Much of the report is taken up with some anecdotes from students who allege various versions of being picked on in/by schools for their faith. One fifth grade student was "forced" to read a book about transgenderism to his kindergarten buddy, and this qualified for testimony because somehow being anti-trans is a Christian belief. One student was denied the right to wear a covid mask with "Jesus Loves Me." One student was denied the right to thank Jesus in his graduation speech. One girl's attempt to sing a Christian song in the school talent show. One girl wanted to pray with friends in a corner of the cafeteria and was denied. And one more student was subject to antisemitic bullying.
The stories are dramatically embellished (when the graduating student went ahead and thanked Jesus anyway, everyone clapped, teachers embraced him, and the principal cried). Sure. And we'll never know just how quiet the cafeteria prayer really was. But while the trans book story is complicated, the other stories, if accurate, are stories of students whose rights were, in fact, violated by their school.
They are anecdotes. The commission might have included others, like the story of the kindergartners who wore hijabs to graduation and were held up for abuse by the President of the United States. There are undoubtedly other anecdotes that bend the other way; take my own former superintendent who routinely opened elementary graduation ceremonies with a Jesus prayer, or my former student whose fourth grade teacher who pressured her to convert from Judaism to Christianity.
The commission deals with the anecdotal nature by offering a blanket observation that the "story is not an isolated event."
That's fine-- providing a compelling narrative is how folks do the commission testimony thing. But what's more notable is the principles outlined to provide context for the narratives.
The commission offers the now-familiar tale of how institutions have been captured by the Bad Guys. For a century, they assert, teacher training institutions "have increasingly framed education not as the transmission of intrinsic moral truths, but as a vehicle for ideology-driven social transformation."
Well, now. "Social transformation" has arguably always been the point, as in transforming society by trying to make everyone numerate, literate, and knowledgeable. "Ideology-driven" only makes sense as analysis if you remember, as implied by this construction, that "ideology" only refers only to ideology followed by Those Guys, while our ideology is actually "truth." Either way, it's a stretch. Virtually every teacher I've ever known or worked with mostly had a classroom ideology of Can We Please Learn This Content. Though I'll bet you can find a few ideologues of every flavor in classrooms here and there about the country (there are over 4 million teachers, guaranteeing at least one of everything you can imagine).
But what really strikes me is the commission's idea of what schools are supposed to do--
The transmission of intrinsic moral truths.
That's a phrase doing a lot of heavy lifting, but dovetails with the notion that the world is all absolute truths, probably already figured out by some dead Greek and Roman guys. Once grasped, the truths allow for no negotiation, discussion, and certainly no revision (see also the argument that we don't need to respect all religions because everything that's not Christian is just wrong).
They go after John Dewey (though I'll bet you that there aren't 25 teachers working in 2026 who could name two things Dewey believed) and accuse him of this kind of stuff:
He proposed that schools create an “embryonic community life,” where children would be taught primarily not how to think or explore truth, but to develop habits useful to the state, such as cooperation, shared purpose, and democratic citizenship.
Dewey gets charged with re-characterizing schools as "a vehicle for ideologically driven social progress." Again, I think his offense here is not going after "social progress" so much as letting the incorrect ideology have a say.
Their example is sex ed. After the sexual revolution of the sixties (the decade when everything went to shit for these folks) schools started teaching sex ed and exposing young kids to discussions of sex (bad, because otherwise young humans would not have ever heard about sex). Also, they taught birth control instead of abstinence, which is bad, because schools should prioritize politically correct over actually works.
The commission argues that "ideological current has too often left little room for students who hold traditional religious convictions, such as the belief that God created man and woman, that moral truth is real, or that America—though imperfect—is not fundamentally evil." Maybe not so much "left little room" as "didn't allow these beliefs to occupy a central place over all others." And I'm not sure how beliefs about America qualify as traditional religious convictions (even if, as they apparently mean, only certain religious traditions count here). But humans have a historic tendency to confuse their own personal beliefs with the Will Of God.
The report positions all this debate of the First Amendment as a battle over culture:
It is part of a larger cultural struggle over whether schools will form children in the moral inheritance of Western civilization or in a newer creed that often treats historic religious belief as something backward, suspect, and even harmful.
"Form children." Yikes. (I refer you to Russell Barkley's contention that we are shepherds, not engineers.) And historic religious belief has, at times, been backward and harmful, and remembering that ought to inform any discussion of the First Amendment and what the founders had in mind.
But from there we're on to the argument that some sort of hostile secular religion displaced "the 2,000-year canon of Western moral and religious tradition" (the writers are careful not to explicitly argue for Christianity by name, but they might as well have).This is a bogus argument and always has been. Public schools have no official position on vegetarianism. Their only mandate is to offer an assortment of healthy choices and the freedom to pack a lunch from home. Likewise, the First Amendment mandates that religion not be on the menu of what schools offer, leaving students free to practice as they wish. There is no such thing as "secular religion," rather, "secular" is what is left when you remove all the religious parts.
We can find three issues in the commission's complaint.
One is that some schools, over-zealous (or afraid) about church-state separation take steps to squelch student religious expression when they should not. School officials should not lead a religious prayer at graduation, but if student speakers want to thank Jesus, they should. Admittedly, the line is sometimes tough to spot-- if a student, as part of a school project, chooses to paint a religious image, that's probably okay, but if the painting is on the wall of the school, the issue is fuzzier.
Second is the part they try to avoid saying out loud, which is the belief that White Christianity should be the dominant culture in America, and that should start in school.
Third is the notion, repeatedly taken into court, that one cannot fully exercise one's religion unless one is free to inflict it on others. That includes financing that exercise with public tax dollars and discriminating against certain Others. This goes hand in hand with having a dominant position.
Some folks will absolutely regret it if they ever win these debates. For one, they will find themselves swamped with people who want to claim a religious free-money-and-no-rules card. For another, the inevitable result will be government commandeering and regulation of religion-- you know, like setting up a federal commission to oversee religion in this country. The First Amendment is just as much about protecting the church as it is protecting the state.
The commission offers all sorts of recommendations. Some involve providing more guidance about First Amendments, which isn't a bad idea depending on whether or not the training is related to the actual language. "Know Your Rights" posters for school. Sure; posters really work in school. Set up a portal so that people can report naughtiness on line. Sic the DOJ on those naughty schools. Get behind courtroom support for the transparently unConstitutional laws requiring Ten Commandments displays. Also, school choice. They don't bother to explain why they want it; they just want it.
Nothing here you wouldn't expect from a commission headed up by Dan Patrick and including Ben Carson, Dr. Phil, Franklin Graham, Cardinal Tim Dolan, Paula White, and Todd Blanche. Can't wait to see what they come up with next.
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