That may seem like an odd question. Perhaps you think I am talking about the tax deductible nature of contributions to religious organizations and schools. One could make the argument that such is a tax subsidization of religious views with which one disagreses, but we have a well established pattern of allowing such offsets without regard to the religious beliefs thus supported.
But what about vouchers? What if we use tax dollars to give vouchers to families who then have complete freedom to pick a school for their children? Will not those vouchers help pay for textbooks whose contents might be objectionable to many?
The operable Supreme Court decision, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 536 U.S. 639 (2002), comes from the voucher program in Cleveland, in an opinion shaped by Sandra Day O'Connor, which decided allowing vouchers to be used in religious schools was not a violation of the 1st Amendment ban on establishment. But such vouchers are often banned by state Constitutional provisions known as "Blaine" provisions - these specifically bar state aid to religious institutions and were established originally as anti-Catholic provisions. Gov. Scott in Florida is moving to remove the Blaine provision in his state, and as Rachel Tabachnick explores in Vouchers/Tax Credits Funding Creationism, Revisionist History, Hostility Toward Other Religions, an article at Talk to Action which is an expanded version of a piece that originally appeared at Alternet. As she writes in the intro:
Are your state's tax dollars funding the teaching of religious supremacism and bigotry? What about Creationism? The answer is undoubtedly yes, if you live in a state with a voucher or corporate tax credit program funding "school choice."
Please keep reading.
Tabachnick rightly credits Dr. Frances Paterson, a specialist in education law, who in 2003 published Democracy and Intolerance: Christian School Curricula, School Choice, and Public Policy. That book explored the work of three publishing companies who are the largest providers of Protestant Fundamentalist textbooks: A Beka Book, Pensacola, Florida; Bob Jones University Publishing, Greenville South Carolina; and Accelerated Christian Education, Lewisville, Texas. As Tabachnick notes of Paterson's work,
Her research included surveys in Florida, including one of private schools receiving public funding in the Orlando area. Of those that responded, 52% used A Beka textbooks, 24% used Bob Jones and 15% used ACE. A Beka publishers reported that about 9,000 schools nationwide purchase their textbooks.
Tabachnick also references a 2003
Palm Beach Post survey that found of religious schools responding "43% used either A Beka or Bob Jones curriculum."
You may have some knowledge of Bob Jones University. In the 2000 Republican primary cycle, John McCain criticized the University, which had virulently anti-Catholic material on its website (which was removed only after attention was drawn to it) and also criticized George W. Bush for speaking there. IN the 2008 cycle McCain decided he was willing to speak there because he wanted to win the SC primary. This is a university that during the period of conflict in Northern Ireland invited hate-spewing Protestant leader Ian Paisley to speak at the University and to receive an honorary doctorate (Paisley eventually became a Member of Parliament representing the Democratic Unionist Party).
Tabachnick has done a thorough job examining the textbooks offered by these three publishers. She provides examples (with footnoted sources) of the material contained therein. Let me first provide you with her overview:
The textbooks' position on social issues are virulent anti-gay, similar to those of Religious Right organizations (heavily funded by Betsy DeVos and family) that have been labeled as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and they are fiercely anti-abortion; but they also teach a radical laissez-faire capitalism. Government safety nets, regulation, minimum wage, and progressive taxes are described as contrary to the Bible. Many of these textbooks were first published in the 1980s, evidence that the merging of Religious Right ideology with extreme free market economics predates the Tea Party movement by many years.
The textbooks exhibit hostility toward other religions - Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, traditional African religions, and Native American religions - and other Christians are also targeted, including non-evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics.
All three series include biblical Creationism in their science curriculum.
and then offer just a very few selections to illustrate the problem.
Predating today's "tenther" movement, the texts consistently accuse the federal government of exceeding its constitutional authority as described in the Tenth Amendment and taking powers that belong to the states. The Fourteenth Amendment, passed during Reconstruction to give citizenship to African Americans, is criticized as taking away state's rights.
A Bob Jones history text states that the Klu Klux Klan fed on "racism and bigotry" but then states that "the Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross to target bootleggers, wife beaters and immoral movies."
Under the subtitle "Socialist Propaganda" in an A Beka text, the Great Depression is described as having been exaggerated so that Franklin Delano Roosevelt could pass New Deal legislation. The text states, "Perhaps the best known work of propaganda to come from the Depression was John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. [...] Other forms of propaganda included rumors of mortgage foreclosures, mass evictions, and hunger riots and exaggerated statistics representing the number of unemployed and homeless people in America."
A quiz in the teacher's guide for the A Beka eighth grade text Matter and Motion asks, "Why did superstition take the place of science during the Middle Ages?" The answer key tells us, "People did not have the Bible to guide them in their beliefs. Many looked back to the false ideas of Aristotle."23 The next question is, "Why did modern science begin so suddenly in the 1500s?" The answer given is, "As people returned to the authority of the Scriptures during the Protestant Reformation (1517), they started learning the truth about God and His creation."
By now you should be getting a picture that such texts would be problematic for most people here. But these are not even the worst one can find: as Tabachnick writes,
These texts are less militantly Christian nationalists than some other homeschooling and private school textbooks, such as the popular America's Providential History. Nevertheless they present a view of the nation's history and government that parallels that of the Religious Right.
Let me offer a personal observation: textbooks are a way of controlling what can be taught and what is learned. For years, in public schools, the state-wide textbook adoption programs in California and Texas played an oversized role in defining what was in the nation's textbooks. As two large states, textbook publishers would often shape what they did to meet the requirements of those states, thus imposing upon the rest of us what those states decided. This has been less true of California in recent years, but the problems coming from Texas continue, as the recent adoption of material for history made clear. This is not a new phenomenon. I remember a 60 Minutes piece on Mel and Norma Gabler, whose right-wing views tended to dominate the Texas process for more than a decade.
As a public school teacher, I can be required not to use any material not approved for use in my course. As it happens I teach in Prince Georges County Maryland, and our school board may adopt textbooks, but at least to date does not impose rigid restrictions on materials that may be used. As a teacher of government I use a variety of sources so that my students are exposed to different perspectives. This includes material from newspapers, columnists, magazines, and books. My students watch both Fox and PBS and MSNBC. Our science teachers teach science, not Creationism, but in social studies we can discuss that conflict - and I teach students who are in our science and technology program because it is the only way they can attend our school but whose personal and family beliefs reject both Darwin and Global warming. It makes for an interesting environment.
There is in our system every right for parents to choose to place children in a school setting that does not teach things contrary to their religious beliefs. The question that we have never fully resolved is how much support for such schools is allowable under the U S and state constitutions. We need to remember that religious motivation is not limited to those who seek to impose their views in restricting abortion - the Civil Rights movement was fueled by those whose religious beliefs found segregation and discrimination contrary to their religious beliefs, which is why the likes of Archbishop Iakovos of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other Black ministers.
The phenomenon that Tabachnick addresses in this piece is something more. We have a phenomenon which is not new, which is seeking to undermine any and all institutions that teach a worldview different than that held by some of those on the religious right. They see themselves engaged in holy warfare. They want to defund public schools, and will take any path that enables them to do so, including removing tax dollars from public schools to fund their religious indoctrination - after all, that is very much the content of the textbooks in question.
I took the time to write about this piece by Tabachnick because I view it as an important resource. It, along with other parts of her work (such as that I wrote about previously) provide a far more detailed picture of what is going on than many people realize.
We will see continued efforts to shift public funds in the direction of such religious schools. Vouchers are not necessarily merely a philosophical orientation against public schools, although as originally proposed by Milton Friedman, they represented a hostility to public institutions of any kind (other than police and military). When looked at in combination with some of the other endeavors advocated by the likes of Betsy DeVos and the idealogues supported by some of the groups on the Right, there is a clear intent to impose a wordview that is hostile to anything except their interpretation of Biblical material. Ultimately, they want a theocracy that they and their ilk define.
Thus this is not just an issue of textbooks for religious schools and how they are in part funded by taxes paid by others. We cannot view this in isolation from the other parts of the larger agenda.
This predates the Tea Party. It predates the Reagan Revolution. It dominated much of the country in the early part of the 20th Century until it was embarrassed and withdrew in part as a result of the Scopes Monkey Trial in the 1920s. But it began resurging in the 1970s. Roe v Wade was one reason for reentry into the political arena. Jimmy Carter's openness about his Baptist faith was another, although he did not retain the evangelicals who had voted for him in 1976 when he tried for reelection four years later.
If you care about public schools or public institutions of any kind, understand that the issue of taxpayer funding through vouchers of textbooks like those discussed by Tabachnick is part of the much larger picture of a concerted attack - upon liberalism, upon Government services, upon any religious view contrary to that of the extreme religious right. They will take temporary allies to win political battles but are willing to destroy any and all in the long term to achieve their goal, which for some of the important figures can only be described as a theocracy as defined by a narrow group of thinkers.
That their interpretation of Biblical material is ahistoric, in many ways either selective reading or outright interpretive distortion is irrelevant, and you cannot persuade them by discussion of such interpretative problems. Don't bother.
Rather, recognize that there is a threat - to democracy, to the rights and liberties of those of differing viewpoints.
Read the Tabachnick.
Pay attention.
This is too important an issue to ignore.
Thanks for reading.