Chapter 7 Excerpt

Is God Allowed in Public Schools?

My feelings about homeschooling are very strong because many homeschooling parents are part of the group of public school critics whom I find the most offensive of all. These are the holier-than-thou modern day Pharisees who see public schools as enclaves of evil. They often put it this way: God is no longer allowed in public schools.

The people who promote this message object to the fact that we don't have prayer at the beginning of our school days, the way we did until the mid-1960s. Any reasonably well-informed American knows that we don't have that anymore because we have the separation of church and state in this country. The alternative to this is to have whoever is in power impose their interpretation of their religion on society. If you want to imagine how this might work, just look at what the Taliban did in Afghanistan, or look at Iran or Saudi Arabia.

Many good people argue that the separation of church and state shouldn't preclude prayer in school. Although I'm not sure they're correct, I don't think they are being unreasonable. But I can also remember the discomfort I felt as one of the few Catholic kids in a predominantly Protestant elementary school in Minneapolis in the 1960s when we said a prayer in class that didn't include the sign of the cross. It wouldn't bother me at all now, but it did then. I never felt discomfort when I said prayers with my family at home or in church. I wonder how hard it would be today to come up with a prayer that would not cause some discomfort for some of the students, given all our various religions. I'm not saying that people who believe we should have prayer at the beginning of our day are definitely wrong, but I am saying that those of us who have reservations about that are not necessarily Godless.

But not having school prayers doesn't mean we don't allow God in school. Maybe I'm spiritually confused, but I see God in the way people go about their everyday lives, whether or not they pray in public. Although I would be very uncomfortable leading my first-hour class in prayer, God and my faith are very important to me, and I try to bring that with me to school every day. I think there are a lot of teachers like me in that respect. When teachers go out of their way to help students, I see God in our school. When some kid who "gets it" tries to help some kid who doesn't "get it," I see God. In the last four years in our small school, two of our students have died tragically during the school year. There was an outpouring of love and sympathy for those kids and their families from our community and especially from our school. I definitely saw God in our school then.

My school is fortunate because most concerned parents in our community who care about their kids send them to our school. They send them to our school because they care about them, but also because they care about other people's kids and our community. Am I wrong when I think I see God in many of them? These parents are confident in the values they've instilled in their children, so they don't keep them home or send them to a parochial school because they fear that they will somehow be corrupted by our less than perfect students and faculty. It is their children more than anyone or anything else-teachers, administrators, or all the computers money could buy-that make our school a good place to learn. I see these kids everyday, and I see what they do, and I would bet that there are at least some kids like them in every public school in America. So if some people can't see God in our schools, maybe they should take a closer look.