Are Government Schools Constitutional?

Are Government Schools Constitutional?

Building on what Roxanne Sitler wrote regarding State Education System Inconsistent With State Constitution, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution states,

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

Many have attempted to define this verbiage as separation of church and state based on a letter written by Thomas Jefferson in which he defined what he believed this verbiage meant, understanding that Jefferson was in France when the Bill of Rights was written.

This is not, however, what our Founding Fathers intended. Many of the framers of the Constitution had, themselves, been the subject of the persecution of the Church of England, which even here, in America, had refused to recognize certain religious faiths. For example, until 1781, in Virginia, the Presbyterian ministers were not recognized; and, therefore, any marriages they performed were not recognized. For this reason, couples seeking marriage had to do so outside their church, and often had to travel great distances to marry. As a bit of history trivia here, it was the Scotch-Irish of Virginia who had fought for England in Ireland, who were largely responsible for the Revolution. They had fought for England with the understanding that in so doing, England would recognize their religious faith. When England got what it wanted, however, it refused to recognize the Presbyterian faith and continued persecuting those who practiced it.

It was this sort of persecution that caused our Founding Fathers to forbid the establishment of a state religion which is the purpose and intent of the First Amendment in forbidding the establishment of a state religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

As Roxanne has so adequately laid out, education, in every instance, is to inform a world view – one's religious principles, opinions or beliefs "concerning the origin of the universe, the nature of man, of history, of morality and even government" – how one perceives the world and the purpose of it.

And it follows therefrom that government schools, in propagating any religion – whether Christianity, humanism, Buddhism, Shintuism, Confusism, New Age – violate the charge of the First Amendment forbidding the establishment of a state religion. And if follows thereform that government schools violate the First Amendment.

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