Religion in the School System
Over the course of
the past two centuries there has been heated debate over what place, if any,
religion should have in the public school system. There are many people who
believe that the elimination of religion from a school’s curriculum only serves
to misrepresent American history and has a profoundly negative effect on
children – morally and socially. Other people believe that the inclusion of
religion in the public school system violates the constitution and is a direct infringement
on the laws governing the separation of church and state. The solution, in
terms of determining what place religion should have in the public school
system, lies somewhere in the middle of two extreme perspectives on the
subject, which are: include religion in the curriculum or eliminate it from the
curriculum completely.
The debate over
religion in the public school system can be traced back to the common school
movement, which took place in the 1830’s (Wright, 1999, p. 17). The term
“common school” refers to the school system that was developed in the early
1800’s, by Horace Mann, and was designed to serve the needs of the school-aged
children from all of the various cultures and religions. The “common school”
was the very first version of the public school system. Local taxes supported
the funding of the school and there was not a charge for tuition (Wikipedia, 2007, par. 1-4).
