The Religious Right, Education Reform and Federal Policy

A Forum — July 29, 1994

Background

In most minds, the Religious Right is connected to issues of creationism and school prayer.  We tend to think of its members as reverent zealots fighting to uphold\impose a strict moral and social code upon the rest of American society.  As far back as the Scopes Trial, the Religious Right has attacked public schools for what it feels is a curriculum inimical to its fundamental beliefs.  This is still true today.

Members of the Religious Right of the 1990s, however, have proven themselves to be more organized than their predecessors.  Today, they are not only voicing their concern over certain school-related issues, but are making themselves heard by gaining control of local school boards.  This position of power has given members an opportunity to have an effect on all education issues, not just creationism and school prayer.

In this context, George Kaplan and Stephen Bates, both of whom have written extensively on the Religious Right, spoke to a Forum audience of over eighty.

Kaplan gave an overview of the Religious Right as it exists in the 1990s.  He addressed several topics:

• the current rise in the movement
• its power hierarchy
• its specific views in relation to education and education reform
• his recommendation for how the education community should respond to this resurgence in the movement

Stephen Bates also presented his views on how schools should handle demands made by members of the Religious Right.  He did so by offering the example of conflict between a public school and Christian Right parents in Hawkins County, Tennessee.  For Bates, this conflict illustrates the need to find a common ground between these two groups.

George Kaplan

The current rise in the movement.  Kaplan set out to explain why, as he put it, "the Religious Right is the flavor of the month."  He identified two reasons.  The first was related to the changing political culture of the country due to the election of a Democratic President after twelve years of Republican rule.  According to Kaplan, "Reagan and Bush protected the Religious Right while Clinton came along as an immediate opponent."  Religious Right opposition to many of Clinton's plans, especially those concerned with abortion and gays in the military, forced its members to become much louder and better organized.
 
The second reason for the resurgence in the movement arises from the renewed focus on education and education reform.  Not only did Clinton, in a sense, force the Religious Right out into the open, he also provided them with an incentive to organize effectively.  Clinton's call for education reform has been a rallying cry for these conservative Christians.  They see this as an opportunity to effect their own kind of change in the schools.  As Kaplan explained, "Schools have been susceptible [to the Religious Right] because of their vulnerability to education reform."

Power structure. While we talk of the Religious Right as if it were a highly organized and structured group, Kaplan was quick to dispel this idea.  There are four distinct levels within the movement.  At the top are the "leaders," such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who are visible to the general public.  Below them are the "activists" who number roughly a half million.  Next come the "followers," followed by the "flock."

The flock deserves the most attention because it is the hardest to characterize.  This group is made up of roughly thirty million Americans.  They are everyday citizens, mostly from rural areas and small towns, who feel strongly about the role of religion in education and are fighting their local school boards.  They hold no special ties to their so-called "leaders" and frequently disagree with each other.

Education reform. This lack of homogeneity among its different levels makes it even harder to grasp who the Religious Right is and what it wants.  Yet, as Kaplan said, "The Religious Right is unanimous on one thing -- the role of the schools...[It] would like to see the schools as an adjunct of the church and family, rather than a free-standing force in the raising of children."
 
Perhaps the Religious Right is more clearly defined by what it does not want in schools.  It is against "secular humanism" as the basis for teaching students.  In terms of specific subjects, most members are opposed to sex education, environmental education, and multiculturalism.  Outcome-based education is another topic that incites protest because many of its standards are affective in nature.  The Religious Right is strongly opposed to any kind of measure that would require schools to instill specific values or emotions in students.

The needed response. One difficulty in fighting the Religious Right is that it knows how to "protect" itself.  By adopting the "pro-family" slogan, the Religious Right has been able to shield itself from most of its opposition.  The fear from opposing groups is that they will be labeled "anti-family" if they publicly denounce or even criticize the Religious Right.  Another problem arises when trying to mount an opposition to the Religious Right's use of what Kaplan calls "stealth tactics."  It is hard to fight something that is so elusive.

Kaplan did suggest approaches to counter the Religious Right's influence.  He advocated the need for school systems to ally with parents against members of the Religious Right -- concentrate on facts and put the issues in context, he said.  Another approach is to use pro-reform tactics to undermine the Religious Right's stealth tactics.  Members of the education community need to make it clear that they, too, want to reform the schools, and toward what end.

Stephen Bates

Bates examined the Religious Right not as a political movement but as actual people fighting to make school curricula compatible with their religious and moral beliefs.  He told the story of Hawkins County, Tennessee, a rural area where "religious rhetoric imbued almost everything."  In this case, parents were fighting to remove certain books from the local school's curriculum which they felt were in direct conflict with their Fundamentalist Christian beliefs.

A bitter battle between the school board and the parents ensued.  The parents eventually filed suit against the school, saying their religious freedom was being abridged.  The result was a decision which, in effect, would have excused the children of these parents from reading class and put them in their own "special" class.  The decision was appealed and reversed on the basis that the separation of the students was found to be unconstitutional.  In the end, the courts sided with the school.  Some of the parents reacted by placing their kids in private schools.

Bates believes a compromise could have been reached between the parents and the school board.  To him, separation of church and state is not a black-and-white issue.  As he put it, "The Constitution requires secular schools but not secular students."  According to Bates, if the school board had been "flexible" and provided the "special" class, those students would have stayed at the public school instead of leaving for a private, most likely parochial, school.  At least in this scenario, the school system would still have had control over their education and could have ensured that these children were exposed to secular ideas and values.

Mostly, though, Bates advocated the need for both sides of the fight to listen and try to understand each other.  "Stop fighting about whose interpretation is right and whose is wrong" he warned. "Agree to disagree."

Discussion Period

Bates and Kaplan addressed several key questions:

"Flexible" curriculum.  More than one member of the audience was critical of Bates' call for the schools to be more "flexible" in terms of their curriculum.  They were concerned that making an exception for some students would result in a "thinning out" of the curriculum to a point where it is no longer valuable to anyone.  One respondent felt that Bates' proposed separation of students smacked of "separate but equal" arguments.

Bates reiterated that schools should compromise to keep the children of Religious Right parents in a public school setting where they will learn democratic values.  The alternative is to push these children to enter a private school where there is no such guarantee that they will be exposed to these values.  As for the separation of some students from others, Bates made the point that this already occurs in public schools with classes for students with learning disabilities and even separate schools for pregnant teens.
 
One respondent retorted that we have to be careful whenever we decide to silence factual knowledge, such as evolution, as many parents of the Religious Right would like, because at that point one is challenging the relationship between the notion of truth and education.

The Religious Right & upcoming elections. Kaplan was asked what role the Religious Right would play in upcoming elections.  He was careful to distinguish between the leaders of the Religious Right and what he calls the "flock" because these two factions do not necessarily share the same beliefs.  While he believes the leaders, like Falwell and Robertson, will make their presence felt in the next presidential election, he does not think that the "flock" will show up much in the '94 or '96 elections mainly because they lack any sense of homogeneity.  As a faction of the Religious Right, the "flock" has neither one political view nor any "serious or credible flagbearers."  Instead, members of the flock can be expected to continue to focus their efforts on gaining control of local school boards.

Educational standards.  How does the Religious Right feel about educational standards such as those found in the Goals 2000: Educate America Act?  Both speakers agreed that the Religious Right is against some forms of standards.  Kaplan explained: "The Religious Right's opposition to Goals 2000 and other related reform efforts stems from a fundamental conviction that the federal government has no right to dictate or even suggest what should go on in America's schools."

Bates felt the need to qualify this statement.  He responded that the Religious Right is not against all education standards.  Members are, however, against outcome-based education whenever it proposes to measure "psychological or attitudinal aspects" of children.

Both speakers offered explanations for why the Religious Right has had such a major impact on the local level over school reform and efforts to establish standards.  Kaplan suggested that the strength of the Religious Right is that its members stay involved with school boards even after their children graduate, unlike most parents who lose touch with their local school boards once their children are no longer immediately affected.  For Bates, the reason the Religious Right has been able to have such an effect on school reform is its clear focus.  The Religious Right is concerned with children and the family.  This has always been and will continue to be their motivation.

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