Hello, , from NHERI.

It provides perfect cover for the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) and others who are confused or devious on the issue. Sue a publicly-funded charter school for promoting religion because this is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution. But, reader, please do not let the red herring work on you.

You may read in a national news source that the ACLU is "alleging violations of the constitutional prohibition against government endorsement of religion," in this case, Islam, by a group running a charter school in Minnesota. [Note 1]

Let us tease this apart a bit. First, charter schools are just one of several versions of public schools, that is, state-run schools. The taxpayers fund them with taxes re-distributed by the government. That is, legal plunder is at work. [Note 2] And the state controls, ultimately, the education going on in these schools, just as in conventional "brick and mortar" schools.

Second, the ACLU is upset that this charter school is promoting religion, Islam. Their suit, however, implies that public schools in general do not promote religion. If this were not implied, the ACLU would have to go after shutting down all public (i.e., state-run) schools. Why? Because all schools are, ipso facto, engaged in the teaching, training, and indoctrination of children into a set of values, belief, and worldview. This necessarily entails promotion of religion.

Consider what Dr. James Carper and Dr. Thomas Hunt clearly explained regarding the issue of religion in public schools:

Mead, one of the outstanding historians of American religion in the latter half of the twentieth century, was among the first modern scholars to assert that public schooling functions as our established church. He argued that one of the prominent reasons for the development of compulsory public education in the United States was to "guarantee the dissemination and inculcation among the embryo citizens of the beliefs essential to the existence and well-being of the democratic society." Such beliefs, he claimed, "are certainly religious." Thus the state, he continued, "in its public-education system is and always has been teaching religion" because the stability of the nation-state requires a foundation of shared beliefs, the "religion of the nation" in his terms. "In other words," he concluded, "the public schools in the United States took over one of the basic responsibilities that traditionally was always assumed by an established church. In this sense, the public school system of the United States is its established church." (p. 2). [Note 3]

Therefore, no one, none of the public, should allow the ACLU's suit against this charter public school fool him. All schooling, including public schools, is the promotion of religion. Problematically, however, far too many Americans are oblivious to this point. In fact, so many miss it that they think that they are sending their children away from home, Monday through Friday, to get a religiously "neutral" education in the nice little (or run-down big) state-run school building down the street. They are very mistaken, and a myriad educational historians and philosophers of education know they are.

In one sense, no one should be upset if a public charter school is promoting Islam. After all, all public schools are promoting some religion. Whether the ACLU is trying to distract the public with a red herring or not, the false claim that public schooling in general is religion-less has a tight grip on most Americans.

Back to the title of this article: Religious Charter Schools? Yes, because in a fundamental way, all schools are religious.

An increasing number of parents, however, appear to be realizing that all education is value-laden and that is one reason homeschooling is still on the rise. (For a new study on that, see 2.04 Million Homeschool Students in the United States in 2010.)

P.S. Please feel free to send us your questions about homeschooling and we will try to answer them in upcoming messages.

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