In 2022 I wrote a piece here at Next Steps declaring myself President of the “Religious Charter Schools Should Be Permitted, Mandatory and Non-existent” club. Every other group under the sun operates charter schools and infuses the curriculum with their point of view, which is fine because charter schools should be viewed as state contractors, as they are out here in the 9th Circuit. Moreover no one is ever forced to attend.
In that context, telling Lutherans etc. that they are some kind of menace to society that we must protect children from seems both bigoted and silly. It is also contrary to the principle of religious neutrality. Moreover, the equivalents of religious charter schools operate in Europe, and while it may not be optimal, it is hard to argue that such a prospect is catastrophic.
I also attempted to explain that the charter movement of today is not the movement of decades past. We’ve spent a couple of decades passing charter school laws perfectly designed not to open many actual charter schools. When states passed laws perfectly designed not to pass many charter schools, national charter groups sang the praises of the new laws.
This is not as strange as it sounds. This is not to say that it isn’t pathetic — it is in fact entirely pathetic — but it is not unheard of. Public choice economists long ago identified a Baptist and Bootlegger problem whereby sincere opponents (Baptists in this case are the unions and their groupies) and opportunistic incumbents (in this case charter management organizations with a legal team that can file a 900+ page application etc.) team up to throttle competition…err…I meant ensure quality charter authorizing.
Actually, I had it right the first time.
If you’ve been keeping half an eye on the Supreme Court for the last 20-plus years, you’ll know that the majority (delightfully) takes a dim view of discriminating against people or groups based upon their religious affiliations. I could be wrong (it has happened plenty of times before) but I’m thinking it is pretty clear how this case is likely to go.
Even if/when the high court allows religious charter schools, enthusiasts need to remember that this is what awaits even if you win the case:
The B and B alliance does not want m(any?) new charter schools to open, and both will be aghast at the idea of religious charter schools. I am not going to help them dream up insidious ways to discriminate against religious groups. If I did, it wouldn’t take me long to dream up five or six ways. On principle, I am with the religious charter school enthusiasts. Color me skeptical that this effort will prove a productive way to provide new schools and seats, but non-discrimination and an experimental mindset should prevail.
Enthusiasts should, however, understand the politics of what they are getting into.
Editor’s note: The NAEP will release 2024 fourth and eighth grade math and reading scores Wednesday. Buckle up!
If all want sense, God takes a text
And preaches patience.
The Church Porch, Geo. Spencer
Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has given us a decision in Espinoza v. Montana, suppose that one day the state of Montucky were to adopt a broad and inviting program of subsidies for lower-income parents to choose among private schools that are free to teach religion. One systemic effect of such an act would be new pressure on the public school to begin behaving in ways that attract parents who would no longer be conscripts, but rather, free customers.
In a word, there would be competition.
Experience already tells us that one substantial effect of choice is to lure to the private sector parents who have religious beliefs that could at last be served and celebrated in private school. Plainly put, the governmental sector of schooling would be at some disadvantage in a market where, by law, it could not serve such families’ preferences by teaching about God as the parent would have it.
There seems little prospect of the Court in any future decision allowing public schools to compete simply by adding religion to its ordinary curriculum. Which religion(s) would they teach, and what of the rights of dissenting and atheist parents? Are there options for P.S. 42 – that is, could public schools at least do something that would recognize the importance of the intellectual, spiritual and moral issues involved without favoring any particular belief over others?
Could they do something more than offering an hour’s “release time” once a week with some unpaid priest, pastor or rabbi who sets aside all other distracting duties for this one, for which he or she may be poorly prepared?
The alternative available to the public school may be awkward, but I should not give up on making religion, agnosticism and atheism all teachable with enthusiasm in the basic curriculum – and without violating the establishment clause of the First Amendment. There is, I think a way for the classroom teacher (or better, a certified and scheduled specialist), in the regular curriculum to do justice to contrary ideas without betraying his or her own convictions; it would have its occasional moments of disaster, but no more frequently or damaging than the available alternatives.
Moreover, it could open young minds to ways of thinking and of respectful disagreement on this world’s most fundamental issue.
This method that I have I mind is very old and always imperfect, but I think it a plausible exit from the public school’s looming problem of keeping those families who would now have become its free customers. The effective teaching of religion in public elementary and high school should be taken seriously as part of the teacher training for the Master of Arts, and at least some graduates should finish sufficiently adept that their handling of the transcendental could claim neutrality.
Without settling upon a “correct” answer for the pupil to memorize, the child would at very least be helped to understand that there is a crucial question all humans have faced since the beginning – from Eve in the Garden of Eden to politicians in the Rose Garden.
This method that is plausibly lawful is generally labeled “Socratic,” thus paying tribute to that old Greek who left us nothing written but who gave philosophy and law a way of separating ideas that are either mutually opposed or simply different, and to do so without taking a side.
And here is a confession: I draw upon forty-plus years of experience teaching law to (mostly) young adults and not to children (except our own five) and that experience may be too remote from childhood and adolescence to justify my pontificating about the ideal pedagogy for elementary or high school pupils.
Whether Socrates ever visited his style upon children, we don’t know. But were I teaching in the public schools of 2040, I would at least give the old Greek – and myself – a serious try.
