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Community Corner

Freedom to Teach as the Students Require

Local communities should be free to differ on matters of education and religion without the ACLU's having a national veto.

The connection is indirect, to be sure, but the controversy over an old prayer banner in Cranston High School West brings to mind the Chafee administration - and not (only) because Rhode Island's new governor has me so worried that I think a school-system-wide prayer initiative might be beneficial.

Rather, what connects the items, in my mind, is an aspect of newly confirmed Board of Regents Chairman George Caruolo's not-so-surprising hesitance to embrace the reforms that Commissioner of Education Deborah Gist has been pursuing with such zest:

"I've never seen a turnaround in anything with an alienated work force," Caruolo said. "And from my viewpoint, I don't see a lot of talk about poverty and homelessness and family disruptions in the education dialogue, right now."

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The comment is of a sort that one hears whenever the notion of linking teacher pay with student success arises. Immediately, in the eyes of the other side, a profession that is rightly admired for its ability to change lives and improve the future prospects of students becomes a hopeless endeavor in the face of parental apathy and poverty.

My response, whenever a debate turns in that direction, is to ask why we oughtn't therefore reduce the investment that communities make in education and direct resources where they might address the problem claimed by those who gainsay the possibility of teacher accountability. If parental disconnect is the underlying problem, then pay teachers less and use the money to create programs that draw mothers and fathers into the educational lives of their children. If economic distress is the underlying problem, then redirect education funds to economic development.

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Of course, reference to non-educational causes of educational failure is meant to suggest a need for funding of an "and that, too" variety. The money is never to be shifted, but always compounded. Still, the salient point is that there's more to student success than academics, and Rhode Island's schools are demonstrably lacking in it, whatever it is.

Which brings us to the Cranston High West school prayer banner.

The initially striking aspect of the debate over whether it should stay or go is the nonchalant extremism of the people who wish to tear it down. Here we have a banner hanging passively on the wall --- no doubt, one of dozens of posters and banners decorating the walls of the school --- where it has been since the school opened nearly a half-century ago, when school prayers were common.

Its message is one of general encouragement toward good behavior, and its religiosity is mild and nondenominational --- albeit recognizably Christian. Nobody is required to recite the prayer; nobody is required even to look at it.

Yet, people outside of the city find it perfectly reasonable for a well-funded pressure group, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), to threaten the district's tenuous finances with lawsuits. In times of economic hardship, they place the blame on the community for defending its heritage, rather than the parties, whose opinion is in the minority, who are insisting on a change.

More striking, though, is the broadly accepted certitude that one understanding of what is necessary for education should be applied across all 3.8 million square miles the United States of America. Perhaps the community of Cranston finds it beneficial to remind students that certain principles to which they should continue to adhere were once rooted in religious faith. Of what concern is that to Providence or Washington, D.C.?

For my own community --- that in which I'm a taxpayer and registered voter --- I would advocate for encouragement of individual exploration and articulation of beliefs, with all given equivalent rights to public expression, and the added proviso that traditions already in place require the democratic process (not threats of lawsuits or judicial fiats) to change. If there's a banner, if there's a traditional appearance by the Easter Bunny, if there's an annual Hanukkah festival, then the entire community should agree to its cessation. But there is no reason that my solution should be binding on a nation of school districts in which I do not live.

Indeed, it can only be an article of religious faith to insist that no public school in the country could possibly benefit from a visible approval of religious principles. As long as no student is forced to recite a creed contrary to their beliefs, as long as their right to speak freely is not abridged, as long as their families are neither prevented from working to change the operations of their government nor from leaving, then a degree of religious expression is well within the tolerance of diversity that our federalist and democratic system was designed to accommodate.

The genius of the United States is the degree to which it makes possible peaceful coexistence and even civic cooperation between people who wish to live in very different societies. Freedom to define the boundaries of the government under which one lives is a necessary component, and if that freedom is real, governments at the level of town and city will differ in fundamental ways.

Who's to say but that a dose of religion is precisely remedy for struggling students? Or, more specifically, who better to determine as much for a particular community than the people who live there and who have the greatest interest in the well-being and success of its students?

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