A story from my local newspaper shows how much confusion exists about the separation of church and state.
The story [CapeGazette.villagesoup.com 10/21/14] states:
The Cape Henlopen School District [Lewes DE] has replied to a complaint that its football coach publicly prayed with his players after a game.
But two board members say the issue merits more discussion.
“This is not a board decision … matter of fact, the letter was not even shared with us until after it was sent,” said board member Sandi Minard.
The letter is in response to a Freedom from Religion Foundation letter sent to the district Oct. 8 after the Wisconsin-based group received a complaint about a Cape Gazette photo. The foundation says the photo shows football coach Bill Collick praying with his team after a game.
In Cape’s written response to the group, Superintendent Robert Fulton said he spoke with school administrators and Collick about the photo taken after the Oct. 3 football game against a Cambridge, Md. team.
“I can assure you that our employees, including coaches, will be reminded of laws involving the Separation of Church and State and will respond accordingly so that an objective/reasonable observer will not perceive their actions as endorsing religion in the future,” he wrote.
Is it a violation of church and state for a high school coach to publicly pray with his players on a field? Two camps reply. One camp says, in essence: “It’s a public school. It’s funded with taxpayer dollars, and the tax-paying citizens should not be forced to endorse religion in this way.” The other camp says, “Religion is a private matter, and if a coach wishes to lead his team in prayer, particularly if he’s not forcing anybody, he should be allowed to do so.”
Is it possible for both sides to be right — and wrong — at the same time? Logically, it sounds ludicrous; but that’s the case here.
Each side argues about the immorality and illegality of coercion. One side says it’s wrong to force people to pray, while the other side says it’s wrong to deny people the right to pray.
But what both sides ignore, forget or evade is that public schools are government-coerced monopolies, in the first place. Who’s paying for the salaries of these coaches and the football field stadiums and equipment? Primarily citizens who pay property taxes. Property taxes are not optional. When you pay property taxes, you have no choice about (1) the fact you must pay them; and (2) the policies of the schools to which you’re being forced to contribute — whether those schools allow football coaches to pray with their players, for example.
Federal tax dollars also are poured into the public school system, via the U.S. Department of Education at the federal level. What this means is that people in a Baptist area of Alabama are forced to contribute to programs of which they disapprove in Manhattan or San Francisco, while taxpayers in San Francisco are subject to endorsing opposite types of programs and practices at schools in Alabama or central Mississippi. And we wonder why there’s so much dissension, anger and irritation about public schools.
In any coercive monopoly (of which the public school system is the biggest example), somebody will always be screwed. If the money goes to support religious-oriented activities, then taxpayers who don’t want religion will be out of luck. If the money goes to support the atheistic or secular-oriented activities, then religious people will take offense.
There’s no possible solution to this debate. There never will be, and there cannot be. The only “solution” is the one that always happens: Those with the most votes, or the most political clout, will win. If the case goes to court, then a socially conservative judge will decide in favor of the pro-prayer side; and a socially liberal judge will decide in favor of the no-prayer-allowed side. Either way, someone loses.
Neither side has a right to complain about the violation of rights, not if they support — or take for granted an unqualified support of — the coercive public school monopoly.
The only fair and ultimately practical solution? Privatize schools completely. There should be no government “school system.” We can debate and study the best way to implement privatization in practice; but the goal of any such proposal should be to phase out public schools not only as we know them, but as something that exists at all.
In a private system, parents will be responsible for educating their children, and any dollars required will be voluntarily spent — not coercively obtained — dollars. This is as moral as it gets. Without the imposition of politics from above, privatized schools will have an opportunity to actually get education right. Let’s face it; given the current state of schools (at an unbelievably high price tag), there’s nowhere to go but up.
If you doubt the credibility of a privatized school system, then ask yourself this question: Would you rather buy a car, or a house, from an agent or a company who cannot go out of business? Or from one who can? A public school cannot and will not ever go out of business. In fact, the less it accomplishes, the more money it gets. In a private system, this would not be the case.
Given the unlikelihood of this happening, the only other alternatives are second-best or fourth-rate solutions. One is to get the federal government out of public schools altogether. Leave it to localities and local school boards. In some areas, high school coaches will pray with their team, and it won’t be controversial. In other areas of the country, school prayer would never stand a chance. Shut down the federal Department of Education, which — liberals should remember — could someday come under the control of a religiously fundamentalist administration that will seek to use taxpayer programs to enforce the presence of religion in schools, just as the liberals enforce their philosophies and viewpoints at present.
It’s true that government money cannot and should not ever be used to overtly fund religious activities. Whether a school football coach choosing to pray and inviting (not requiring, but inviting) his players to join him is an admittedly borderline and debatable case. The liberals do have a point here. However, they’re not entitled to make that point unless they favor getting rid of coercion altogether. You cannot argue, “Forcing religion on people is wrong,” when at the same time you argue or imply, “Forcing anything else on people is acceptable.”
I am not, personally, a social conservative in any way, shape or form. I oppose any social conservative who wishes to trade off one form of coercion — the socially liberal kind — for another. I don’t want President Rick Santorum using federal tax dollars to mold public, nationalized education in his own image any more than I want Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton imposing theirs. I don’t favor school vouchers using tax dollars to support religious schools, any more than I favor tax dollars going to the public schools we have now.
But I do sympathize with socially conservative parents who wish to be left alone, and to teach their children as they see fit. Even if they’re teaching their children things I don’t personally like, it doesn’t change the fact that this is their right. And I’m not so hopelessly naive as to think that if public schools teach these children something different, that the children will automatically think differently. Young people, in a free society, grow up and think what they choose. That’s how it should be.
This is why so many conservative religious people are angry. They’re being forced to participate in a school system that does (or forbids) things they don’t like. This is no more fair than forcing liberals to participate in a school system that requires (or pressures for) prayer, or teaches that marriage is only between a man and a woman, for example.
In any non-debate like this, freedom is the only solution. Individual rights, property rights and freedom of expression (in the academic realm, most of all) are what made this country grow from a wilderness into the most magnificent civilization in all of human history. All this in spite of the fact that people were from vastly different cultural, religious and ideological backgrounds. Back in the day, people largely agreed on one thing: freedom. Today? Not so much.
Whenever people evade these obvious truths, you get the sort of disingenuous and hypocritical non-debates of the kind described on the Delaware football field.
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