Letters to the Editor
-
Re: Anonymous 7:34
"As an Englishman teaching in a US public school, I'm shocked how complete that separation is. You can't teach the Crusades, you have to talk in vague terms about 'European tyranny' as the reason for emigration to America, you can't even teach something like Hamlet without ignoring great chunks of the play."
I'm having trouble believing you. In four years of teaching English in a public school, not once did I skirt or skip the religious issue when it presented itself in a text, be it "Hamlet," "Macbeth," "Julius Caesar," or even "Antigone" (in the latter two we discussed Ancient Greek and Roman religion so that we could understand the motivations and actions of the characters). Our English literature books had Psalms from the KJV Bible because they are examples of transcendent English language poetry. We covered Milton's "Paradise Lost," Donne's poetry, and Jonathan Swift's essays. The Book of Ruth and Ecclesiastes (both KJV) were on the county's approved reading list. Our American lit. books had religious poems by Anne Bradstreet and sermons by Jonathan Edwards and Cotton Mather.
The world history classes covered the history of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, the conversion of the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Crusades, the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, the Inquisition, Henry the VIII, religious persecution in Europe and the Americas, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Any time religion featured a prominent role in historical events, it was covered. Such topics are covered in the Maryland state exams and the AP exams.
Not once did a student, parent, or those bogey-men the ACLU or Americans United for the Separation of the Church and State so much as whisper about us not keeping church and state separate. And far from being an exception, my experience (as a former public school teacher and a former public school student) is par-for-the-course in the USA.
The law and legal precedent clearly affirm that religious topics may be discussed in terms of history and religious texts read and taught in terms history and literature. Proselytization is the legal line in the sand which a teacher can not cross. I know all of this not only because of my teaching experience, but because I had to take a class on legal issues in public education when I got my master's degree.
If what you've describe is true (and honestly, I have trouble believing that it is), you are in a bad school with a terrible administration (the two always go hand-in-hand), as well as ineffectual department heads who doesn't understand the legal issues and doesn't back up their professional staff. If this is the case, you need to start teaching the way you want to teach (so long as you don't proselytize) and have your union back your ass up if parents and administrators starting claiming a violation of church and state separation.
BTW - your letter plays right into the hands of the "religious right" who claim that they are persecuted by the public school system. What you describe sounds word-for-word like the misinformation (lies) they disseminate about Church-State Separation in public schools.