POS 500 Religion and Education
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Matthew Somarelli
First Amendment: Religion and Education
POS 500
Professor Deborah Halperin
November 3, 2021
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Introduction: First Amendment Religion and Education
As the world takes shape everyday there are such a different diverse way to look at religion
today. Schools and their environments are growing each day and something that schools need to
do is begin to focus on religious liberty. One thing I love about my teaching style is I like to give
the students the “platform” to voice their opinion on things. Giving an assignment of an open-
ended essay with a picture where the student needs to describe their hero fits my style for sure.
This is something I would love to do. In this situation here the student chose to talk about Jesus
as his hero and drew a picture of the last supper. The First Amendment of the United States
Constitution can help in this situation whether it would be an issue or cause of concern. Will this
violate the student’s rights? How will the grading process be different? These are all questions to
be addressed.
Constitution Rights
The First Amendment of the United States Constitution calls for the protection of the
people. Freedom of speech and expression, and the right of religion would all play for this. There
will be limitations when it comes to religion in public schools and the roles teachers and
administrators have. For example, one main issue with the First Amendment and public schools
are the materials that they choose to talk about. There is no real oversight for the choices that are
made in public schools when it comes to their definition of educational objectives (Magaldi-
Dopman & Park-Taylor, 2014, pg. 48). This meaning that schools are given the chance to pick
what they want to teach in a way. They are given a guideline to follow and teach their students
and they must take test and be assessed on their work and for the most part none of this comes
with the concern of violating the student’s free speech right. This can be a big chance in the area
of education.
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When thinking of how I am going to grade this assignment from a student, a lot of case
law reflects on similar situations. An example is in
Settle v. Dickson County School Board.
In this
case a teacher refused to allow the student to write about Jesus for a research paper. The student
decided to bring this to the court claiming that the decision by the teacher violated her first
amendment right and her overall right to free speech. Later on, the case was dismissed.
Yes, in this example the court case was dismissed but overall, as a school we need to
continue to maintain a focus on learning. Continuing to provide the students with good
information and keeping an open mind we can have these type of discussions and assignments as
long as no one is going to be harmed or an agenda isn’t going to be pushed. I would love to
model my classroom in a way where I wouldn’t have to reject a topic like this one, but we can all
see that public schools shouldn’t drive a narrative when it comes to religion, economic class, or
political officiation.
Limitations
There are also a lot of cases that don’t have these limitations or even are applicable to the
First Amendment. This is because of the direct relationship between the government and religion
(Grelle, 2015, pg. 231). An example is,
Edwards v. Aguillard,
the courts ruled that Louisiana law
that they were to teach creation science. Talking about things like Evolution and creation science
rather than the creation of Jesus etc is such a hard subject to talk about. One thing that I
remember in middle school they began to talk about evolution, and it was a topic that sent home
a letter to the parents asking if they wanted their child to learn about evolution and such. This
violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment. This case also goes along with
Compare Fleming v. Jefferson County School District.
Which also talks about schools are not
required to choose to limit the products that learners could make without guidelines.
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Conclusion:
Therefore, the case of this project and drawing from the class. I would read over and give
feedback to that student but to continue to look at case law like discussed in this paper it woud be
hard to drive a narrative when it comes to religion in the public school setting.
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Reference:
"Edwin W. Edwards, Etc., Et Al., Appellants v. Don Aguillard, Et Al.."
Legal Information
Institute
. Legal Information Institute. Web. 03 Nov. 2021.
"Fleming v. Jefferson County School Dist. No. R-1, 170 F. Supp. 2D 1094 (D. Colo. 2001)."
Justia Law
. Web. 03 Nov. 2021.
Grelle, Bruce. "Neutrality in Public School Religion Education: Theory and Politics."
Brill
. Brill,
01 Jan. 2015. Web. 03 Nov. 2021.
Jr., David L. Hudson. "Settle v. Dickson County School Board (6th Cir.)."
Settle v. Dickson
County School Board (6th Cir.)
. Web. 03 Nov. 2021.
Magaldi-Dopman, Danielle|Park-Taylor. "Integration amidst Separation: Religion, Urban
Education, and the First Amendment."
Urban Review: Issues and Ideas in Public
Education
. Springer. 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013. Tel: 800-777-4643; Tel:
212-460-1500; Fax: 212-348-4505; E-mail: Service-ny@springer.com; Web Site:
Http://www.springerlink.com, 28 Feb. 2014. Web. 03 Nov. 2021.