Three Key Concepts

Reading [ Lesson 1] 
Glossary terms at end of reading

Concept A
The Civic Framework

All citizens of this nation are to be on a level playing field of rights and responsibilities with regard to their
liberty of conscience.

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The guiding principles underlying considerations of religion in public schools are the religious liberty clauses of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution:

 "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…"

The two separate portions of the above statement from the Constitution have different oft-applied nicknames.  

Together, these clauses of the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights offer remarkable guidance for government and religion interaction, guidance that has been copied within numerous state constitutions, and by other nations as well.  As understood and interpreted both by the nation’s courts and by the citizenry, they in concert provide a civic framework of rights and responsibilities for treatment of religion and for negotiations of disagreements or differences. All U.S. citizens, religious or not, are vested in this civic framework.

Over time, a succession of organizations and/or religious groups have interpreted the civic framework. Here are examples of such interpretations:

The above interpretations of our nation's "first civic liberty" are spelled out within several pages of detail in a single book—Finding Common Ground: A First Amendment Guide to Religion and Public Education^2REF (Haynes 1998; Chapter 2: "A Civic Framework for Finding Common Ground")  These interpretive statements champion a civic theme of great importance to public school teachers that will be continually reinforced throughout this mini-course.  When you strive for a neutral classroom regarding worldviews and beliefs of conscience, you must keep in mind: 

The need to reaffirm the "first principles" of our civic framework, the clauses that uphold religious liberty for each person, is an ongoing challenge to the American citizenry.  In the words of signers of a recent public declaration on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the State of Virginia's 1788 call for the Bill of Rights: "The framers of the Constitution, in the First Amendment’s two religious liberty clauses, made "…a momentous decision, perhaps the most important political decision for religious liberty and public justice in history… Yet the ignorance and contention now surrounding the clauses are a reminder that their advocacy and defense is a task for each succeeding generation… A society is only as just and free as it is respectful of this right for its smallest minorities and least popular communities." (Williamsburg Charter 1988)

Concept B
The Civil Public School

Every "citizen of the school" (everyone) has freedom of conscience.  At school, each person is treated
justly and respectfully.

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Through its laws, our nation acknowledges certain human rights for every citizen. Religious liberty is a right bestowed on all, the nonreligious as well as the religious.

Public schools are first and foremost models of the nation’s charter. Their educators are leaders of institutions established by the people through their government. They are required to represent the civic framework. For most students, it is their public schools that mold their conceptions of citizenship.

Public education is for all students. The schools are to be places where people of every faith and no faith are treated with fairness and respect. This is the ideal of the civil public school.  This ideal, as described by educators and others, involves a "3Rs" (rights, respect, responsibility) approach to the just handling of religion in public school classrooms and programs. 

Teachers who follow this three-part ideal owe to all children they teach equitable consideration, acknowledging each youngster as an individual who is fully free to hold to his or her individual belief of conscience (religious faith or nonreligious conviction).

In the school society, a person who has a particular worldview is to be neither outsider nor insider. Everyone is to be in full a member of the community.  No one is to be favored because of personally held worldview beliefs.

Classroom teachers impart an image to students of how America looks upon its citizens’ religious freedom. In a conducive classroom atmosphere, youngsters can learn to respect their classmates’ freedom to have and maintain individuality of conscience with regard to religion.

Concept C
Religious Neutrality at School

Public schools, as government institutions, must be religiously neutral.  They must be neutral among religions, and they must be neutral between religion and nonreligion.

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This understanding grows out of the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court since 1947, the year in which the Court set forth the neutrality concept in the case of Everson v. Board of Education. The neutrality concept has since been the criterion of settling court cases on the relationship of religion to government and to the public schools.  The main notion of religious neutrality at school can be simply stated:

Public schools are not to privilege one religion over another.
Neither are they to privilege religion generally over nonreligion.

Public school educators can respond to the challenge of neutrality by endeavoring to ensure impartiality in their own actions.  In dealings with students and by their selection of instructional content and method, they can avoid endorsing any position of belief of conscience as being more salubrious than another. Those teachers who teach about religion can endeavor to achieve a comparable academic objectivity in their school curriculum. They can take care that the overall curriculum and instruction offered does not inadvertently advance any particular religion over others or evidence favoritism for a religious or a nonreligious worldview.

It should be noted that the various beliefs of conscience and religious traditions present in the populace will not have equivalent cultural legitimacy (the community and larger body politic will find some far more acceptable than others).  And, a teacher will not, by acknowledging their existence and teaching about them, thereby deem the various worldviews to be equally valid.

It is important to note that religious neutrality at school does not demand equivalence in terms of the acceptability and/or the validity of the outlooks and traditions. Rather, the point of religious neutrality in public education is two-fold:
(1) acknowledging the actuality of the various convictions, and
(2) ensuring justice to the adherents within the secular school.

Corrections and comments invited. [last modified: 8/28/01]  
Authors: Mynga Futrell, Ph.D. and Paul Geisert, Ph.D.

GLOSSARY TERMS:   adherent  \  belief  \  belief of conscience  \  conscience  \  establishment  \  Establishment clause   \  faith(s)  \  free exercise  \  Free Exercise clause  \  (freedom/liberty) of conscience  \  none (no faith)  \  non-establishment  \  nonreligion  \  religious (freedom/liberty)  \  religious liberty clauses  \  religious neutrality  \  secular  \  worldview

End of Reading.  Return to Guide Sheet.