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Headings: Religion’s Legal Place in the Schoolhouse
Religion’s Legal Place in the Schoolhouse
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Content: As noted in Tinker, school officials also can regulate speech when the expression causes an actual disruption in the school’s operation, according to the Tinker case. So long as students conduct themselves in a non-harassing and non-disruptive manner, public schools must allow students to express their religious views on the same terms as they allow other forms of expression. What’s Permissible? An issue public school administrators and teachers often confront is the appropriate role that religion may play during instructional time in the classroom. There is a key difference between “religious activity” or “religious instruction” in the classroom — that is between instructing students that the tenets of one religion are true and should be followed, which is not permitted, and teaching about religion, such as what members of various religions believe, which is permitted. The U.S. Department of Education explains it this way in its 2003 guidelines, Religious Expression in Public Schools: “ Teachers and school administrators, when acting in those capacities, are representatives of the state and are prohibited by the Establishment Clause from soliciting or encouraging religious activity, and from participating in such activity with students. Teachers and administrators also are prohibited from discouraging activity because of its religious content, and from soliciting or encouraging anti-religious activity.” While the guidelines forbid public school teachers from engaging in religious activity in the classroom, they affirm the Establishment Clause does not mean that religion is strictly forbidden from public schools in all aspects. In Stone v. Graham in 1980, the Supreme Court stated that the matter before it was “not a case in which the Ten Commandments are integrated into the school curriculum, where the Bible may constitutionally be used in an appropriate study of history, civilization, ethics, comparative religion, or the like.”