posted
In our society, because church and state are separate, the roles they play in our lives are distinct. In this model, churches have a significant responsibility: They are in charge of (among other things) teaching and promoting morality in our society.
I've always considered this to be a good thing. Churches are well designed for promoting an ethical society - they have a clergy devoted not only to a tradition of beliefs on the matter, but also to the better understanding of those beliefs. They are people devoted for the most part not to just getting a salary, or to pleasing constituents, but rather to learning the Truth with a capital T. Furthemore, people who go to church are generally not forced to do so, so they are going to be more likely to listen to the lessons being taught. And finally, because there are many different churches in competition, a myriad of moral views are out there - presumably allowing the cream to rise to the top.
But the religious right seems to want to undermine the role of the church - to marginalize its position in society. Instead, they want the government to take on the role that the church has traditionally played. They want the government to teach morality in schools and to enforce it through laws.
But it seems to me that a church is a far better moral guide than a government bureaucracy. No? Do we really want the government deciding for us how we should make our moral choices? Do we really want the government to force it's own brand of morality on our children in schools? I don't want a sort of big-government brand of socialism for moral values.
Why can't we let the government and the church each do their own respective jobs?
quote: Do we really want the government to force it's own brand of morality on our children in schools? I don't want a sort of big-government brand of socialism for moral values.
I think the problem is that many parents perceive that the government already does teach a secular morality in schools. They feel that especially in the older grades, their children start to get lessons biased against their own religion. The bias of teachers inevitably come through in their teaching. If that bias is against church in general, it passes muster with separation of church and state. Anything pro-religious is far more suspect under current interpretations of separation of church and state. So I think it is not so strange that parents percieve this bias against their religion within a state sponsored institution. So they seek to change it.
I think the problem is with having public schools run by government in the first place. I'm tired of people demonizing parents who wish to educate their children and have the tax dollars that would otherwise be spent on their child in a public school go towards a private eduation. What is wrong with that? I think more choice in schools can only improve the system as a whole. The public school system needs to be made more accountable.
However, parents should never, ever place the responsibility of teaching morals on the schools (private or public), or even on their churches. If the schools much teach moralities, it will have to be a social morality, and cannot be based on theology (even secular humanism). Such a morality can only be action/consequence driven. To make an example of sexual education, every type of birth control should be explored, their pros and cons given, and the students left to decide for themselves without any bias from the teachers. It should be up to the parents to supplement such teaching with a theologically moral viewpoint.
IMHO, the parents should already have been doing this years before it gets approached in school.
Posts: 438 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
I don't, Icarus, but I think it gets more pronounced the higher in education you get. What I do think is that since we have separation of church and state, teachers biased against Christianity are a lot more able to speak out than teachers biased towards Christianity. Anyone speaking for a Christian viewpoint will get slapped down for promoting their religion. Anyway speaking against a Christian viewpoint will be seen not as anti-Christian but as religiously neutral. But if they speak against a non-Christian minority religion, they are seen as religiously bigoted and get slapped down.
Does that make sense?
Posts: 438 | Registered: Apr 2004
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quote:Do we really want the government to force it's own brand of morality on our children in schools?
I don't want government teaching morality. But I do want schools teaching morality. Moral education needs to be integrated with every other type of education. One of the things I'd liked to see changed most about public education is the one size fits all approach. It's one of the reasons I'm in favor of programs to enhance school choice.
quote: But the religious right seems to want to undermine the role of the church - to marginalize its position in society. Instead, they want the government to take on the role that the church has traditionally played. They want the government to teach morality in schools and to enforce it through laws.
I would say that historically (let's say over the past 500 years), the govenment has always tried to enforce morality, and that we have gotten away from that in the last 100 years.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
mph, the thing is, public education for the general public has really only been around for the last 200 years, tops.
Amka, the reason people still ought to pay for public ed., even if their kids go the private route, is because if the entire education system were privatized, there would always be some percentage of kids whose families would not be able to afford it. If the money were to just be refunded to parents, that might increase inflation for general living expenses (due to the market being flush with cash), as well as it is in the best interest of private education institutions to be somewhat selective in admission (from a PR and and discipline standpoint, choosy schools can appear to have more prestige, and if you can sort out the bad apples, by whatever criteria a private organization decides, it saves that school money on keeping students behaved)., as well as applying pressure to people who can afford it to pay more for the education, or else be like those poorer families, which can be a powerful stigma. You also end up with weird edge cases of people being the lone Buddhist family in an area with only Christian schools that require prayer and confession, or the Eucharist, or whatever.
Also, if you let there be complete choice, where the parents can pull their tax money out of the public system, you end up with only poor families paying for their families education in public schools; those poor families don't necessarily have the cash to fully fund a decent school, unless you get tons of them in one place, in which case you likely end up with huge class sizes.
posted
How exactly can you teach someone to be moral?
Seems to me like in schools, moral ideas are given in the textbooks/lectures, and are enforced by punishing students who act immorally. So what is the government going to do, make every public school use government approved text books?
Posts: 2756 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
How far do you take the government not regulating or teaching morality? I agree the government shouldn't regulated behavior between two consenting adults, but what about basic concepts of right and wrong? We need a basis to say why murder is wrong, not just that its in our mutual self interest not to murder each other.
Posts: 3446 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
Xap, I asked my cousin your question and here is a cool reply to it:
quote: the easy answer is that people of faith and people not of faith work in many environments...and the people OF faith don't always have hte same opinon, even within their own ranks (calvinists, revisionists, methodists and lutherans, to name a few). In the secular workd, especially in a world post-fifties and sixties 'antiestablishment' mindset, faith has been removed from the workplace- by choice and by law mandates, and the workplace has become our second (if not primary for some) home.
As far as government is concerned, it depends on who's running the show. cronyism goes as far back as written history, so there's no fingerpointing for/at W, at least for now. Whoever controls policy controls cashflow. Whoever controls cashflow controls the masses- be it in the form of real poicy, witchhunts or bread and circus expositions.
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