Title:
Letting Religion Into the Classroom, but Setting
Limits
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Education Report.
See text below
Text:
Public schools in the United States have to be
neutral about religion, even though they close for
holidays like Christmas. The Constitution separates
religion from government. Researcher Charles Haynes
explains what it says.
He says: "'Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof ... '
Those sixteen words provide the framework for how we
deal with religion in our public schools."
Those words are part of the First Amendment, which
guarantees freedom of expression and other rights.
Charles Haynes is a senior scholar at the First
Amendment Center, a group that studies free
expression issues.
In the last generation or so, different groups have
encouraged public schools to celebrate diversity and
cultural differences. At the same time, courts have
ruled against any publicly supported celebrations of
one religion over another.
Charles Haynes thinks the schools are generally
doing a good job.
He says: "So public schools now I think understand
that their role is to expose students to learning
about different religions in a fair way, an
objective way. Their role is to protect the
religious liberty rights of students; if they want
to express their faith, they may do so. But school
officials under the First Amendment may not take
sides in religion."
Hollie Jones teaches six year olds at a public
school in Loudon County, Virginia. Each December,
she has her students make posters about their own
celebrations at home and present them to the class.
The posters are discussed and then shown on the
walls at the school. Ms. Jones says: Some students
will do Hanukkah, some Kwanzaa, some Christmas. Some
we've had in the past do the Chinese New Year.
Some children come from families with more than one
religion.
Hollie Jones says the children always ask lots of
questions about the traditions of other families.
She says this gives them an understanding about how
different and diverse the students are.
And Charles Haynes says that is one of the purposes
of public education in America.
And that's the VOA Special English Education Report,
written by Nancy Steinbach. You can find transcripts
and podcasts of our reports, and you can post
comments, at voaspecialenglish.com. And you can find
us on Twitter and YouTube at VOA Learning English.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
