Murrieta in the News; Making waves

Here's a fascinating article in the news about a recent trend for public schools to have courses on the Bible. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bible5aug05,1,1087611.story?coll=la-headlines-california&ctrack=1&cset=true Our own Murrieta school district is blazing a path in the inland empire in establishing such a course. The article assumes that the study of the bible serves legitimate scholastic purposes, but quibbles with such courses on the grounds that they can easily serve as worship services as opposed to secular scholastic inquiry. Certainly, indoctrination and proselytizing should be avoided as this is not the function of the government. The article touches upon the interesting legal question which is whether such courses are constitutional. There is a wide spread misconception that the constitution says that there is a separation of church and state. This is incorrect. The Constitution's establishment clause forbids the congress from establishing a religion. Thus, the question is whether such courses establish a religion. This is obviously not correct.

All in all, this is a very fair minded article. However, will you endulge a pet
peeve? The articles gives us the advice of an 18 year old: "Thomas Scher, who
graduated from Murrieta Valley High in June and will attend Stanford University,
said that although he approved of the course in concept, he believed religious
agendas prompted its adoption."There was an effort made to
bring Judeo-Christian religion into our school under the guise of academia," he said
at a school board meeting in May. "Political or religious agendas do not belong
in our schools, and that is simply what is going on here today."

If the boy wonder wanted to expound on what was the "effort made to bring Judeo-Christian religion into our school under the guise of academia" that could be newsworthy, but to simply give us his opinion that "Political or religious agendas do not belong in our schools, and that is simply what is going on here today" is tendentious and tiresome.