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Moses would have never thought his trip down Mount Sinai would lead to the Bayou State’s new law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom.
It’s common sense that an educated person should be familiar with the commandments.
It’s just one of those things. They are meant to be foundational to our concept of law and morality. America and Western Civilization are unimaginable without them. So is a global society. Their influence is universal. Familiarizing students with them is imperative.
But before we hit the tablets, a quick mention of the Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters’s announcement that all schools must incorporate the Ten Commandments and the Bible into curriculums is so 2024.
HE REALLY BELIEVES THIS
“The Bible is an indispensable historical and cultural touchstone,” Walters said in the press release. “Oklahoma students cannot properly contextualize our nation’s foundation without basic knowledge. This is not merely an educational directive but a crucial step in ensuring our students grasp our country’s core values and historical context.”
Since public schools are accelerators and incubators for politicizing social issues, organizations have sprung up, insisting that we must put God back in public schools.
The Bible has been present in American classrooms to at least some degree since before the origins of the country’s public school system in the 19th century.
Schools have become the arena for an array of moral and cultural conflicts, and conservative Christians are asserting their political muscle even as they decline as a share of the American population.
EXTREME BELIEF
Everyone has an opinion about religion and its role in schools. These opinions are often intense and on the extreme edges of the subject.
More than 55 years after the Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling striking down school-sponsored prayer, Americans continue to fight over the place of religion in public schools. Questions about religion in the classroom are now making different kinds of headlines as the issue is an important battleground in the broader conflict over religion’s role in public life.
TRYING REAL HARD
Some Americans are troubled by what they see as an effort by federal courts and civil liberties advocates to exclude God and religious sentiment from public schools. Such an effort, these Americans believe, infringes on the First Amendment right to free exercise of religion.
Many civil libertarians and others, meanwhile, voice concern that conservative Christians and others are trying to impose their values on students. Federal courts, they point out, consistently have interpreted the First Amendment’s prohibition on establishing religion to forbid state sponsorship of prayer and most other religious activities in public schools.
THE TABLETS
I see nothing wrong with posting the Ten Commandments in any classroom. I mean, who cares? Anything that can help students be more caring, thoughtful human beings, bring it on. These commandments represent the general list that most cultures provide for living together in peace.
The Ten Commandments are not enshrined in US law except for a couple. At its essence, they create a way to live together. Nothing in these commandments should upset anyone, as most cultures have some variation of them to guide their communities.
So, sitting in a classroom with them on a wall shouldn’t bother anyone. It’s not forcing religion down their throats; it’s merely highlighting what one religion felt was necessary for living together in peace.
WHERE’S MINE
I don’t see why a child of any religion should turn away from a poster with the Ten Commandments when those rules apply, even if the emphasis is slightly different. But I understand why parents practicing other religions would also want their commands hanging up somewhere for their children to read and respect. Whether you call it lust, adultery, or coveting your neighbor’s wife, it is all the same in all religions – it’s not allowed.
Instilling a moral code in our kids is a good idea, no matter where it comes from, especially if it’s a code we follow. Every major religion worldwide has one, and they’re all remarkably similar. So, sure, let’s hang moral codes in our schools—hang them everywhere. Moral codes from every religion in America—so that no matter where a student looks, they are confronted with the beliefs that allow human societies to exist.
America’s heroes are public school teachers, administrators, committed parents and passionate volunteers and staff who flip the lights on in the morning and shut them down at night.
Many of these people do what they do because of their faith. We don’t need mandatory, non-sectarian prayers read over the loudspeaker to “put God back in schools.” God never left the schools. God is still at work through these people.
This column is by Ritchie Lucas, Founder/CEO of the non-profit The Student Success Project. He can be reached by email at ritchie@studentsuccessproject.org and on Facebook as The Student Success Project.
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