Alan Brownstein UC Davis
At 12:46 PM 2/18/2005 -0500, you wrote:
Marty's point as I understand it is not that students choosing to participate in released time programs are coerced to believe. It is that students who do not participate confront school mandated boredom are being punished for not participating in released time programs. Until the second circuit decision, I had taken it is settled that schools had to do something constructive with those who chose to remain behind. Marc Stern
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Rick Duncan Sent: Friday, February 18, 2005 12:19 PM To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics Subject: RE: 21st Century Zorach
It seems to me that if there is a problem with modern "released time" programs, the problem is not with the releasing of students whose parents request a release, but rather in not providing something to do for the kids whose parents don't wish them to be released.
I don't know the facts of the cases Marty mentions. It seems to me that the school must do *something* with the kids who stay behind. Even a supervised study hall, in which students have an opportunity to work on their homework assignments or to study for tests and quizzes, is something. It would probably be even better if the school provided some kind of activity--say, art or multicultural appreciation--for the students who stay on campus during the released time period.
Mandatory attendence laws and the public school monopoly over public funding of education do indeed impose a substantial burden on families who wish their children to be exposed to more diversity of thought and opinion than they receive in the secular public schools. The released time program permits children to be exposed to another way of looking at the world; it provides them an opportunity to choose to visit a spiritual oasis in what is otherwise a secular intellectual desert.
Since children are released only if their parents consent and request release, as in Good News there is no state-imposed coercion imposed on children who participate in the program.
I don't see a problem under the EC. Indeed, how can it be an establishment of religion for the state merely to release children, upon the request of their parents, from state custody.
Suppose the program were amended to allow children who do not wish to be part of an organized released time program to be released instead into the custody of their parents for that hour? Shouldn't that take care of any objection about leaving some children behind?
Rick Duncan University of Nebraska College of Law Red State Lawblog: www.redstatelaw.blogspot.com
===== Rick Duncan Welpton Professor of Law University of Nebraska College of Law Lincoln, NE 68583-0902
"When the Round Table is broken every man must follow either Galahad or Mordred: middle things are gone." C.S.Lewis, Grand Miracle
"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered." --The Prisoner
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