Religion in School

by Mr. Richard Greenberg^*

Having carefuly scrutinized inumerable post-Littleton post-mortems, I can say this with unshakable certainty about the whole lot: Yes.

Yes, it's guns. Yes, it's the culture. (The one-versus-the-other debate is a no-starter). Yes, it's geek alienation. Yes, it's youth balkanization. Yes, it's the parents (or lack thereof). And if not at Littleton, than surely at other kiddie killing fields, including those we take for granted in the inner city. Yes, it's lots of things.

Could one of them have been the supposed dearth of religion in our public schools? That's what some politicians and others are claiming. Do they have a point? First, let's touch on some other possible factors:

Guns. I applaud all efforts to control them. But a reality check is in order. Nothing short of draconian measures will reduce our murder rate to that of civilized nations. We'd have to ban the production, sale and even possession of virtually all guns. A great idea in theory, except for this: Try it here, and you'd have a civil war on your hands. What's really needed won't happen anytime soon, if ever, because American gun culture is too deeply rooted. We'll have to settle for legislative Bandaids instead.

The popular culture. Huge chunks of it are poisonous; so what else is new? Debate has focused on whether there is a direct cause-and-effect link between that culture (represented by violent or sexually explicit videos, music, movies, etc.) and anti-social behavior. The correlation may not be absolute, but so what? Questions still remain that demand answers. And one of them is: What does your own common sense tell you about the redeeming social value of some of this stuff that passes for entertainment?

In a recent New York Times story, an unnamed producer who trafficks in violent films, defended his trade, saying: "We make excitement. We don't make movies to create killers." In precisely the same way that Marlboros aren't intended to create emphysema victims. It just happens that way sometimes. "Callous disregard" is a term that immediately jumps to mind.

The entertainment industry generates art as well as gratuitously violent garbage. Granted, the demarcation is not always clear. And many presentations merely depict contemporary life without necessarily prescribing action. I realize that. All the same, I believe there is a noteworthy difference between honestly pushing the artistic envelope and marketing products that openly glorify thuggery and murder. If there are vast gray areas in this realm, there are also some no-brainers.

What to do? Government censorship is not an option, but industry self-censorship certainly should be -- along with stronger parental supervision. I'd urge anyone in the entertainment field to take a long, deep look in the mirror and ask him- or herself: Is my conscience clear? Is my money clean? Would God approve of how I make my living? How would I morally justify, for example, creating an ad (in the magazine PCGamer) that reads: "Gratuitous violence is 200 times faster with a D-Link Network than with online games"?

The moral suasion approach may be hopelessly naive, but it's worth a try. Make it a campaign. Make it a crusade. Enlist the aid of celebrities. Do public service spots. And if that doesn't work, stronger measures might be warranted, including shaming (publicly identifying industry executives and other responsible parties) and organizing boycotts of goods produced by companies (and their subsidiaries) that peddle garbage to our kids.

Now, let's consider the role of religion in this discussion. It has become fashionable for some politicians to blame the Littletons of the world on constitutionally mandated "Godlessness" in our public schools. Or as Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) put it during a recent hearing on gun control, if high schools were permitted to display the Ten Commandments, "we would not have the tragedies that bring us here today."

That's overly simplistic, at best. Such claims fail to recognize the myriad social changes that have occurred over the past several decades. They also fail to recognize that God is actually alive and well in the nation's public schools, according to Charles Haynes, senior scholar for religious freedom at the First Amendment Center. He said student-initiated and student-lead extracurricular religious activities of all kinds are thriving, including prayer groups, religious clubs and the distribution of religious literature. Morever, there has been a tremendous upsurge in the classroom teaching of moral and ethical values, most of which have religious roots.

The downside: Those religious roots are rarely explored because conflict-averse and litigation-shy teachers and administrators tend to break out in a cold sweat at the mere mention of the R-word. "That's wrong; it's a mistake," said Haynes. "Not to teach about religion, as opposed to religious indoctrination, is to sound the death knell of public education. It means we can't do what we promise to do, which is to offer a good liberal education. It also means we give up on the First Amendment's guarantee of fairness and neutrality."

Character education has a long way to go. But it's still a big improvement over its predecessor, an exercise in mushiness and moral relativism known as "values clarification." Under that format, which petered out by the mid-80s, students were urged to "clarify" what their own values are, rather than decide what is right and wrong.

What is right and wrong? Ultimately, what the Torah and our tradition says it is. That's my answer. It is not, understandably, the answer provided by public school character education, which instead identifies a set of "universal core values" that a broad cross-section of a given community agree on, including religious leaders. A sample offering would include honesty, responsibility, respect for others and compassion.

No, it's not the Ten Commandments. But it's not bad for starters. Might even make Bob Barr's short list.

Richard Greenberg is a columnist with Washington Jewish Week and is the author of the book Pathways: Jews Who Return, published by Jason Aronson Inc.

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