More importantly, debating the constitutionality of the bill avoids the real crisis afflicting students in public schools. It’s not so much that they don’t know right from wrong (though this is obviously a problem); it’s that too many lack the very capacity to know right from wrong. Thinking morally and empathetically requires some degree of imagination, logic, and an ability to control one’s feelings—in other words, it requires maturity. This is why most Christian churches usually wait until a child reaches “the age of reason” (usually seven or eight years old) before teaching things like the Ten Commandments and Christ’s parables.
The Louisiana legislature is about to pass a bill that would require every public school in the state to post the Ten Commandments in each classroom. The bill’s author, Rep. Dodie Horton, explained that the “purpose [of the law] is not solely religious” but also serves to “display the history of our country and foundation of our legal system.”
On cue, the disestablishmentarians took immediate issue with the bill, arguing that it was synonymous with theocratic indoctrination. As an attorney from the ACLU put it, ”Public schools shouldn’t be used to religiously indoctrinate or convert students.” Some unsuspecting non-Christian students may see one of these posters, ponder its implications, and literally come to Jesus.
One can only hope! But the greater likelihood is that they will see it as just more clutter on teachers’ already busy walls, next to the Gandhi and Malcolm X posters, across the from the motivational Garfield poster, and right behind the state, national, and Pride flags up front. Perhaps some conservative teachers might try to use it to tame their less civilized classes, while some progressive teachers will see it as yet another reason to whine about the stupid conservatives running their state.
But most teachers will probably post it on their walls … and ignore it—much like they do with posters of learning objectives, school mission statements, bullying hotlines, and all the other meaningless content mandated from on high. Somehow, miraculously, the response to the dysfunction of public schools is supposed to be remedied by one more visual that indirectly encourages them to make better choices.
None of this is to say that the critics are right. Nor is this to say that the idea behind the bill is wrong. Rather, it is to say that, as it stands, the bill does not go far enough in addressing the moral illiteracy plaguing public schools.
Along with their innumerable academic deficiencies, too many of today’s students are selfish, shortsighted, irrational, and utterly superficial. They fail to recognize that all actions have consequences, that other people have feelings too, and that they are ultimately responsible for the way they behave. Many of them struggle to differentiate between right and wrong, good and bad, truth and falsehood. Even a good number of juniors and seniors whom I work with in Advanced Placement English classes will draw a blank when encountering the words “virtue” and “vice.”
Naturally, this carries significant implications for their education on multiple fronts. In some cases, schools descend into a “Lord of the Flies”–style anarchy where students brutalize one another, as frequently happens in Louisiana’s urban campuses. In other instances, high-achieving students will lie and cheat their way to the top, only to fail miserably when they leave the permissive, grade-inflating environments of school and college.