Nathan S. French & Kenlea Barnes, Miami University Imagine walking into two American public school classrooms today. In the first classroom, students study histories of the framers of the U.S. Constitution, review important laws and quotes from historic speeches. They hear praise for national heroes who embodied patriotic values such as bravery, courage, and honesty. These students study biblical scriptures and philosophical texts to learn about the morals that informed the creation of the early republic. From these virtues and examples, they are taught that responsible citizens respect their country, its laws, its institutions, and nurture the virtues required to secure liberty. In the second classroom, students study the histories of the framers of the U.S. Constitution. They, too, study speeches and laws. But, their teacher introduces them to debates about the mistakes of past governments and the dangers of ambitious leaders who seek political power. They explore how U.S. citizens and non-U.S. citizens have had their rights denied by the U.S. government. They read literature from other countries about their political, cultural, or social challenges to understand how reason and logic helped to correct political, legal, and moral failure. They consider how the knowledge they gain is part of any responsible citizen’s obligation to resist the tyranny that threatens even the best of governments. Which of these most resemble your experiences? In both examples, each classroom is meant to educate students about citizenship, but are they attempting to education and form the same type of citizen? The first classroom resembles the vision of Noah Webster (1758-1843), a pivotal figure in early American political thought. The second classroom? Thomas Jefferson’s (1743-1846) ideal for civic education. Both examples invite us to ask: “If public education is intended, at least in part, to shape citizens, what kind of citizens should public education help create? And, should the study of religion play a role in that work?” Such a question faces school children, their parents, their teachers, school administrators, and legislators even today. Each time you read a headline about religion in public schools – ranging from the Texas legislature approving a requirement for every student to read passages from biblical literature to Ohio permitting students to depart school for off-site religious instruction – you are witnessing that ongoing debate over the role of religion, morality, and knowledge in public education. As teachers, parents, administrators, and students debate how best to prepare young people for citizenship and adulthood, they debate what students should read, which historical figures they should study, and which virtues should be emphasized as part of creating a “citizen” from public education. Webster’s civic education emphasized what citizens ought to believe and how they ought to behave. Jefferson placed greater emphasis on how citizens ought to reason. What would Webster and Jefferson think about our public education priorities 250 years after our founding? “Religion, Morality, and Knowledge” in Public Education A first glance at the history of the United States and the history might suggest that every Ohio student at a public institution from kindergarten through public colleges should be engaged in a study of “religion, morality, and knowledge,” as part of sound civic education. The commitment to each in public education might seem to some students to be woven into the foundations of the state itself. Consider the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which created the legal framework for the state. Article 3 reads, “religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” In reflecting on this passage, Mannasseh Cutler (1742-1823), an American Congregationalist reverend, observed that the inclusion of this language was to affirm the “fixed principles” that would form the states to emerge from the territory. “Religion,” observed Cutler in a sermon at the time, “ought never to be made a political engine.” Yet, principles of religion along with principles of virtue, would form the surest means to “promote the civil and social happiness” of the settlements to be established. Cutler’s understanding likely shaped the charters of both Ohio University (chartered 1803, 1804), of which Cutler is considered a “father,” and Miami University (chartered 1809), both of which included an affirmation that the universities would promote “good education, virtue, religion and morality.” The legacy of the Northwest Ordinance also influenced the 1802 Ohio Constitutional Convention. In Article 8, Section 3 of the Ohio Constitution of 1803 the convention established “that all men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God, according to the dictates of conscience; that no human authority can, in any case whatever, control or interfere with the rights of conscience; [and] that no man shall be compelled to attend, erect or support any place of worship, or to maintain any ministry, against his consent.” The section concluded by noting that “schools and the means of instruction shall forever be encouraged by legislative provision,” linking such an education to “religion, morality, and knowledge” as both “necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind.” It might seem certain, then, that religion should play a central role in civic education. Yet, at the time of the ratification of Ohio’s constitution, the Democratic-Republican party – the party of then-President Thomas Jefferson – held a majority and significant influence in Ohio politics. Early in 1802, ten months before Ohio convened its convention, Jefferson wrote a letter to the Danbury Baptists of Connecticut in which he outlined his understanding that the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, having forbade Congress from enacting laws establishing a national religion, affirmed a “wall of separation between church and state.” The prevention of all forms of tyranny must be a focus of public education, Jefferson argued, if the American experiment was to succeed. Education should “illuminate” the public mind and teach people to recognize ambition “under all its shapes.” Religious education, Jefferson feared, could be a source for such ambition, with tyranny not far behind. Education in biblical studies was better left to an older age, Jefferson once counseled a young Peter Carr (1770-1815). Further, Jefferson added, “those facts in the Bible which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined with more care, and under a variety of faces.” A civic education should instead emphasize the development of the rational faculties to consider the responsibilities of good governance and the dangers facing it. Freedom of religion, Jefferson suggested, was a freedom meant to affirm one’s liberty from forms of tyranny, religious and otherwise. A civic education, inclusive of an education about religious freedom, ensured the protection, Jefferson observed, of “the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.” On the contrary, throughout his life, Noah Webster believed that an American republic would require an education in religious and moral education alongside American history, government, and an understanding of the duties and responsibilities of citizenship. This required a strong sense of obedience to authorities, including moral obedience to religious authorities and strict submission to legal authorities. In 1788, Webster noted that in addition to the Christian New Testament, “an acquaintance with ethics … the general principles of law, commerce, money, and government” are all necessary to a public education in the service of a “republican state.” Webster’s approach was not dissimilar from that of Patrick Henry (1736-1799) who, in his 1784 “Bill Establishing a Provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion,” sought to secure the instruction of Christian teachings with taxpayer money in schools. Religion, Henry argued, was the surest way to secure the public morality and virtues necessary for a democratic republic. Henry’s efforts were rejected by James Madison (1751-1836), who, in his “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments” echoed Jefferson in arguing that religion should remain outside the reach of civil government. A state assessment for religious instruction, he concluded, would violate conscience, corrupt religion by connecting it to political power, and create a precedent for further coercion Religion, the Bible, and Public Education The debate between Jefferson and Webster remains unresolved in Ohio and other states even today. During the Cincinnati “Bible War” from 1869-1873, the Cincinnati Board of Education voted to ban daily bible readings in schools leading to massive public protest. In 1872, the Ohio Supreme Court, in Board of Education v. Minor (23 Ohio S. N.S. 211), considering the question of mandatory (Christian) religious education in Ohio public school classrooms, ruled that the linkage of “religion, morality, and knowledge,” did not require the teaching of religion – particularly the Christian religion – in public schools. “Nothing is enjoined,” they wrote, “but the encouragement and means of instruction in general knowledge.” Later U.S. Supreme Court decisions, such as School District of Abington Township, Pennsylvania v. Schempp (374 U.S. 203, 1973) would uphold that public schools cannot sponsor Bible readings or recitation of the Christian “Lord’s Prayer” under the first amendment’s Establishment Clause. The question of the role of r
