Recently, we looked at multiple court cases that helped will the freedom of religion in schools. While some of these (such as a legal exemption from school due to Amish beliefs) don't affect many of us in a day-to-day way, but these cases have lead to many changes that we often overlook. For example, when we graduate in less than a year, there will be no official prayer at our graduation. While this may seem like an inherent guarantee under the First Amendment, this occurred in schools until 1992. Then, the Supreme Court decided in Lee vs. Weismann that graduation prayers were unconstitutional because it excluded students of different or no faith.
Another thing we often take for granted is religious clubs in the school. In Los Altos High School, we have a club for Christian athletes, a Jew Crew, and other religiously affiliated clubs. This may seem like it violates the First Amendment, but these are in fact Constitutional. However, these clubs must be student-led and inclusive - meaning that anyone from any religious background can come to and chose to participate in the meetings. Additionally, while clubs can request to have guests (such as priests or clergymen) join their meeting, the school retains complete right to reject these requests.
These both may seem like basic rights, but they only recently became a requirement to enforce. Today, we take a lot of the small religious freedoms that First Amendment has granted us for granted, as the generations before us had to fight to be able to use their freedom of religion.
Great post! I really liked how you mentioned that many of the results from previous first amendment cases are ones that we take for granted in our daily lives. From the perspective of someone who doesn't identify with a religion, I've always taken for granted that I don't have to worry about having a religion forced onto me in places like school, and it's all because of court cases like the ones you mentioned. In addition, religion is a complicated factor when it comes to religion, because it can often infringe on things like the right to education for children. This concept is demonstrated by the case Wisconsin v. Yoder, when an amish family argued that their first amendment rights allowed them to freely expressed their religion, even if that meant not sending their children to public school.
ReplyDeleteI do think it's interesting how many facets of our society are vaguely based in Christian ideals. That decision about Amish children in school, at least for me, is based in questionable morals. I don't really feel like education is something that should be sacrificed for faith.
ReplyDeleteI think that it is very important that this is in place because we would have to take these region classes that we would not want to engage in. I personally have never thought about the significance of religious clubs at school other than its a really nice way to connect with others who share the same culture. However because it's student lead and option its a really nice to join and it doesn't make people forced to attend it. And because it's a public school no one gets discriminated based on their religion. In many religious private schools, teachers are allowed to not hire certain religions, and are given leeway in terms of who they want to hire of what they want to teach.
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