I'm not quite ready to share Rick's "groan" in response to the Ninth Circuit's ruling in Truth v. Kent School District. I find maddening a university's decision not to approve Christian student groups that "discriminate" against non-Christians, but this case involves a high school. And this is not a Good News Club-type case in which a Christian group is denied access to public facilities; here the "Truth" Christian group sought status as an officially approved curricular group, which would allow them to use student council funds and access the PA system for making announcements, among other privileges.
More fundamentally, though, I think the legitimate pedagogical objectives of a high school are much different than a university. A university is, or at least should be, a broad and vibrant marketplace of competing moral claims. I'm not sure that model is appropriate for a high school. In this case, the school district's policies portrayed officially approved student groups (as opposed to clubs like Young Life that meet before or after school) as vehicles by which to teach tolerance and inclusiveness (among other values). This is not to suggest that all officially approved groups were uncontroversial -- the Gay-Straight Student Alliance gained approval, which makes the Christian group's exclusion a bit jarring, I'll admit. But even if we disagree with the school's decision not to approve Truth given its exclusion of non-Christians from voting membership, do we really want to give Truth a constitutional right to demand that it be approved?
As Rick himself recently wrote in a very thoughtful essay, it is by no means obvious how we should expect the First Amendment, which is designed to “constrain the government from interfering in or directing a diverse and pluralistic society’s conversations about the common good,” to apply in a context in which the state is charged with “producing not just certain facilities, but certain core values, loyalties, and commitments."
Put simply, I'm always willing to groan at the Ninth Circuit, but I need a bit more convincing in this case.
Our dean's decision not to allow students to fulfill their public service graduation requirements by volunteering at Planned Parenthood has received substantial local news coverage. Most of it has been fair and balanced (though one wonders about the state of Catholic higher education when this decision is deemed sufficiently newsworthy to lead off a nightly newscast). My favorite quote was from the head of Minnesota's Planned Parenthood office, who explained that Dean Mengler's decision not only violates academic freedom, but it also "illustrates a disturbing and dangerous lack of tolerance."
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Marc DeGirolami has posted his paper, The Constitutional Paradox of Religious Learning. I recommend it to anyone interested in the role of religion in public education, though I'm hesitant to embrace his recommendations. Here's the abstract:
The constitutional paradox of religious learning is the problem of knowing that religion - including the teaching about religion - must be separated from liberal public education, and yet that religion cannot be entirely separated if the aims of liberal public education are to be realized. It is a paradox that has gone largely unexamined by courts, constitutional scholars and other legal theorists. Though the Supreme Court has offered a few terse statements about the permissibility of teaching about religion in its Establishment Clause jurisprudence and scholars frequently urge favored policies for or against such controversial subjects as Intelligent Design or graduation prayers, insufficient attention has been paid to the nature and depth of the paradox itself. As a result, discussion about religion‘s place in public schools often exhibits a haphazard and under-theorized quality. Yet without a deeper understanding of the relationship between religious learning and liberal public education, no edifying policy solutions are likely in an area so fraught with constitutional complexity and high emotion.
This Article aims to fill that gap by giving the constitutional paradox of religious learning its due. It offers a detailed theoretical account of the relationship between religious learning and the cultivation of the civic and moral ideals of liberal democracies. It draws on that account to develop a unique model of religious learning within liberal learning that takes its cue from the historic purpose of the public school. Since even today it is widely supposed and insisted that public schools still serve a vital role in developing civic and moral ideals in young people, this Article‘s comprehensive examination of the constitutional paradox of religious learning is both timely and necessary if the seemingly intractable skirmishes over religion, education policy, and constitutional law are capable of even a modest rapprochement.
An important topic, to be sure, and one that Marc handles with a good deal of theoretical sophistication. Nevertheless, I found myself growing less and less comfortable with where the analysis was taking me. Let me take a stab at articulating my discomfort.
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Tuesday, April 29, 2008
For anyone who doubts the dangers to family autonomy posed by an overreaching (and apparently incompetent) state, consider the case of an archaeology professor who mistakenly gave his 7 year old a bottle of Mike's Hard Lemonade at a Detroit Tigers baseball game.
I'm aware of the Miley Cyrus photo controversy, but I was more taken aback by a billboard and television ad campaign for a show called "Gossip Girl." The campaign utilizes the well-known (and obscene) "OMFG" with a photo of two young people in a pretty unmistakable sexual pose. Just how young are they? It was not until tonight that I learned that the show is about high schoolers, and the marketing is aimed at high schoolers. I'm not all that old (though my students will say that the content of this post is evidence that I indeed am old), but I'd like to note how quickly social norms have changed, even since I was in college and Beverly Hills 90210 debuted as the teen show of choice. Yes, the characters on 90210 had sex. But the marketing images are dramatically different, and I'm pretty sure that images matter. (You can see the images below the fold.) What norms do these images establish for teenagers today?
UPDATE: Denise Hunnell answers my question from the perspective of a CCD teacher. For her seventh graders, she writes, the most difficult sacrament to understand is Holy Matrimony. The cultural messages kids have received by seventh grade make the Catholic image of marriage "extremely counter cultural and almost unbelievable." Indeed, "It is easier for them to believe that the Eucharist is the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ than it is for them to believe that sex belongs in marriage and marriage is a life-long commitment." She has written more on her experience here.
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