Vouchers and Tax Credits Threaten Religious Liberty and Sense of a Shared Public Space
The idea of religious liberty in American public education is basic. This is the promise that the U.S. Constitution protects children from the teaching of somebody else’s religious views at public expense in their schools. The First Amendment of the Constitution protects religion in two ways: government may not impose religion (public schools may not teach religious doctrine) and government must protect the free exercise of religion.
The idea of religious freedom is being perverted in myriad ways by those who perpetually try to figure out how public schools or publicly funded schools can teach religion. Yesterday,Stephanie Simon published a fascinating and detailed article at Politico about the many ways school vouchers and closely related tuition tax credits are being used by those who want to promote their religion.
Simon summarizes the thinking of Neal McCluskey, a libertarian analyst from the Cato Institute, for example, who says that public funds ought to be allowed to go to schools that promote all kinds of religious values. Then parents should be free to choose for their children the schools that reflect their own beliefs. “If you want very rigorous evolution instruction, you should be able to choose that. But you have to let other people choose something else.” McCluskey’s thinking gets us to a very peculiar definition of scientific thinking: you should be able to choose for your child what kind of science you want your child to believe. Most