Yep, there’s nothing so clear as King James English to get through to young people.
Same for the unnamed person(s) who wrote the Code of Ur-Nammu, about 300 years before Hammurabi. Gets no respect. And before that set of laws, there was the ancient maxim, “No good deed goes unpunished.”
I do think it is good that these Louisiana classroom posters will help reduce the incidence of oxen-coveting and Sabbath-breaking in public schools. Something must be done and I applaud the Louisiana legislature for doing something about it.
The idea of posters in the classroom got my thinking back to public school experiences long ago. I have faded memories of some kind of poster on the wall of my second-grade classroom that was titled something like “How to Be a Good Citizen.” The list of rules included “Do not take or use things without permission of the owner.”; “Be kind and respectful of others.”; “When indoors, use your indoor voice.”; “Tell the truth.”; “Know when to say please and thank you.”
I find that most talk of “the good old days” is based upon glamorized mythology and tunnel vision. (The 1950’s, for example, were far from the imagined ideal “good family values” and “everybody was safe and happy” message of the sitcoms of that era which still play on American nostalgia TV.) But I do remember that the aforementioned poster in my classroom was not the only example of community efforts to encourage a shared sense of community ethics. Of course, I have no direct personal knowledge by observation whether this was just a feature of my traditional rural farming community where everybody knew everybody or whether this was a common American phenomena. (Obviously, there was much of America that experienced constant community tension and strife, such as where civil rights struggles were underway and powerful people quite openly opposed equality.)
Anyway, I don’t know if such posters are common today. I just wondered what could be possible if the legislators of Louisiana had said, “Let’s put our heads together and create a list of basic rules which we can all live by. Surely there is much we can agree on as to good rules of conduct.” I don’t think too many people are opposed to rules like “Don’t steal.” and “Don’t lie about your neighbor.” I am not opposed to teaching public school children basic rules of good conduct—and if a poster helps with that, fine. We don’t have to make a tribal war out of it—and a flex of power wielded by those who happen to control the legislature. (Indeed, I see the Louisiana law as a way to say, “Hey. WE are in charge here. If you don’t like the King James Bible, you can lump it.” I find that sad and contrary to the best ideals of our nation’s founders.)
You know, actually, I attended Seattle public schools from '67 to ‘79 and as I recall it, this is pretty much exactly what we were taught. Not in great detail, certainly, but the idea that we were given was that sectarian differences had torn European countries apart at times and that the alliance of the government with one of those sects tended to make things worse, and that our framers definitely had just that sort of thing in mind when writing the First Amendment. People might argue about religion, but none of them would have the government in their corner when doing it or be able to use the force of law to infringe on others’ beliefs.
Now, we also had nonsense like the reference to Underdog (at least it was a truly GREAT cartoon) in the Pledge of Allegiance, and we did have all of the Christian trappings around Christmas and other holidays, with very, very little acknowledgement of any other religious traditions to which our classmates might adhere.
But, the thing is: we certainly never had the notion, which seems to be so prevalent in fundie-land these days, that the separation of church and state was in any way intended as a finger in the church’s eye. Rather, the idea was that religion was freed from entanglement with the state – both the benefits and the detriments thereof – and that this was, ultimately, to the benefit of all people of all faiths.
I don’t know what our textbooks said – certainly don’t have any here to consult – but this was the message we got in the classroom, whether from books or teachers.
I do know that in the years after, when I got to studying the history of the British people, I realized – holy cow, this is a big deal. There were times in the history there where there was no such thing as a safe faith; there was only a safe faith for the time being, and you had to worry that the day would come that they’d set fire to you in the public square for it. I stayed in a home in East Grinstead once just across the street from where some Protestants had been executed during Queen Mary’s reign; if it had been happening during my visit you could have watched it from the front parlor. No wonder that people who had so much of this nastiness to look back upon said “no more!”
Oh, and: I will be curious, and nervous, to see what comes of this Louisiana law. Only a few years ago I’d have been confident that it could not survive judicial review. Under current case law it clearly cannot. But after that awful decision in that Bremerton football coach case, I no longer trust our Court to stick to the constitution. Arguments will always be made that “well, you know, the Ten Commandments are a historic part of our legal tradition,” and yadda, and yadda, but of course nobody really denies that. The thing is: they’re not CENTRAL to our legal tradition, any more than the Codes of Hammurabi or Justinian or the Magna Carta or the doings of the Witangemot.
I do wish, sometimes, that kids were taught a little bit about the origins of our legal traditions. The common law comes to us from the Brits, and is a very interesting thing – a kind of organic law that grows of its own. Its origins are rather complicated and its development more so. And it’s already got Coke in it, so there are ample corporate sponsorship opportunities for the curriculum materials.
Please read the lawsuit filed of behalf of 9 parents with children in the Louisiana Public Schools. The arguments are compelling that the Louisiana law is a blatant violation of the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Wikipedia has a nice table showing the different ways in which the bible verses can by divided up so as to produce the required ten commandments. Some of them seem odd. How can you interpret “I am the Lord thy God” as a command of any sort? Also curious about why some versions divided the coveting into two parts.
I sometimes call them “the good old days that never were.”
I grew up in that era. But we cannot easily go back.
I have some respect for the Amish. They at least recognize that if you want to live that way, you have to do it without automobiles, without cell phones, without television.
Interesting. In my school there was just the general concept of “They came to America for religious freedom.” but little was said about the centuries of religion-related wars—nor even the specifics of how/why the Pilgrims and Puritans had suffered for their religion when still in Europe. (Of course, absolutely nothing was said about how they oppressed others through their own religious tolerance once they established their American communities.)
FOOTNOTE: I think there may have been brief mention of European religious wars in an 11th grade American history—and that was the only history class my home state required for high school students. (Other history classes existed but they were electives.)
Yeah, I don’t recall that coming up. I learned of that much later. It made those pilgrims a tad less adorable, though of course a decent lesson on the English Civil War would have done that, too.
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry knew the score when he signed into law a requirement that every classroom in his state—from kindergarten classrooms to college chemistry labs—must post a copy of the Ten Commandments. In fact, the ambitious Republican seemed to be trolling his critics even before he sanctified the work of the GOP-controlled legislature.
“I’m going home to sign a bill that places the Ten Commandments in public classrooms,” he said Saturday night as he headlined a Republican Party fundraiser in Nashville. “And I can’t wait to be sued.”
He won’t have to, certainly. I do wish I felt better about the security of a good outcome, but the Court has absolutely lost its mind on church/state these days and we may be entering a dark era.
As a postscript PM’s dark era, it will likely be determined by the Louisiana 10 Commandments case. I think there are justices now sitting on the court unprincipled enough to let that tragedy happen. They are not stupid, nor are they necessarily ignorant of 1st Amendment history, they simply have an agenda and will do any violence necessary to Anglo-American jurisprudence to get there…
Madison (and Jefferson) never viewed the 1st Amendment as a bright, shiny beacon for religious freedom as generally taught in history books. Being the brilliant and prescient men they were, the 1st Amendment, written almost exclusively by Madison, with considerable input from Jefferson, who was in constant contact with Madison, despite his diplomatic postings in Europe, and was a direct attempt to check the power of theocracies in the colonies and in particular, Massachusetts. In 17th and 18th century America, religious intolerance was the rule, was infinitely more pronounced that anything such in Europe or England and had been codified in many colonial governing documents. Catholics and Jews, for example were banned in most colonies, which led to the establishment of Maryland as a safe harbor for Catholics, and to some degree Jews. Calvinistic leaders in New England had, from the moment the Pilgrims hit Plymouth Rock, worked relentlessly to establish Reformed theocracies openly hostile to any other sect and proceeded to persecute mercilessly non-Calvinist folks, Christian and non-Christian alike. Contrary to conventional presentations of victimized Pilgrims and Puritans leaving England to flee religious persecution, Reformed sects decamped to America precisely because they could (and did) impose their theocratic states unchecked, which they did with relish. Forget about the conflict between science and religion for a minute and look more broadly–the Louisiana 10 Commandments law is just one more example of conservative Christian zealots, misusing the 1st Amendment to establish Zion in your backyard…
Me too. The 1947 Everson, which introduced that language into 1st Amendment jurisprudence, was written by Justice Hugo Black, a former (supposedly) KKK member. He was FDR’s first appointee to the court after FDR’s court packing bill failed in 1937. Black was also an Alabama Senator prior to his appointment. The reason Black and other racists and bigots wanted the “separation of church and state” was to prevent Catholics and Jews from taking over public institutions. They were bigots and conspiracy theorists. I’d love for this history to be taught in schools as well.
While I think it a good idea to teach the darker side of American history, and Christianity’s role in it, I don’t think that who introduced a particular phrase to jurisprudence is that important. Especially not when that phrase reflects the understanding of one of the originators of the law in question.
The actions of the Puritans in the Maryland colony seem more important to me. Overturning the colony’s law granting religious freedom to Christians so they could persecute Catholics and others.
Jefferson wrote this in a letter to some of his political constituents. He did not write that language in any law. The 1947 Everson case was the first time that language was borrowed from Jefferson’s letter and applied to this novel interpretation of the First Amendment.
I shouldn’t need to cite anything for that. It’s easy enough to verify on your own. It’s not a secret.