KY kids need better public schools, not to miss class for religious indoctrination | Opinion

Across America, children are leaving public, taxpayer-funded schools and being driven to churches. There, they receive “moral education” and study Bible verse. Despite claims of interdenominational teaching, adults there —who are not required to have teaching credentials — tell students that divorce is a sin, and to heed their pastors before their parents. Students are provided with flashy swag, and instructed to peer pressure other public school students into joining to save their souls.

The most successful such program is LifeWise Academy, with chapters in more than 600 schools across the country. Even though LifeWise is well-funded, with a full-time lobbying arm and significant ties to the Heritage Foundation, it was recently denied a petition to establish a program in Oldham County. This is due mostly to the efforts of local parents, many of whom came together in our grassroots organization, Kentucky Citizens for Democracy.

Oldham County may have said no, but LifeWise has grander plans. They have already announced petitions in Jefferson County and across Kentucky. If LifeWise succeeds, students in Kentucky public schools will not be studying science, or history, or math; they will be hearing sermons.

Removal from a classroom for religious instruction is entirely antithetical to public education. Even as our public schools are under political assault, as American children fall further behind their international cohorts, as school shootings are so common they no longer make the front page, we must insist that what is missing in public schools is not religious instruction, which is strictly prohibited by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment; what is missing are plentiful resources, political stewardship, and community support. In the last five years, public school appropriations in Kentucky have fallen by almost 20%. We are in grave danger of allowing our system to atrophy because we have forgotten why public schools exist in the first place.

What are the virtues of public education? Certainly, its benefits to society include workforce preparation and the fostering of excellence. But we do not train 13-year olds for a job, and we do not allow only the brightest students to graduate from 2nd to 3rd grades. We prepare all; we foster all.

Public schools are a laboratory where the next generation of citizens learn to live alongside one another, to challenge one another, and to uplift one another. This is their true purpose. LifeWise claims to offer “moral education,” but our public schools already do so, and not along lines of denomination. We educate young Americans in a set of shared values: fairness, justice, truth, compassion. Teachers are not mere reciters of textbooks; they are ethical champions, charged with ensuring that all children get–and give–a seat at the table, speak honestly and insist on honesty from others, share spaces and resources, engage in common purpose. A child is there not only to learn math, but to learn citizenship.

Public schools are a modern invention. It was not until after the Civil War that elementary education became funded by the state and available to all. In the aftermath of a staggering war to eradicate a fundamental inequality, it was understood that such inequality would only return if the most basic of opportunities was withheld. Schools were the key to remaking the country and forging a new, shared national identity.

The prosperity and progress of the 20th Century were created by generations of people educated by well-funded public schools, who understood that investment in the nation is patriotism, and that the soundest investment is in our children. As public education has flourished, so has America, its people bound in solidarity and eager to build their future. As public education atrophies, so does our sense of collective responsibility and mutual trust. We live in an America riven by division because we have forgotten the importance of the public school. Nowhere else in our society are such malleable minds put in communication. Elsewhere, disagreement festers into suspicion; but go down to your local public school and watch the 2nd graders hash out their differences with smiles on their faces, bound together not by creed, but in common cause. Learn. Grow. Thrive. The children of well-funded, vigorously defended public schools go on to create a prosperous, just, and flourishing society.

No student should be pressured to join any organization which divides along lines of belief; no hour of critical instruction should be misspent outside school walls, segregated from peers; no creed or faith should be privileged by the public education system which we have established, with great struggle, for the common good.

Please join Kentucky Citizens for Democracy in opposing LifeWise’s attempts to infiltrate our school systems, not just in Oldham County, but across the Commonwealth.

Daniel Hamilton is a writer, and the parent of Jefferson County Public Schools students.