Religious Objections Regarding Curriculum

> PhOtO 9.2 Federal judges have concluded that students who refuse to stand and recite the pledge of allegiance cannot be compelled to do so if participation violates their religious or other personal beliefs.

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9-4d Religious objections Regarding curriculum

In Tennessee in the mid-1980s, fundamentalist Christian parents brought suit against the Hawkins County School District, charging that exposure of their children to the Holt, Rinehart and Winston basal reading series was offensive to their religious beliefs. The parents believed that “after reading the entire Holt series, a child might adopt the views of a feminist, a humanist, a pacifist, an anti-Christian, a vegetarian, or an advocate of a one-world government.” The district court held for the parents, reasoning that the state could satisfy its compelling interest in the literacy of Tennessee schoolchildren through less restrictive means than compulsory use of the Holt series. However, an appellate court reversed this decision, stating that no evidence had been produced to show that students were required to affirm their belief or disbelief in any idea mentioned in the Holt books. The textbook series, the court said, “merely requires recognition that in a pluralistic society we must ‘live and let live.’”70

In somewhat similar cases, district judges upheld a group of parents in Alabama who contended that school textbooks and activities advanced the religion of secular humanism,71 as well as a New York group whose members contended that Bedford Public Schools were promoting pagan religions when students recited a liturgy to the Earth or sold worry dolls. The first decision was reversed by a federal appeals court, which held that the textbooks did not endorse secular humanism or any other religion, but rather attempted to instill such values as independent thought and tolerance of diverse views. The appeals court noted that if the First Amendment prohibited mere “inconsistency with the beliefs of a particular religion, there would be very little that could be taught in the public schools.” The second case also was resolved in favor of the schools.

70Mozert v. Hawkins County Board of Education, 86-6144 (E.D. Tenn. 1986); Mozert v. Hawkins County Board of Education, 87-5024 (6th Cir. 1987); Vivian E. Hamilton, “Immature Citizens and the State,” BYU Law Review No. 4 (2010), available at www.lawreview.byu.edu; and John Light, “Sherman Alexei’s Young Adult Novel Pulled from Curriculum in Idaho Schools,” Moyers & Company (April 8, 2014), available at www.billmoyers.com. 71The secular humanism philosophy de-emphasizes religious doctrines and instead emphasizes the human capacity for self-realization through reason.