Theocracy in California Public Schools
Many thanks to Lea for cross-posting this!
—TexBetsy
I first encountered Released Time Christian Education when I moved to California 12 years and started teaching in the public school system. The little flyers went home, some came back filled out, and one day a few of my students left to go “learn about Jesus” in the trailer that had pulled up out front.
The purpose of Released Time Christian Education, from their website:
The purpose of Released Time Christian Education classes is to share God’s Word with the 4th and 5th grade boys and girls in the public schools and to assure them of His love and forgiveness through His Son Jesus Christ. Hundreds of students are enrolled annually in the classes in Orange. For many, this is their only Bible study.
Once a week 4th and 5th grade children attend a 40 minute Bible Study. Students are walked to a near-by Chapel-On-Wheels. During this time a variety of teaching methods including visuals, music, chalk talks and dramas are used. Each child is treated as a special and unique individual who is loved by God. Everyone is welcome
I thought it was a bit odd that students could be pulled out of public school for religious instruction, thinking that perhaps church or home was a more appropriate setting for this. The site also explains how this is legal, for those of you wondering about the whole separation of church and state thing.
The program has been available for the 4th and 5th grade students since February 1954. Under the Released Time Religious Education Law (California Education Code section 46014) local school boards may give permission to release students once a week for religious instruction during the school days.
I was annoyed that it was ok for students to go and “learn about Jesus” during the time that I was mandated to be teaching them things like reading and math, but the real outrage came when my principal explained to me the restrictions involved during Release Time.
You see, while students participating in Release Time are out of my classroom, I am not allowed to teach any new material. I am not allowed to do anything that they will have to make up, meaning no worksheets. They cannot miss any hands-on activities. Basically, the rest of the class is held hostage for the religious instruction of a few students, and it is most often just a few students. I have never had more than 3 students enrolled in the same year. Perhaps these restrictions are unique to my school district, but they have been consistent at the two schools at which I have encountered Release Time.
This means that the religious needs of a few take priority over the educational needs of the rest of the class. It’s only 40 minutes a week, but over the course of the year, that adds up. This year we have roughly 38 weeks of school, which means that we would lose about 25 hours of instruction time, or slightly over 4 days. When you consider the amount of material we are expected to teach, that’s a huge amount of time. Take, for example, the math standards for 5th grade. But I digress into another rant. 
Religious instruction is fine, but it does not belong in the public schools. It most definitely should not be detracting from the education of the other students. The only challenge to Release Time I found took place with Gordon v. Board of Education of the City of Los Angeles, 178 p. 2d 488 (1947). Perhaps it is time to revisit this issue legally.
My California tax $ at work – this sucks! You still teaching in California? We need all the qualified teachers we can get. Bless you Betsy!
Actually, this is Lea, from Relaxed Politics, but yes, I still teach in California. We need to keep all of the qualified teachers we are currently laying off. My district pink-slipped 300 teachers, many of whom are very bright and talented. It will be a huge loss.
Nope raceynora. I just copied, pasted & hit the publish button for Lea’s post. I teach in Texas, in a district that doesn’t have this nonsense. Closest we get is a Christian Student Organization that meets during club time on club days.
Boy and man, I was raised and educated in California, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard of this silly law — needless to say, I’m very pissed off.
Spitting tacks (and tax),
Tengrain
I agree 100%. Religious study belongs at home or in church but not at a public school that receives tax dollars.
Like Tengrain, I was born and raised in California (born in San Francisco but moved 18 miles south to San Mateo when I was 6 and my parents bought a house in the suburbs) and I have no recollection of anyone ever being excused for Bible study.
I remember portable buildings because of overcrowding and a few, shall I say, peculiar teachers but, I don’t think I ever heard any mention of God, faith, or the Bible.
But you did say “Orange,” as in the Orange County city of Orange? Orange County has always been our own little slice of Texas and Alabama smack dab in the middle of the Southland, so I can’t say I’m surprised.
Lea – Thanks for all you do!
The only kids who got a break in our school were those who got off on Jewish holidays, but since they always had to beaver away like crazy to make up for what they had missed, nobody envied them even slightly.
My word, how incredibly weird…and no one has sought to repeal this program in 50 years!
Who monitors the classes in the ‘trailers’ & who is responsible for safety issues, etc. while those kids are not physically in the school, but ‘on school time’?
Why oh why do so many people turn their brains off when it comes to religion…I will never understand!
Lsamsa, the Release Time teachers are responsible for the students when they are in the trailers. The trailers are parked in the street in front of the school, so I would imagine that qualifies as off school property.
There are many aspects of this that don’t seem to be clearly thought through!
This sounds exactly like a program in Champaign, Il, that was declared unconstitutional by SCOTUS in the McCollum case in 1947. Why the f*** is this stil going on? One complaint is all that it will take to shut it down. Call ACLU, FFRF, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, or any other civil rights group.
Hi Tim –
Welcome aboard MPS, your home for anti-theocracy on the web. MPS won the blog-of-the-year — “the Postie” — from American’s United subsidiary, First Freedom First. We love all these groups.
If you click this Blog Against Theocracy link, you can read many more fine posts from around the web on these topics, too.
Regards,
Tengrain
well, i am surprised at this… i was raised in illinois catholic schools until the 10th grade… most of my friends were non-catholic at public school – and i joined them for 11-12th grades…
but ALL the catholic kids in public schools who wanted religious training, as prescribed by the church, did so on SATURDAY… not during school time…
why wouldn’t that program be good enough for ALL religions…
When my family experienced Release Time when we moved to Virginia about 10 years ago and my younger brother entered 5th grade. This being rural Virginia, though, my brother was the only student in his entire class to not march out to the weekly trailer. Needless to say, this caused some problems. Some of the Release Time attending students clearly missed the bits about loving thy neighbor, while the teacher herself was clearly annoyed to have lost her extra paid time off. My parents had to threaten the school principal with a lawsuit to get the faculty to provide my brother with some damn protection, and had we not moved away that summer, might well have gone ahead with a suit. Fun experience.
If you think this is bad you should (or should not) come to Utah! Every public school, from kindergarden to universities, has, across the street on “private property” a seminary, or at the college level, an “institute of religion.” All public school students can opt for an hour or two of instruction in Mormon theology, and hordes of them do just that. Most are probably forced to do so by their parents, but the pressure within the schools is pretty great too. My own kids reported that their friends asked them why they weren’t in seminary and when they replied that they weren’t Mormons, that was the end of some friendships.
Mahan – wow, that’s quite a story! Welcome to MPS, it is good to have you with us!
Rgds,
Tengrain
Rdale – Welcome to MPS. My Mormon friends (almost all of whom are ex-Mormons at this point) have told me similar stories. I had some really good Mormon friends at school when I was a kid, and they were not allowed to play with us after school. It was really sad, I think, for all of us.
Regards,
Tengrain
This would not bother me if it did not harm the kids who did not choose to participate. Given that you are required to basically halt teaching to all the other students during Release Time, this strikes me as a huge violation of the 1st Amendment. As another commentator pointed out, Jewish students are allowed time off without penalty for Jewish holidays, just as students are allowed time off for Ash Wednesday or other religious requirements, but teachers can choose whether to introduce new instruction or not and the students have to make up the lessons.
Where I grew up there were many Jewish students (and teachers) who took the High Holidays off. Because so many were out, teachers CHOSE to alter their lesson plans because so many students would miss instruction. But this was not a requirement and each teacher had the discretion.
In your case, the many are inconvenienced for the few in a clear deference to religion.
Welcome Pseudonym. Nice to have you here.
Crooks and Liars sent me here. Who am I to argue with brilliance?
When I was in junior-senior high in the 60s in NY state, we had released time once a week. I think the public school system provided buses to transport the students who went to meeting rooms at the different churches: I don’t know if the buses were paid for by the churches or by the school system. I was a kid, didn’t know, didn’t care. The area was essentially Catholic or Protestant, a low-to-middle class white suburb of Buffalo.
Then it just felt like a pain in the neck to have to go, combined with a little excitement of getting out of ‘real school’ for an hour or so.
Just some history offered. I didn’t know it was still going on in any form anywhere.
I live in CA. now and I wasn’t aware that this kind of thing was still happening or even still legal.
I came on the link from Crooks and Liars.
I served as a Lutheran pastor in northern Minnesota in a small town and in 1996 when I left, we still had release time every two weeks for most of an afternoon. This was grades 1-6. Those who chose not to go had study hall or recreation or could read. There was no problem with those who did not participate. This was, I believe, pushed by the Roman Catholics to accomplish their early communion instruction.
The school broke into basically three groups, RC’s, Lutherans, (the biggest bunch) and fundamentalists. One year the priest was too lazy to do his own program so the RC’s joined the Lutherans.
The kids were released and the religious leaders marched the kids across the small town to two and later three different locations and back again. With 30 kids, I always envisioned this as the Bataan Death March, so we often sang songs as we walked. I had to have several volunteers to insure safety and order.
Once we reached the church I tried to be responsible as an educator (my classes were very good and we often picked up kids from other denominations and unchurched) and I tried to teach a fairly generalized subject, loving your neighbor, finding joy in creation, the good Samaritan, or some actual history and where it had affected the students todlay; the Reformation, the founding of America and religious expression, how the Bible was written and printed, (It did not float down from heaven on a cloud but was the work of men trying to understand their world in religious terms) and as the most “lilberal” pastor in town, the role that religion had played in the civil rights movement, abolishing slavery, etc. I also talked about rights under the Constitution. (I have always been a bit subversive.)
After reading the responses above, I find it amazing that I only looked at this from the standpoint of what I needed to do to keep a church board happy and had not really thought about the school time or teacher time. (although I believe the teachers were pretty supportive as they got the free time.)
I think overall it was handled well and fairly for all the students. I had serious doubts about the fundamentalists as I am sure it entailed a lot of indoctrination and today would have been (or is still) a hotbed of political and religious extremeism. I am sure that those attitudes affect the ability of students to not go to relaese time.) I do not doubt that today they would be teaching ID classes to “offset” the school science teaching.
Having grown up in the home of a principal (my first seven years I had either my dad or uncle as principal) I felt that MY release time was a continuation of the educataional process of the school with relligious overtones. That is probably why eventually the Priest broke away from my program and the fundamentalists pushed for selection of students rather than letting them choose which class they wanted to attend. They even tried better snacks to try to “hijack” kids who wanted to be part of my program.
I would agree with the above writers that probably the real tragedy is lost class time but I believe the teachers structured their class time to see this as an extension for citizenship, hisrtory, social studies, rather than cut back on math or science.
I will book mark this site and return to see any comments to my post. Thanks for the opportunity to remember, and reflect.
Jon Erickson
Colorado
Jon -
Welcome aboard, it is good to have more sides of the issue presented here.
Thank you for commenting.
Regards,
Tengrain