scholarly journals Religion in the public schools: An examination of school personnel knowledge of the law and attitudes toward religious expression

2019 ◽  
Vol 106 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-97
Author(s):  
Julie C. Herbstrith ◽  
Sarah Kuperus ◽  
Kathleen Dingle ◽  
Zachary C. Roth
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
School Personnel ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Religious Activities ◽  
Religious Expression ◽  
Right Wing Authoritarianism ◽  
The Public ◽  
Increased Sensitivity ◽  
The Law

Many Americans are familiar with the First Amendment, but its application to prayer and religious activities in public schools is often misunderstood. Religious beliefs are increasingly diverse in the United States. Therefore, it seems imperative that school personnel are aware of the law and sensitive to an array of religious practices. We conducted two studies that explored school personnel’s (a) understanding of laws on religious expression in public schools; (b) attitudes toward religious expression in public schools; and (c) tolerance for different religions. Key Study 1 findings were that school personnel with more service years had less accurate knowledge of religious expression laws than school personnel with fewer service years, and more knowledge was related to increased sensitivity to religious practices in schools. Study 2 conceptually replicated these relations with a sample of pre-service teachers and found that Right-wing Authoritarianism mediated the relation between knowledge of the law and religious sensitivity, presenting an avenue for interventions to increase religious sensitivity.

scholarly journals Religion, Democracy and the Public Schools

2009 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
A Priori ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Activities ◽  
The Public ◽  
School Prayer ◽  
Political Policy ◽  
Early School ◽  
K 12

In the six decades since it began adjudicating issues involving religion and K-12 education, the United States Supreme Court has issued numerous opinions on various aspects of that relationship. Several of the Court's viewpoints have changed over time. It explicitly reversed itself on the constitutionality of using publicly-paid specialists in parochial schools, and dramatically changed its perspective on public funds flowing to those institutions. But the Court has never wavered on issues regarding religious activities in public schools—it has struck down every policy or program it has chosen to review. No opinion was unanimous, and rationales changed. But no result has diverged from the Court's original perspective that the Establishment Clause's brightest line ran just outside the public school grounds.This piece begins with first doctrinal, then policy reviews of the Court's nine school prayer decisions. Parts I and II analyze the decisions as constitutional doctrine, dividing them along parallel lines of time and quality. In Part I, I show that the holdings and rationales of the Court's early school prayer decisions are both sound and commendable as constitutional doctrine. Part II takes a longer look at the remaining later decisions however, and reveals a struggling Court often relying on specious, fabricated or a priori reasoning to reach the apparently inevitable, but questionable, conclusion of unconstitutionality. Part III takes up the effects of the Court's decisions on social and political policy. I argue that the early decisions, though controversial, freed America from a past of sectarian domination, while the later decisions helped sow the seeds of several related and unhappy developments, especially ones promoting the very religious divisions they purported to guard against.

Religious Expression in Public Schools

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin R. Pregent ◽  
Nathan C. Walker
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
Establishment Clause ◽  
Religious Activities ◽  
Religious Expression ◽  
Free Exercise ◽  
The Public ◽  
Free Exercise Clause ◽  
The Us ◽  
Teachers And Students

There is perhaps no better setting that exhibits the perennial tension between the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause than American public schools. The Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the US Constitution ensures that students may retain their religious beliefs, practices, identities, and rights when they enter public schools. The free exercise principle also protects government employees; however, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prevents teachers and administrators, as agents of the state, from entangling the public school in religious activities or engaging in school speech that advances or endorses religion. This chapter illustrates how these two principles––free exercise of religion and non-establishment of religion––form the concept known as religious freedom. Attempting to strike this balance are public schools, which are required to serve the entire public, whether religious or not. Those within the school—both teachers and students—may be religious and wish to express their religion or to express their critique of or nonaffiliation with religion. This chapter explores different forms of religious expression for both students and teachers and details the unconstitutional nature of laws that seek to target religion for regulation or fail to accommodate religion in public schools.

PERMISSION TO CONDUCT THE FIRST STUDY OF THE HEIGHTS AND WEIGHTS OF CHILDREN IN THE UNITED STATES

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1968 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 311-311
Author(s):  
T. E. C.
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Medical School ◽  
Harvard Medical School ◽  
The United States ◽  
Harvard University ◽  
The Public ◽  
Boston Public Schools ◽  
School Committee ◽  
Boston School

The beginning of all growth studies in this country occurred less than a century ago when the Boston School Committee approved the following order permitting Henry Pickering Bowditch, Professor of Physiology at the Harvard Medical School, to measure and weigh children in the Boston public schools. This document is one of the great, and I believe little known, landmarks in modern pediatrics.1 In School Committee, March 9, 1875 Ordered, That permission be given to Prof. Henry P. Bowditch, of Harvard University, to ascertain the height and weight of the pupils attending the public school, through such an arrangement as the respective chairman and the headmaster, or masters, may deem most convenient.

Education

2021 ◽  
pp. 90-113
Author(s):  
Crawford Gribben
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
The United States ◽  
Day Schools ◽  
Government Schools ◽  
Home Schools ◽  
The Public ◽  
Number Of Children ◽  
American Children ◽  
The 1960S

Since the 1960s, a growing number of American evangelicals have withdrawn their children from “government schools,” seeking alternative provision either in private Christian day schools or in parentally provided education within the home. Over two million American children are being home educated, and in the last few years, the number of children involved in home education has grown at a rate around twelve times that of the number of students entering public schools. Across the United States, but especially in north Idaho, an increasing number of believers are turning to several varieties of Christian education to dispute the minoritarian and subcultural assumptions of those believers who have conceded to liberal expectations, and to educate a generation of the faithful that will work to reclaim and eventually control the cultural mainstream. The influence of conservative religion on the public school system has never been greater, but in home schools, private schools, and liberal arts colleges, education has become a vital weapon in strategies of survival and resistance in evangelical America.

Have You Heard? Newsworthy items from the field

2019 ◽  
Vol 101 (4) ◽  
pp. 69-70
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Test Scores ◽  
Educational Opportunity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Research ◽  
National Bureau ◽  
Religious Expression ◽  
Working Paper ◽  
Suspension Rates ◽  
The Relationship

A Pew survey reveals how much and what kinds of religious expression students encounter in U.S. public schools. Teachers surveyed by the Data Quality Campaign say they value data, although learning to use data well requires time and training. An interactive website from the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University enables users to explore average test scores, improvements in test scores, and trends in test scores in schools and districts across the United States. A new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research looks at the relationship between schools’ suspension rates and the future lives of students in those schools.

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