Publicly Funded Parochial Schools?

One nation under God? As apathy and low moral confidence spread, Americans are increasingly advocating a publicly funded return to conventional religion. This trend, especially as it takes form in the school voucher movement, raises significant questions about violations of the First Amendment's separation between church and state, particularly if religious teaching is approved in government-funded schools.

For instance, Kansas' injunction against the mandatory teaching of evolution in its public schools is paving the way for pro-creationist instruction. It is just one example of the recent national progression toward a belief once held only by the religious right. This breach in secular ethics is also evident in recent judicial developments in the school vouchers issue.

On Nov. 5, the U.S. Supreme Court restored tax-supported tuition assistance for more than 700 Cleveland students. Cleveland, for the past few years, has permitted these subsidies to be used for both sectarian and secular private schools. Opponents of the 5-4 court ruling claim that even indirect government support of parochial institutions violates the First Amendment.

Comparing Canada's and France's stance on the relation of church and state with the public funding that they provide to religious schools will help us understand where American priorities should lie on this issue. It is important to realize that the United States is unique in its philosophy and in its practices. Examining the examples of other nations should not require that we follow their policies in kind, but rather clarify the reasons for our distinction.

In determining how recent court decisions here relate to international norms, let's first look to our neighbors, or should we say neighbours, to the North. On Nov. 5 the United Nations Human Rights Committee ruled on the question of whether Ontario's funding of an exclusively Roman Catholic denominational school violates international law prohibiting discrimination. Canada, like Britain, has never endorsed the separation of church and state. Besides Catholic school funding in Ontario, all public schools in Quebec have either Protestant or Roman Catholic affiliation. Even so, international standards on religious discrimination have prevailed in Canadian public schools. The United Nation's court found Canada guilty and ordered that the Canadian government propose a solution to this injustice within 90 days.

Our school voucher system does not discriminate between religions as blatantly as Ontario's or Quebec's school funding does. Public scholastic funding is not distributed to any specific religious group. Vouchers may be used for the sectarian schools of any religion, or conversely, for private schools of no religious affiliation at all. However, complying with international guidelines for justice has never been our national priority, and particularly in this instance, the primacy of domestic introspection is justified.

We should not be censoring ourselves with recently developed international codes, but holding ourselves to our time-tested habit of keeping religious authority at a distant arm's length. Permitting vouchers to be used at sectarian schools--irrespective of their religious affiliation--is a departure from that habit.

A voucher policy does not assure that students will be able to attend a school of their particular religion, especially in the case of minority religions. Consequently, our government would thereby discriminate, albeit unintentionally, by not providing religious education to all groups.

A non-voucher system allows religious diversity to flourish, without raising such difficult questions. Comparatively speaking, even a strict adherence to the First Amendment is kinder to religion than other systems around the world. France is the perfect example.

In France, separation of church and state is so strict that no symbolic expression of religious allegiance whatsoever is allowed in the nation's public schools. Muslim girls in hijabs, Jewish boys wearing yarmulkes and Hindu students in turbans have been banished from the schoolyard for their offensive religious headgear.

While we may be shocked at such seemingly fascist religious censorship, the French regard a religiously neutral environment as essential to fostering intellectual objectivity. We would criticize France's schools for seeing personal religious expression as a threat, not an opportunity, for diverse and varied rational discussion.

It follows that as a nation we should not willingly close off any of our children to the breadth of cultural and religious discussion present in our public schools. It is only through such wide exposure that children can begin to choose who they are for themselves and equip themselves for the lifelong examination of personal identity that they are about to embark on.

In the United States, the separation of church and state is intended to substitute reflection and debate for the indoctrination of belief systems. School vouchers used for religious schools divorce the theory of the First Amendment from its logical application.

Over a hundred years ago, Mark Twain remarked that "In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards." Let's prove Twain wrong by urging school boards to deny public funding for private parochial schools.

Dalia R. Rotstein '03, a Crimson editor, is a first-year in Stoughton Hall.