Religion and Education:
It has to work Both Ways

Published in the South Marion Citizen, September 1, 2000

What makes our government great, my sixth grade teacher at the Audubon School in Mattapan, Massachusetts told us, is checks and balances. The Congress and the President check each other, and the Supreme Court checks them both. I never did find out who checks the Court until I began reading James Kilpatrick Sundays in the Ocala Star-Banner.

Kilpo, as he is sometimes called, retired several years ago but like a lot of us, he never went away. It is Kilpo who, in weekly spurts of omniscience, stands alone checking and balancing and, when called for, rebuking the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

When the Court refused to hear the case of Tangipahoa Parish, LA., concerning a conflict involving the teaching of Evolution vs the account set forth in Genesis 1: 1-31, Kilpo dissented. He said:

"The high court leaves us in a position in which even a classroom discussion of Genesis is effectively prohibited. This is intellectually indefensible. More than that, the outcome violates basic constitutional principles of free speech and free inquiry."

There are, as we all know, lots of Americans who believe that every work in the Bible is literally true. These folks, if they read Kilpatrick are, I am sure, cheered by the hope that Kilpo will get his wish.

But would they still cheer if they understood what fulfillment of that wish would bring? We're talking here about schools, education and students so let's listen to Joe Reises, a bright young student-columnist who work appears in the Star-Banner.

Joe's column on 7/24/00 is titled, "Prayer belongs in school." He tells us that children bring guns to school and massacre teachers and student, that there really are racially motivated fights and that all this is "because people have shut the door and locked God out of the school system." Joe recognizes the fact that children "who worship a minority religion would feel left out."

Nevertheless, he goes on, "Some form of organized, directed prayer needs to be put back in the school system." Joe says further: "Why not build a chapel in each school so children know there is a place to pray?" Clearly, this young man is bothered by a lot of the same things that bother us all.

He is looking for answers and instead of just waiting for someone else to do it, he floats some suggestions. Whether his ideas are right or wrong, this is the beginning of wisdom. Yes, this student should be allowed to bounce his ideas around in an academic forum. Kilpo is right.

Kilpo is right indeed - more right perhaps than he intends to be. Because in exposing religion, as he advocates, to the "principles of free speech and free inquiry," we would be releasing the subject from the strictures of indoctrination and exposing it to educational standards: reason, questioning, doubts.

Now guided by public school parameters where nothing is acceptable without solid proof, religion would be treated like any other subject. Consider some of the questions, now taboo, that would be opened to the bright light of day.

Do prayers, millions of which go unanswered and unacknowledged every day, really have any value? Is anybody listening? There are hundreds of religions, all different; is mine the one that is right and does that mean all the others are wrong? Is there proof of any of this?

Everybody talks about God and heaven and hell and even purgatory but does anybody know where they are and what they are like and if somebody does know, how did he find out?

Did the writers of the Bible have access to information that is unavailable to us today and if their source was so authentic, how come they so often disagree among themselves? And if it was God who wrote the Bible, how come it has so many mistakes? Whoa! You say the Bible has no mistakes? Well, okay, there's another question we can investigate when James Kilpatrick gets his wish and the Bible goes to school.

So yes indeed, let freedom ring, let free speech reign, let's tell the school kids in Tangipahoa Parish, La. and every place else all about Evolution and let them if they wish bring up the Biblical version of creation, let them think and talk about all the rest and let's have teachers who can direct the discourse with fairness, with respect for the dignity of our imaginative forebears as well as recognition of the discoveries of modern science.

Let's at last examine our religious notions with the same meticulousness we apply to chemistry, biology and geometry. Should two plus two equal four in religion the same as every place else?

We don't care if the Supreme Court approves or not, do we Kilpo? We want to go after the truth, don't we? We're the People, we're the Highest Court, higher than the Supreme, higher even than you. Right Kilpo?

Right?

Kilpo?

Hey, he walked away.