Jews and public schools

[Marie A. Failinger]

Perhaps I missed it, but I find it strange that almost no one brings up
release time as a viable option for "having our cake and eating it too" in
a religiously pluralistic society.  Perhaps we consider this not to be a
serious public option after the early cases on the subject.  But since
many children are already attending an after-school program (many getting
there with public transportation), the apparatus
for creating a release opportunity for all children to attend
enrichment/values classes (religious or otherwise) while maintaining
public school pluralism in "secular" subjects is perhaps as doable if
religious organizations have the political and economic will to create
them. If release time were part
of the school day for everyone, not just those who chose to leave for
religious classes, parents could have more say over the values their
children were taught, public school teachers a more viable workload, and
students no sense of being excluded/included depending on who was leaving
school.

For some religions, of course, this will not be a viable option because
any pervasive contact with secular values is religiously problematical.
For some children, even a part-day public school children will not do
(which is why vouchers make sense).  But for many people who are concerned
that religious instruction be a part of every child's day and who don't
have the resources to make that possible themselves, this combination
would be preferable to private school anyway.


 On Wed, 20 Aug 1997, Michael McConnell
wrote:

> Much of the debate over the public school monopoly
> resembles the old debate over the established church. The
> church provided much of the social glue that now is
> attributed to public schools, and there was something
> profoundly *inclusive* about a big-tent, latitudinarian
> national church. Only the kooks and radical dissenters
> (today's homeschoolers and religious school fanatics) had a
> problem with it. And requiring everyone to get along
> together in the same church was good for civic compromise
> and ensured that the doctrine taught would be moderate and
> broadly acceptable to (almost) everybody. It avoided social
> balkanization along sectarian lines.
>
> Allen Brownstein writes:
>
>
>


Marie A. Failinger
Hamline University School of Law
mfailing at piper.hamline.edu