experiences.”

The grading and incentive systems of the public school are alleged to commit the “sin” of sifting the gifted from out of the mediocre upon a purely class basis. It is alleged that patriotic groups within our society seek to foster an antique form of nationalism, and that “Puritan attitudes toward work, thrift, and play seem out of place in modern America” (p. 259). It goes without saying that the article decries any requirements that would test political beliefs (i.e., loyalties) of teachers or that would protect the young from the salacious products of the press.

In the light of the foregoing, it is far from certain that the values of “the life which we prize” will be conserved in the school which is made safe only for the secular humanist. The overtones of Professor Graham’s pleas for “freedom of the mind” are not encouraging for the continuance of an ethically based free society.

With respect to the second question, whether the influence of the school upon children may be regarded, simpliciter, as part of God’s pervasive activity, we would find it difficult to be sanguine in the light of the anti-supernaturalism which seems to have been part of the regimen of a significant number of institutions of higher learning in which our more influential educators have been trained. One wonders whether the naturalistic teacher can serve with great effectiveness as an instrument for the transmission of a type of outlook compatible with any kind of spiritual world-view.

The view that no use of Scripture and no practice of prayer in the public school can be of any value to the spiritual life of a people is held by many sincere persons. Some, especially of the Jewish faith, hold that such teaching would be ineffectual in the case of their children, and that absence of religious practice in the school is a potent challenge to the synagogue, or to the church or Sunday school, to take its task with greater seriousness. Well and good. But may not a total severance, by an agency which commands the ear of the child for such a large portion of the week as does the public school, from religious concern or religious reference produce a spiritual wasteland in the mind of the child that no spiritual agency, with necessarily less time of access to the child’s mind, can ever hope to populate?

One is perplexed to know precisely what attitude to take toward the children of the overtly irreligious, who seem to feel with sincere conviction that they wish their offspring to be protected from contact with the expressions and forms of religious faith.

Certainly we ought to respect the feelings of minority elements in our society. But do the secular humanists take time to consider the sentiments of those of religious faith, whose children are increasingly subjected to indoctrination in terms of the secular humanistic creed? This fact poses for concerned Christians a continuing source of perplexity.

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