According to Minister Louis Farrakhan, church-state separation is responsible for the education problems in America.
Hundreds packed a South Side Chicago church on Sunday to hear Farrakhan, the controversial leader of the Nation of Islam, speak on the “Educational Challenge: A New Paradigm for the 21st Century.” According to the Chicago Sun-Times, community activists and religious leaders met to find solutions for America’s “plighted education system.”
And Farrakhan’s solution? Inject religion into the public schools.
“How in the world can you achieve what you want when the headmaster has been disrespected?” asked Farrakhan, apparently dubbing God “the headmaster.”
He condemned America for allegedly implementing an “extreme separation of church and state” and taking God out of schools. He called for a new educational paradigm rooted in faith.
Farrakhan went on to say that the public school curriculum needs to relate more readily to minority children.
And putting religion into schools will accomplish this? It seems that Farrakhan has some things mixed up.
First, the Supreme Court’s church-state decisions mandating religious neutrality in the public schools did not occur because of disrespect for the “headmaster.” Rather, the justices held that the Constitution protects the freedom of every person to worship the “headmaster” of his or her choice, or to believe in no “headmaster” at all. If government sponsored or endorsed a particular religion, how would Americans have that choice?
Second, in protecting the freedom of all faiths (or no faith), we are protecting minority religious groups from being discriminated against and made to feel unwelcome by their own government. Bringing government-sanctioned faith into public schools would alienate minority students, not make education more successful.
As a member of a minority faith, Farrakhan ought to know that.
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