Only in Louisiana

Fixing Education

The state of Louisiana has an education problem.  Their public schools are ranked 40^th out of 51 in the Nation (KTAL).  So you’d expect the state legislature would look for ways to improve their standing:  work on early childhood education, or remedial literacy education in the fourth grade, or alternative mathematics programs for middle schoolers.  Maybe Louisiana should pay their teachers more:  the state ranks 46^th  nationally in average teacher pay (NEA).  The old adage, “You get what you pay for” works in education as well.

But the super-MAGA Louisiana legislature isn’t looking at any of those alternatives.  Instead, they just passed an education bill, signed into law by the MAGA Governor, Jeff Landry. According to the governor’s webpage: 

“Today, surrounded by legislators, educators, school kids, and community leaders, Governor Jeff Landry signed into law monumental bills that will transform our education system and bring back common sense in our classrooms.”  

Too bad the ceremony was marred by a little girl who passed out in the back of the crowd around the signing table (no symbolism there).  The Governor seemed unaware of her condition – probably not “the look” he was going for as a “national leader” in education.

The bill “fixed” such critical education issues as:

• Rescinding Covid requirements
• Allowing unvaccinated kids to go to school
• Requiring parents consent to their child’s pronouns
• Allowing “chaplains” in schools
• Giving scholarships for private schools. (Louisiana.Gov).

Establishment Clause

But that’s not what anyone was talking about.  As part of this package “transforming our education system”, is the requirement that the Ten Commandments be posted in every public classroom in the state.  In 1980 the US Supreme Court ruled on this exact point.  In Stone v Graham (449 U.S. 39 1980) the Court ruled that a similar Kentucky law “…has no secular legislative purpose, and therefore is unconstitutional as violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.”

So why is Louisiana flying directly in the face of a forty year-old Supreme Court precedent?  And why is the state committing their limited financial resources to a legal fight,  already filed in the Louisiana Federal Courts, that will undoubtedly go to the Supreme Court in a couple of years?  

Well, first of all, it’s easier to go to the Supreme Court than it is to get third graders to pass a literacy test.  And it’s easier to “bring common sense” to education by imposing state-sanctioned Christian symbolism, than it is to pay for the real needs of public school classrooms.  So, Governor Landry and the Legislature made a national “splash”, without really doing anything at all for those kids in the schools of failing Baker City School District in East Baton Rouge Parrish.  

Governor Landry wants to be the “leader” of the Christian Nationalist movement to “retake” American institutions, including public education. That’s a great way to get in the National spotlight. And he might get a leg-up in the post-Trump MAGA-Republican Party; stepping right over the actual fallen body of some poor little grade-school girl.  And with today’s Supreme Court, Hell-bent on remaking America in their own image; Landry might be right.

Teachable Moment

For many Christians, putting the Ten Commandments up in classrooms is a “no brainer”. According to them, it gives children the basic “rules” of life. (I know – many of us kind of remember them, if not from Sunday School, then from all of those Easter Sunday evenings around the TV watching Charlton Heston carry the tablets down the mountain).  So, just as a reminder,  here’s the Ten Commandments:

• Thou shalt have no other Gods before me
• Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image
• Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord they God in vain
• Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it Holy
• Honor thy Father and thy Mother
• Thou shalt not kill
• Thou shalt not commit adultery
• Thou shalt not steal
• Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor
• Thou shalt not covet.

Let’s look at that “teachable moment”, when the third graders lose focus on the math lesson on fractions, look up at the wall and start asking questions.  It might get very religious – especially when the Hindu or Buddhist or Moslem kids in the class ask about “their” God(s) which can’t be “before” Governor Landry’s God.  What about the whole Christian Sunday versus Jewish Saturday – which is the Sabbath?  And then there’s  that “graven image” of Jesus on the Cross in the front of the church – why is that different?  How about the flag in the classroom, little Suzie the Jehovah’s Witness girl doesn’t even stand up for the Pledge of Allegiance?

Sure, there are the easy teaching points: don’t steal, don’t kill, don’t lie; honor Mom and Dad.  But adultery – really going to go into that with the third graders?  Isn’t there some other Louisiana law that prevents teachers from uttering the dreaded three-letter word – sex – in class?  

Fake History

The Christian Nationalist movement operates on a false premise.  They believe that the United States was founded as a “Christian” nation, and that the founding fathers were using Christian doctrine as the template for American law.  In fact, real history is exactly the opposite.  Many of the American colonies were refuges from religious oppression in Europe.  Sure some had their particular religion; the Puritans and Pilgrims in Massachusetts, the Roman Catholics in Maryland, the Quakers in Pennsylvania.  But they were actually running from Government sanctioned religion in Great Britain. 

The Founding Fathers were well aware of that. They specifically made no mention of a/the “deity” in the Constitution, and in fact, prohibited Government sanctioned religion in the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment religion…” – the first words of the First Amendment). 

Congress is “the government”, and so is the state of Louisiana.  America, the “home of the free”, was founded on the principle (not Christian) that religious belief is personal, not a Government issue.  But Governor Landry and the good folks in the Louisiana Legislature have a different answer:  believe in what we believe in. And more, there’s the unspoken corollary:  if you don’t believe, you’re wrong.  

And that’s not the lesson about America that Louisiana third graders need to learn.