{"id":1529092,"date":"2022-06-27T07:49:56","date_gmt":"2022-06-27T11:49:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1529092"},"modified":"2022-06-27T07:50:11","modified_gmt":"2022-06-27T11:50:11","slug":"supreme-court-ruling-proves-once-again-that-religion-and-education-are-inseparable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/supreme-court-ruling-proves-once-again-that-religion-and-education-are-inseparable\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court Ruling Proves Once Again That Religion And Education Are Inseparable"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fsupreme-court-ruling-proves-once-again-that-religion-and-education-are-inseparable%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1529092&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/relschool-e1656095695752.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Last week, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.catholicnewsagency.com\/news\/251595\/us-supreme-court-rules-against-maine-s-ban-on-tuition-aid-to-religious-schools\">U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3<\/a> that Maine\u2019s policy of allowing parents to use school vouchers for religious schools was not a violation of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/first-amendment\/article\/885\/establishment-clause-separation-of-church-and-state\">establishment clause<\/a> of the First Amendment, which prohibits the national government from establishing a state religion. In a rare moment of principle, Chief Justice John Roberts rightly asserted in the majority opinion that excluding religious schools from the voucher program was blatant religious discrimination.<\/p>\n<p>This is significant for school choice. It illustrates just how feasible it is to implement school choice and how well it can work. Because the state is largely rural and students are scattered across such a wide area, it was a matter of necessity to outsource schooling to private organizations that could accommodate families where they were. By sending money to parents directly, Maine\u2019s taxpayers are free from the massive cost of building so many campuses and staffing them.<\/p>\n<p>Other state governments looking to save money on funding public schools while encouraging high-quality education may want to imitate this model. In most of the country, only the families who live in affluent areas or can pay for private schools have real access to a quality education. Meanwhile, poorer families are forced to rely on inferior public schools because they have no other options.<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, the ruling of <em>Carson v. Makin<\/em> reaffirms a critical component of school choice \u2014 that there needs to be an actual choice between actual alternatives. A parent with a voucher may technically have a \u201cchoice\u201d between various private, charter, and public schools in the area, but if all these schools operate the same way \u2014 which they do in most states by following numerous regulations in order to receive funding \u2014 that choice is meaningless. <\/p>\n<p>Real choice involves a variety of formats and governing principles that accommodates the needs of the family. For one family, it may be a religious school that stresses a Christian lifestyle; for another family, it may be a school that specializes in preparing students for a trade; or for another family, it may be a school that accommodates students with learning disabilities.<\/p>\n<h2>Education Is Religious<\/h2>\n<p>Along with clarifying the meaning and practice of school choice, both the majority and dissenting opinions from the justices in this case illuminate a deeper truth about education and religion, which is that the two are closely intertwined. All education is religious, and all religion involves education. Learning doesn\u2019t happen in a moral vacuum, and it\u2019s dangerously absurd to insist otherwise.<\/p>\n<p>Yet the idea that public schools are neutral in regards to religion is a pervasive myth for Americans, particularly leftists. Simply invoke the magic words, \u201cseparation of church and state,\u201d vigorously <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crisismagazine.com\/2022\/christianity-is-under-trial-with-the-praying-coach-case\">prohibit all forms of prayer<\/a>, and remove all references to God, and public school campuses will be purged of all religious influences, they seem to assume.<\/p>\n<p>As anyone who has attended or taught at a public school knows, all of them are quite religious. It\u2019s just that their religion is secular humanism. They\u2019ve replaced God with model human beings (e.g., world leaders, civil rights activists, and scientists) that embody the standards they hope to inculcate. They\u2019ve replaced the Apostle\u2019s Creed with a slew of other creeds that pledge students to celebrate \u201cdiversity,\u201d fight climate change, or attend college. And there\u2019s always a consistent effort to replace the home and church community with the school community.<\/p>\n<p>That makes every non-secular school dangerous, even heretical. This is why Justice Sonia Sotomayor described the funding of religious schools as \u201cperverse.\u201d These schools are indoctrinating students in a faith that is different from the established faith of public schools. And like the heretics of yore, they pose a threat to public order and must be put through a Spanish Inquisition or burned at the stake.<\/p>\n<h2>The Idea of Education Is Itself Christian<\/h2>\n<p>The great irony to all this is that the very idea of school is originally Christian. As outlined by St. Augustine in his masterpiece \u201cDe Doctrina Christiana\u201d and carried out by the first universities and cathedral schools in the Middle Ages, school was always intended to be a means of systematically transferring Christendom\u2019s values and beliefs to successive generations. Whatever the academic discipline was, whether music, logic, literature, or astronomy, these were modes of knowledge primarily designed to empower students to become successful Christian disciples.<\/p>\n<p>Even though people like to think that schools today have long dispensed with their religious purpose and have substituted values and beliefs with knowledge and skills, they are sorely mistaken. One will always precede the other and be directly tied to it: values and beliefs must be established to incentivize the acquisition of knowledge and skills. <\/p>\n<p>This is just as true for secular public schools as it is for Christian private schools. Whereas in the past, students learned in order to be like Jesus and His disciples, students today learn so they end up rich like Elon Musk or universally revered like Rosa Parks.<\/p>\n<h2>Humanism Better than What Some Leftists Want<\/h2>\n<p>However, as lackluster as secular humanism is as a guiding philosophy for education, it\u2019s at least something. Anti-religious progressives want to go further and remove all discernable values and standards in public education \u2014 in the interest of equity and diversity, of course. They want all public schools to collectively disavow all their core principles and make \u201cYou do you! It\u2019s all good!\u201d their mission statement. In other words, they want to impose an insecure nihilism that seeks to marginalize and discredit all competing philosophies and religions.<\/p>\n<p>In such an environment, students will sit through classes and question why they\u2019re there. If the goal of school is whatever students want it to be, they\u2019ll probably just want to mentally check out, play on their phone, and find meaning in the latest fad, whether that be <a href=\"https:\/\/www.inquirer.com\/news\/devious-licks-tiktok-bathroom-vandalism-challenge-philadelphia-20211008.html\">vandalizing bathrooms<\/a> or experimenting with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/ideas\/archive\/2021\/04\/how-super-straight-started-culture-war-tiktok\/618498\/\">different sexual identities<\/a>. It\u2019s not surprising that this <a href=\"https:\/\/morrispsych.com\/dealing-with-this-depressive-dystopia-ecclesiastes-covid-and-the-paradoxical-commandments-by-dr-jeffrey-singer\/\">adolescent acedia<\/a> is increasingly becoming the norm at most public school campuses.<\/p>\n<p>Hopefully, with this new ruling, more parents can send their children elsewhere and save their children\u2019s souls along with their minds. The two can\u2019t be separated, and it was always a mistake to assume that it\u2019d be better if they were.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<div class=\"article-author-description fst-italic\">\n  Auguste Meyrat is an English teacher in the Dallas area. He holds an MA in humanities and an MEd in educational leadership. He is the senior editor of The Everyman and has written essays for The Federalist, The American Conservative, and The Imaginative Conservative, as well as the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. Follow him on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MeyratAuguste\">Twitter<\/a>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Maine\u2019s policy of allowing parents to use school vouchers for religious schools was not a violation of the establishment clause of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":551,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1529092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1529092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/551"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1529092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1529092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1529092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1529092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1529092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}