CHURCH AND STATE.

Uninformed Opinion

A recent CNN-Gallup-USA Today poll shows just how uninformed and uncritical a great many Americans are on important church-state issues. The poll found that respondents:

* favor displaying the Ten Commandments in public schools--74 percent to 24 percent

* favor allowing official prayers at school graduations--83 percent to 17 percent

* would allow use of the Bible in literature, history, and other classes--71 percent to 28 percent

* would permit daily prayer in the classroom--70 percent to 28 percent

* would approve teaching creationism along with evolution in public schools--68 percent to 29 percent

* would oppose teaching creationism instead of evolution--55 percent to 40 percent.

Let's look at these issues.

Displays of the Ten Commandments in public areas were ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1981 in Stone v. Graham, but beyond that there is no agreement among various faiths as to the wording or even the enumeration of the commandments. In any event, the folks who produced the commandments don't call them that but, rather, "utterances." Is government or a school board then to decide which is to be the official version? When asked his opinion about a Ten-Commandments-in-the-school measure passed by the U.S. House of Representatives this past June, born-again Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush said he thought the "standard" version would be okay.

Incidentally, how many churches display the Ten Commandments prominently or otherwise? Very few, I should think. But posting them there or in churchyards where they would be visible to passersby would be noncontroversial--and if they reduced crime and violence, which I very much doubt, then hooray!

As for official graduation prayers, just whose might they be? The school board's? Prayers written by committees? The Supreme Court has already slammed the door on that one.

Using the Bible in literature and history classes is okay in theory but presents many problems in practice, such as how the Bible is used. The likelihood that it would be used in a constitutional manner is surely less than 50 percent.

A majority may favor permitting prayer in public schools, but individual voluntary classroom prayer has never been held illegal--only government-sponsored or -led prayer. What is more, another Gallup poll about a year ago found that if respondents had a choice they would prefer a moment of silence rather than prayer in the classroom.

The Supreme Court has also come down against teaching creationism in public schools along with evolution. Evolution is science; creationism is but one of many competing nonscientific religious explanations of how and when the universe and living things developed. There is controversy over evolution in the United States because of the persisting strength of fundamentalism and the related weakness of science teaching in our schools.

Clearly, Americans are sadly ignorant of their Constitution.

Public Versus Private Schools

Advocates of tax support for nonpublic schools (through vouchers, tuition tax credits, "hope scholarships," "opportunity grants," and the like) often argue that church-related and other private schools are so much better than public schools that it is only fair and just to use public funds to enable all kids the chance to attend them. John Swomley, Al Menendez, and I pretty thoroughly blew their arguments out of the water in our book The Case Against School Vouchers, especially with our showing the discriminatory and selective nature of the vast majority of nonpublic schools. Now comes new data confirming the hollowness of the voucher promoters' case.

In July 1999, New York State released the scores of fourth-grade reading and writing tests for students in public and nonpublic schools. Statewide, 53 percent of nonpublic students passed, compared to 48 percent of public students. In hard-pressed New York City the percentages were 44 percent and 33 percent, respectively. However, as nonpublic schools serve far fewer special-education kids--647 in nonpublic schools compared to 50,510 in public schools--the differences between the two kinds of schools grow narrower, 55 percent to 52 percent statewide and 45 percent to 37 percent in New York City.

But even this correction doesn't take into account the fact that nonpublic schools serve on average rather more affluent and more well-educated families than public schools, impose requirements on parents that public schools cannot, and are more selective over and above the special-education issue. Voucher supporter, Reagan administration official, and Manhattan Institute honcho Chester Finn had to admit that nonpublic schools are not "delivering a superior product."

So the very slight superiority that nonpublic schools in the aggregate may appear to have over public schools vanishes like a morning mist when the light of the facts is shown on the situation. Furthermore, despite their disadvantages, New York's public schools outscored nonpublic schools in the top category of scores: 5.6 percent to 5 percent statewide and 3.5 percent to 3 percent in New York City.

By the way, New York City's elite and expensive private schools declined to have their students take the optional tests--perhaps because they didn't want their scores to be compared with those of kids in relatively starved, nonselective public schools.

Edd Doerr is president of the American Humanist Association, executive director of Americans for Religious Liberty, and the author or coauthor of numerous books and articles on church-state separation and First Amendment liberties.