
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 25, 1995                   TAG: 9501280020
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TALK OF RELIGION NEEDN'T BE TABOO

KUDOS TO PTA leaders in Roanoke for asking the city School Board to revisit its policy on religion in the classroom. They want to make sure that a fundamental point isn't misunderstood: While the Constitution prohibits governmental endorsement of religion or sponsorship of religious exercises, it doesn't make all mention of religion out of bounds in the classroom.

If some city teachers are overcautious on this issue, their attitude is neither unique to Roanoke nor hard to understand.

Teachers are the people likeliest to be put on the spot by confusion over what is and isn't constitutionally permissible. In its attempts at precise line-drawing, sometimes the U.S. Supreme Court has paradoxically made things more perplexing. Meanwhile, pressure from those who care little for constitutional niceties, and who want the public schools to expound religious doctrine, contributes to the impulse to overreact in the other direction.

If policy clarification in Roanoke did no more than provide additional help for Roanoke's teachers and principals in applying church-state considerations to everyday situations, it would be worthwhile.

But the issue goes beyond that. It also goes to the safety-first approach in American public education that too often in curriculum and course content ignores the study of religion's role in the history, culture and moral thinking of human societies. This may provide a conveniently foolproof way to avoid constitutional difficulties. But to pretend that something so powerful and widespread as religion and religious belief simply doesn't exist is to pose considerable educational difficulties.

In its 33-year string of rulings applying the First and 14th amendments to the question of religion in public schools, the court has forced school districts across the country to abandon traditional practices of religious devotion, and rightly so. Not only is there a Constitution to be heeded and a religiously diverse social reality to be respected. There's also a lesson to be learned: that secularizing religion is a favor neither to secular society nor to religion.

But the court has never said religion should not be part of a public education. Quite the contrary. In a landmark 1963 ruling overturning teacher-led prayer in public schools, for example, the court went out of its way to make the point:

"[I]t might well be said that one's education is not complete without a study of comparative religion or the history of religion and its relationship to the advancement of civilization. It certainly may be said that the Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities. Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may not be effected consistently with the First Amendment."

The court could command an end to state-sponsored religious exercises as unconstitutional, but could only urge that its words not be misconstrued.

Too often, unfortunately, they have been. Too often, judicial reinforcement of the principle of public-school neutrality in matters of religion is taken as judicial proscription against any public-school mention of religion.

Not so. It can be a delicate task, to be sure, this business of recognizing religion without trying to inculcate it, of teaching about religion without teaching religion. But how much harder can that be than pretending that religion doesn't exist?

by CNB