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IT IS OKAY |
IT’S NOT OKAY |
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To inform about religion through class presentations and discussion, by
employing media in instruction, and by assigning readings and research |
To organize activities that may be easily perceived, rightly or
wrongly, as promoting students’ participation in a religious practice
[3Rs] |
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To use videos of adherents’ conduct in order to inform students about
the customs, traditions and worship practices that attend a given religion
or worldview orientation [3Rs] |
To place students into "role-playing" or other participatory
situations where they will experience aspects of belief practices that may
be contrary to their own worldview traditions [3Rs]
(More
information on role-playing.) |
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To conduct classroom discussions concerning religion in an environment
that is free of advocacy [TGRPS] |
To advocate for your personal religious beliefs or to solicit or
encourage religious or antireligious activity [USDE]
To ask of students that they state their own religious or nonreligious
view [TGRPS]
To encourage students to accept or conform to specific religious
beliefs or practices [ADL] |
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To permit students to express their own religious and nonreligious
views, as long as such expression is germane to the discussion [TGRPS] |
To let students proselytize peers or express their views in ways that
are disrespectful, coercive or inflammatory [OABITAR] |
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To ensure that you do not endorse or disapprove religion, neither
promoting nor denigrating it [ADL] |
To affirmatively oppose or show hostility to religion, thereby
preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe. [ADL-with
court citation] |
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To guard against injecting your personal religious beliefs by means of
strategies such as "teaching through attribution" (e.g., you use
such phrases as "Most Buddhists believe …" or "According
to the Hebrew scriptures …") [TGRPS] |
To ignore the consequence for youngsters of their teacher
voicing belief statements which do not clearly and objectively ascribe the
belief to others. [OABITAR]
Parents are recognized as having the responsibility for their children’s
religious or nonreligious upbringing. [FCG] |
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To say, when referring in class to concepts stated in religious
documents or texts, "Adherents of ___ believe that these statements
are true." Or, "____ [the religion] maintains that…" |
To recite from religious or nonreligious documents as if their
passages are generally accepted [OABITAR]
To endorse as factual the events or concepts from any religious
text, no matter how widely revered [OABITAR] |
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(at high school levels) To present a brief statement of personal
belief, if asked by the class to tell your religious beliefs [TGRPS]
Considering the age of the students, to answer the question
straightforwardly and succinctly [TGRPS] |
To turn an inquiry concerning your personal beliefs into an opportunity
to proselytize for or against religion [TGRPS] |
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To not state your own religious or nonreligious view, if asked. Middle
and high school students may be able to distinguish between a personal
view and the official position of the school; very young children may not.
[TGRPS]
To avoid sharing your personal religious or nonreligious views with
students, particularly those in the lower grades [ADL] |
To inject personal religious or nonreligious beliefs into a discussion
in an attempt to persuade students to your view [OABITAR]
To reward or punish students because they agree or disagree with your
religious or nonreligious views [TGRPS] |
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(elementary level) To use tales drawn from various faiths as part of a
wide variety of stories read by students, as long as the selected material
is presented in the context of learning about religion [FCG] |
(elementary level) To use stories dominated by a given faith or chosen
selectively as classroom or assigned reading without appropriate placement
in a clearly defined, secular curriculum context [OABITAR] |
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To use religious symbols, provided they are used only as examples of
cultural or religious heritage, as a teaching aid or resource [TGRPS]
To display symbols on a temporary basis as part of the academic lesson
being studied [TGRPS] |
To assign or suggest use of specific religious symbols [TGRPS]
To display symbols over a prolonged time or when unconnected to
concurrent studies [ADL] |
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To invite a guest speaker for a more comprehensive presentation of the
tradition or worldview under study
 | Consult their school district policy concerning guest speakers in
the classroom |
| Take care to find a speaker with the academic background necessary
for an objective and scholarly discussion of the historical period and
the religion being considered |
| Advise a guest speaker of the First Amendment guidelines for
teaching about religion in public education and that a talk must be
academic in nature and must not be advocating a religion [TGRPS]
|
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To expose students to an ill-informed guest speaker or one who is
either indifferent to his/her responsibilities to make a secular
presentation or unable to carry out that duty.
Sample situations of concern:
| Adherents who have no broad academic understanding of their life
stance (e.g., history and development of the religion) |
| Clergy who simply cannot break from habits of indoctrination |
| Speakers who over-generalize from a limited base of understanding to
the spectrum of adherents in a religion |
| Individuals who generalize beyond their own personal experience
within a culture to adherents at large (practices often differ) |
| Speakers who apply stereotypes to adherents of other worldviews [OABITAR]
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To excuse individual students from lessons that are objectionable to
the student or the students’ parents on religious or other conscientious
grounds (subject to applicable state laws—schools enjoy substantial
discretion to excuse individual students, but students generally do
not have a Federal right to be excused from lessons that may be
inconsistent with their beliefs or practices) [USDE] |
To encourage or discourage students from availing themselves of an
available excusal option [USDE]
To excuse a student from requirements of studying portions of a
textbook merely because the student objects on religious grounds to the
material [ADL]
(More information on excusal.) |
[July, 2002]
More information on role playing: Problems:
(1) Role-playing prayers and religious rituals runs the risk of blurring the
legal distinction between constitutional teaching about religion and
school-sponsored practice of religion, which is prohibited by the First
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. (2) Role-playing also runs the risk
of trivializing and caricaturing the religion that is being studied. It is more
respectful and educationally sound to view a video of adherents practicing their
faith than having students pretending to be such adherents.(3) Role-playing
runs the risk of putting students in the position of participating in activities
that may violate their own or their parents’ consciences. [Read
the full 3Rs' advisory]
More information on excusal: Public schools
can require that all students use a prescribed set of textbooks if the books
neither promote nor oppose any religious practice. The students must only be
required to read and discuss the material and may not be required to perform or
refrain from performing any act forbidden or mandated by their religion. Mere
exposure to ideas that one finds objectionable on religious grounds does not
rise to the level of a Free Exercise claim; compelled activity would. [ADL-with
court citation 1]
Your Classroom
Assignments
1 Mozert v. Hawkins County
Public Schools, 827 F.2d 1058 (6th Cir. 1987) cert. denied, 484 U.S. 1066; Grove
v. Mead School Dist. No. 354, 753 F.2d 1528 (9th Cir.1985) cert. denied, 474
U.S. 826; Williams v. Bd. of Educ., 388 F.Supp. 93 (D.C.WV.), aff'd. 530 F.2d
972 (4th Cir. 1975)
