Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I will be leaving four documents with the School Board.
The first is a 110-page curriculum for teaching religion. It is in three parts, a survey of world religions, and surveys of Old Testament and New Testament literature. It conforms to the requirements set by the courts as having a secular purpose, creates no undue entanglement between church and state, and neither promotes nor denigrates any religious worldview.
The second document is a rationale for teaching religion in public schools.
The third is a Guideline for doing so prepared by the First Amendment Center now under the auspices of the Freedom Forum in Washington DC.
And the fourth is an endorsement by the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union)
There is a growing consensus that removing the study of religion in public schools has had the unintended consequence of minimizing its importance to a well-rounded education and its basis for a sense of meaning and discipline among students. Litigation over how this is done has caused public school administrators to take a cautious approach and generally abandon attempts to address this difficult issue regarding the separation of church and state.
I would advise the board to take a proactive approach to this and adopt a method of handling this issue within the parameters set by the courts. Our curriculum does that and we’ve put it into the public domain and is available to anyone from our website. It deserves your careful consideration.
Our organization is available for consulting on implementation strategies and other issues.
William Bronson, MA, MTS, DMin
President, Enlighten Education Co-op, Inc.
239 940 6080