Why not eleven?
Can Louisiana force all public school children to stare at “the ten commandments” every day? Nine families are looking to find out.
Nine Louisiana families have sued the state over a new law that orders every public school classroom to display a poster of the Ten Commandments.
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Under the legislation, HB71, every classroom that receives state funding must by 2025 prominently display the biblical text in a “large, easily readable font” on a poster that is 11 inches by 14 inches (28cm by 35.5cm). The commandments must be “the central focus” of the display, the law says.
The complaint, backed by civil rights groups, says such a display violates the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees separation of church and state, and “pressures” students into adopting the state’s favoured religion. The law “simply cannot be reconciled with the fundamental religious freedom principles that animated the founding of our nation”, wrote the plaintiffs, who include both rabbis and pastors.
Nor can it be reconciled with the goal of educating children. Forcible indoctrination is the opposite of education.
A representative for the bill’s Republican author, Dodie Horton, declined to comment. Ms Horton has previously spoken of the importance of returning a “moral code” to classrooms. She was quoted saying “it’s like hope is in the air everywhere” as the bill was rubber-stamped by the governor.
But it’s such a thin “moral code” – it says nothing about what really matters – generosity, compassion, giving a damn. As I shouted the other day, it’s mostly about how to grovel to the sky daddy. People subject to the whims of a powerful monster generally don’t have much room to be genuinely moral. Obedience is not moral.
In 1980, in the case Stone v Graham, the Supreme Court struck down a similar Kentucky law requiring that the document be displayed in elementary and high schools. This precedent has been cited by the groups contesting the Louisiana law.
In its ruling, the Supreme Court said the requirement “had no secular legislative purpose” and was “plainly religious in nature” – noting that the commandments made references to worshipping God.
But that was 1980. That was Before Trump.
“Forcible indoctrination is the opposite of education.”
Agreed. But this is something that Conservatives have never understood.
Forcible indoctrination is the opposite of education.
They don’t want education.
They want obedience.
Steven,
Exactly.
If parents want to remind THEIR children of the Ten Commandments and how important they supposedly are, they can post them in their own home.
Posting them in the schools is to make sure the other kids and their parents know who’s in charge.
I’m guessing that for Republicans this would constitute a “secular legislative purpose.”
I think this is a long game started. If it is wrong to force kids to look at the Ten Commandments, which do have a long involvement with our society’s history, then the conservatives will ask why is it OK for kids to be forced to look at the collection of pride flags we have now? Pride flags cannot be said to be a part of our cultural ethics from the start.
This is going to be used to wedge out some of the cultural indoctrination materials in current use, that is my guess.
Southwest88,
You’re giving them way too much credit.
The purpose of schools is to teach things to kids. Indoctrinate them, if you like. That’s not a problem.
It’s also never been the case that schools limited themselves to teaching “facts,” or just “readin’ and ritin’ and ‘rithmatic.”
Nor is there some Constitutional restriction on teaching anything that wasn’t “part of our cultural ethics from the start.”
There is, however, a Constitutional restriction on the establishment of religion.
Sure, people have tried to make the argument that “well, X is a religion, too! So you can’t teach that in schools!” where X = evolutionary theory, tolerance of other races or sexual orientations, or whatever ethos the speaker doesn’t like. It’s never really worked, in part because then there’s no limiting principle: if “stuff other people believe that I don’t” is “religion,” then practically nothing could be taught in public schools.
Now, I wouldn’t put it past the current Supreme Court to reverse its own precedent and declare that posting the Ten Commandments isn’t an establishment clause violation, but it’s not going to be because “well, the libs are pushing stuff we don’t like, so we get to do it too!” Even Thomas and Alito will come up with a better argument than that.
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