by Edd Doerr
On June 28, for the umpteenth time in the last couple of years, the Washington Post ran another editorial touting the school voucher plan foisted on the District of Columbia by George W. Bush and a Republican congress a decade ago, the plan, you know that forces all taxpayers in the US to contribute involuntarily to the support of religious private schools in the District. The Post seems to have forgotten where it stood in its March 3, 1971, editorial:
"Americans have every right, of course, to seek for their children a religiously oriented education and to send their children to private schools which provide the sort of religious orientation they want. But they have no more right to ask the general public to pay for such schools -- and for the religious instruction they provide -- than to ask the general public to pay for the churches in which, happily, they are free to gather for prayer and for worship as they please."
The Post was right in 1971. It is wrong now. The Post's editors seem to have forgotten that DC voters in 1981 rejected a similar voucher plan by the superlandslide margin of 89% to 11%;that DC's elected congressional delegate has opposed vouchers; that US voters from coast to coast have rejected vouchers or their variants by an average margin of two to one in over two dozen statewide referenda; that vouchers are essentially a Republican device for undermining public education and teacher unions and catering to the religious right; that widespread adoption of vouchers or tax-code vouchers would inevitably fragment our school population along religious, ideological, ethnic, class and other lines while wrecking the teaching profession and undermining the teaching of science and civics; that widespread implementation of voucher plans would increase educational costs and further clog our streets and highways with large yellow gas guzzlers.
Vouchers are a growing political problem, in Congress, in states where GOP governors and legislatures are pushing vouchers (Pennsylvania, Florida, New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Arizona, etc), and in the upcoming election races.
Readers MUST become active in opposing vouchers. Write your members of Congress. Write to the Washington Post and urge its editors to return to their 1971 position. Support the organizations that are fighting to save public education and church-state separation (such as Americans for Religious Liberty). Write letters to editors or post comments on newspaper blogs.
(FYI, the quote from the Post in 1971 is from the book Great Quotations on Religious Freedom, edited by Al Menendez and muyself, and available from me at Box 6656, Silver Spring 20916 for $10.)
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Friday, May 27, 2011
Kane is not Able
by Edd Doerr
Gregory Kane writes a column in the Washington Examiner, the freebie tabloid competing with the Moonie-founded Washington Times for the coveted status as the most reactionary rag wasting paper in America. In his May 19 column he swatted at the Supreme Court's 1963 8-1 ruling against public school prayer and Bible reading in Abington School District v Schempp, asserting that "prayer and Bible reading in public schools hurt no one", that the ruling may have led to "a decline in academics and discipline in public schools since 1968", and that Potter Stewart, the lone Schempp dissenter, was right that the Court stretched the First Amendment too far.
Kane and others in his camp are just not able to gras[ the following facts: 1. Schempp was preceded by the 1962 Supreme Court ruling in Engel v Vitale, a challenge to goverment sponsored public school prayer brought by parents of various religious persuasions; 2. That in 1962 only about half of the nation's public schools had prayer and/or Bible reading, nearly all of them in the east coast or southern states; 3.That far more people than just humanists were offended by the devotions; and 4. That there is no evidence that the absence of government-sponsored devotions negatively affected public education.
But Kane missed the big picture. Public school prayer and Bible reading were hallmarks of the Protestant hegemony in public schools that was offensive to our growing Catholic population from the mid-19th century until 1962, a hegemony lacking an effective legal remedy that pushed Catholic Church officials to create an extensive system of private religious schools. By 1962 Catholic private school enrollment had reached about 5.5 million students.
After Engel v Vitale things began to change. We elected our first Catholic President in 1960, a Catholic strongly dedicated to church-state separation who supported the Supreme Court ruling that ended the Protestant hegemony (except perhaps for parts of the old Confederacy, where there few Catholics -- or humanists). The Second Vatican Council of 1962-65 liberalized the church somewhat and elevated conscience over dogma. In 1968 the Vatican blanketly condemned contraception, against the advice of its own experts, and triggered a huge and ongoing revolt by Catholics against the malignant patriarchalism of the "Old Boys Club on the Tiber".
Voila! Catholic private school enrollment began to slip, from 5.5 million in 1965 to a little over two million today. Studies by Catholic universities for the pro-voucher Nixon Administration showed thst the decline was due not to economic factors but to "changing parental preferences".
On the other hand, the end of the Protestant hegemony in the public schools, combined with the successes of the Civil Rights movement, led to the start of the growing fundamentalist private schools movement, the spread of homeschooling, and growing evangelical/conservative support for school vouchers and tax credits. At the same time, Catholic movement away from sectarian private schools (about 80% of Catholic kids now attend public schools) has led to Catholic voter opposition to diversion of public funds to religious schools.
Gregory Kane writes a column in the Washington Examiner, the freebie tabloid competing with the Moonie-founded Washington Times for the coveted status as the most reactionary rag wasting paper in America. In his May 19 column he swatted at the Supreme Court's 1963 8-1 ruling against public school prayer and Bible reading in Abington School District v Schempp, asserting that "prayer and Bible reading in public schools hurt no one", that the ruling may have led to "a decline in academics and discipline in public schools since 1968", and that Potter Stewart, the lone Schempp dissenter, was right that the Court stretched the First Amendment too far.
Kane and others in his camp are just not able to gras[ the following facts: 1. Schempp was preceded by the 1962 Supreme Court ruling in Engel v Vitale, a challenge to goverment sponsored public school prayer brought by parents of various religious persuasions; 2. That in 1962 only about half of the nation's public schools had prayer and/or Bible reading, nearly all of them in the east coast or southern states; 3.That far more people than just humanists were offended by the devotions; and 4. That there is no evidence that the absence of government-sponsored devotions negatively affected public education.
But Kane missed the big picture. Public school prayer and Bible reading were hallmarks of the Protestant hegemony in public schools that was offensive to our growing Catholic population from the mid-19th century until 1962, a hegemony lacking an effective legal remedy that pushed Catholic Church officials to create an extensive system of private religious schools. By 1962 Catholic private school enrollment had reached about 5.5 million students.
After Engel v Vitale things began to change. We elected our first Catholic President in 1960, a Catholic strongly dedicated to church-state separation who supported the Supreme Court ruling that ended the Protestant hegemony (except perhaps for parts of the old Confederacy, where there few Catholics -- or humanists). The Second Vatican Council of 1962-65 liberalized the church somewhat and elevated conscience over dogma. In 1968 the Vatican blanketly condemned contraception, against the advice of its own experts, and triggered a huge and ongoing revolt by Catholics against the malignant patriarchalism of the "Old Boys Club on the Tiber".
Voila! Catholic private school enrollment began to slip, from 5.5 million in 1965 to a little over two million today. Studies by Catholic universities for the pro-voucher Nixon Administration showed thst the decline was due not to economic factors but to "changing parental preferences".
On the other hand, the end of the Protestant hegemony in the public schools, combined with the successes of the Civil Rights movement, led to the start of the growing fundamentalist private schools movement, the spread of homeschooling, and growing evangelical/conservative support for school vouchers and tax credits. At the same time, Catholic movement away from sectarian private schools (about 80% of Catholic kids now attend public schools) has led to Catholic voter opposition to diversion of public funds to religious schools.
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