My readers may already be aware of the blatant example of religious discrimination in a Wisconsin public school that Fox News recently brought to the nation’s attention.  Student “A. P.” drew a rather innocuous landscape for a school project.  In it, he placed a cross and a reference to John 3:16.  The teacher heard students talking about it and demanded that A. P. remove the “offensive” material, stating that when A. P. had signed a required document prohibiting “any violence, blood, sexual connotations or religious beliefs” in class artwork that he had “signed away his constitutional rights.”  A. P. tore up the paper and was thrown out of the class.  An assistant principle later twice confirmed that A. P.’s “religious expression infringed on other students' rights.”

There are a few small but important issues to mention before moving on to something more significant:  This situation is an illustration of the substantial mythology surrounding the idea of the religion-neutral classroom, and the practical results of those misguided beliefs.  Far from ensuring religious equality, the modern educational paradigm in fact promotes a secular humanistic atheism or agnosticism.   

First, it is amazing that lawyers can somehow find all sorts of “constitutional” rights for things like prison inmates being guaranteed the “right” to sue over crumbled cookies, but somehow this same class of people can’t identify this student’s right to basic religious expression.  I would think the line “Congress shall make no law…” would be pretty clear.  Since this is a public school and receives money and direction from the federal government, it is in clear violation of the First Amendment.  A selective reading of the Constitution can apparently work wonders:  The same amendment once designed to protect religion in America from the federal government is now being used by that same government to persecute religion.

Second, it is equally shocking to see this teacher’s particular classification of off-limits topics.  “Religious beliefs” are lumped in with “violence, blood,” and “sexual connotations.”  Murder, rape, torture, various forms of pornography, and John 3:16—I fear I do not see the necessary connection. The fact that many of the world’s greatest artistic expressions have come from religious origins seems completely lost on this instructor.  What I do see is a clear indication that in this classroom students are told that even basic religious beliefs are on the same level as serious societal abnormalities and outright crimes.   This sums up all too well what a whole generation of students is being taught to believe about religion in general and Christianity in particular.  Perhaps, in light of this, it is a good thing that apparently so many of them are failing to learn much from these “schools.”

Of more significance, though, is the light this situation sheds on the modern myth of the religion-neutral classroom.  Most Americans presume that public schools strive to provide a neutral arena in which multiple religions can be exercised equally.  Hence, Christians can maintain their own beliefs alongside others and in fact can use the school systems as a form of societal outreach.  Unfortunately, this is a serious misconception.

The key point is that in practice the schools—based on the secular humanist lead of men like John Dewey and his intellectual spawn—strive not to be inclusive, but rather exclusive.  This is primarily because they exhibit an overwhelming fear that someone might be offended.  The only practical way to insure that no student could ever be upset by a religious idea is to ban such things entirely, as the teacher here did.  Ironically, the public school system thereby shows its “devotion” to religious diversity by (in theory) discriminating equally against them all.  (In practice, however, it often seems that Christianity is the only “offensive” religion in America.)   No serious religious expression is welcome (though a few cultural platitudes are allowed), which sends the message that such beliefs are somehow wrong, and are something that, if spoken about at all, should be limited to embarrassed whispers behind closed doors.  Belief in a higher power is, at best, optional.  At worst it should be forcibly excluded and placed on the same level as “violence” and “blood.”

In place of religion, secular humanism posits a handy substitute conveniently classified as “non-religious” :  evolutionary scientism.  They preach this non-religious religion with a vehemence that borders on the fanatical.  By “scientism” I do not mean the legitimate pursuit of truth through solid scientific method; I mean the blind-faith sort of radical materialism idolized by secularists.  This kind of “science” is in fact a complete worldview that does not allow its basic premises to undergo serious examination.  The only other “religions” that this worldview can tolerate are of a milquetoast sort that are permitted to give adherents all sorts of warm fuzzies, but must not be allowed to comment on any issues that really matter or make a claim at being Truth.  The practical result is that students are actively discouraged from significant independent religious thought, but are supplied with a blind-faith pseudo-religion cloaked in the hollowed name “science.” 

Of course, I am painting with a broad brush by necessity and do not think that all schools fall directly into this category, or that even those that do are necessarily filled with raving secular humanists.  Still, the idea of the religion-neutral classroom is dominates much of modern education theory and is an almost universally enforced standard.  It can often result in schools becoming the intellectual enforcement arm of practical atheism or else perhaps a sort of mushy agnostic relativism. 

The schools claim to do all of this, of course, in the name of “tolerance.”  This is clearly false, whatever the intent.  If the instructor and school here had really sought to teach understanding between cultures, religious themes would be welcome and the more diverse the merrier.  The students in A. P.’s class who objected to his Christianity, would have been called aside and told to respect his personal beliefs just as he should respect theirs.  It is telling, however, that it was A. P. who was punished and given a zero.

This is a state of affairs thinking American parents should mull over when considering their children’s education.  We need to look deeper and really analyze not only educational rhetoric, but also the practical reality.