Religion, the State and the Schools: Reflections on the Deweyan Perspective

Religion, the State and the Schools: Reflections on the Deweyan Perspective by Allan C. Carlson Historical consciousness among Americans today does not run very deep. We tend to confront each public issue as though it was emerging for the first time, divorced from the earlier history of the nation. Contemporary debate on the relationship between church, state and school is no exception. When history is called in at all, it is usually for rhetorical purposes. Those arguing against school prayer or tuition tax credits go to great lengths to cast Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and other founders of the American nation as largely secularized "free thinkers," or as Deists "at worst." Those pressing for enhanced religious presence in elementary and secondary schools commit similar sins. For example, the over-zealous publisher of one otherwiserespectable book on the framers of the Constitution, placed on his dustcover the claim that "50 (and perhaps 52) of the 55 Framers of the United States Constitution were Christians. Not humanists, not Deists, not agnostics — Christians!" The Secularization of American Education Fortunately, amidst the smoke, there is occasional light. Perhaps the most useful book on the subject is still the slim volume written in 1912 by legal scholar Samuel Windsor Brown. Entitled The Secularization of American Education , the book avoids descent into the vast controversial literature bearing epithets such as "Godless public schools" or "stunted religious minds." Dr. Brown makes the eminently reasonable statement that "state legislation, state constitutional provisions and state supreme court decisions seem best suited to give us the matured judgment of our people as a whole on this matter."1 - 2 1 - - 2 2 What did he find in his comprehensive review of such evidence? Laws from the colonial and early national period, Professor Brown concluded, show the close connection of church and school and of religion and education. They reveal "the largely religious aim of education, the largely religious nature of the subject matter of instruction, and the considerable part played by the church in the control of schools." When the United States was founded, the historical record shows, church and school were closely bound together and there is no convincing evidence that the founders of this nation, taken as a whole, intended for the situation to be otherwise. The great shift in direction, Brown asserted, came about 1850 when state predominance in educational affairs began to supplant that of the church. "The dominant aim of the school becomes a civic one," Brown wrote, "the subject matter of instruction is purged of everything savoring of a sectarian or denominational religious nature, and control shifts from the church and her ministry to the state and her officials." State constitutional provisions emerged denying the diversion of tax funds to religious educational claimants. By 1912, no less than thirty-five states had enacted specific provisions against sectarian religious instruction or the use of textbooks containing religious materials in state supported schools. The reading of the Bible was still provided for in the laws of fourteen states, but even this provision was frequently limited by requirements that such reading be unaccompanied by any commentary and that those who objected to the Bible being read must be excused from the room. This secularization of public education, Professor Brown insisted, represented but one phase of the separation of ecclesiastical from civil power, a recurring theme in this country's history since the early colonial days. "The American States," Brown noted in closing, now held "unbounded confidence in - 2 3 their ability to educate for their purposes." More recent Federal court decisions on state aid to private schools, while commonly drawing on Constitutional arguments resting in historically dubious interpretations of the First and Fourteenth amendments, have not significantly deviated from the political consensus Brown described. Yet, as Professor Brown himself hinted, this dramatic shift in educational philosophy and structure after 1850 had deeper roots. Not coincidentally, this turn accompanied the dramatic change in immigration patterns that the United States experienced in the same decade. Before 1850, the large majority of new immigrants to America continued to come from England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales and, to a lesser degree, from Germany. The Anglo-Saxon predominance in politics, culture...