The American culture has always been strongly linked to religion. It has also been widely present in education, though judicial reforms have made sure to build a wall to separate the state and religion, also known as the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. While the court prefers to say that the jurisprudence, in respect to the religious schools and governmental aid, has remained consistent for decades now, the 2002 Supreme Court case Zelman v. Simmons-Harris 536 U.S. 639 (2002) takes a new turn in the debate.
In 1995, the state of Ohio established a Ohio Scholarship and Tutorial Programme, which attempted to tackle the ongoing educational crisis of weakened public school performances. The idea of the scholarship was to offer the students from low-income families an alternative choice between public and private education by providing them financial aid. In attempt to provide true freedom to choose between all available schools, the programme also included the secular and religious schools within the district.
Religious schools financed by scholarships, which are paid by tax-payers? A definite way to start a debate on constitutionality of the programme. The case was brought into the court on the basis that tax-payer money should not be used on religious education. The supporters of the programme, however, argued that under Supreme Courts previous cases, namely Witters v. Washington Dept. of Servs. for Blind 474 U.S. 481 (1986) and Mueller v. Allen 463 U.S. 388 (1983), the programme is constitutional because it offer true private choice to the parents to decide on their children’s education.
The petitioners argued that there is a two-leveled criteria of neutrality principle to determine the constitutionality of the programme. Firstly, the students that were chosen to apply to the programme needed to reside in the school district. The second thing to consider was the family income. As was mentioned before, the programme was aimed to aid those families whose financial situations would not allow alternative choices of education, namely private schools.
At this point, it is important to have a break and truly think about the effectiveness of these criteria. Considering the fact that private school institutions have tuitions, which the Ohio scholarship will not cover completely, poor families would not be able to cover private education any way. Public schools do not have tuitions and do not therefore fall under the scholarship category. If students were to choose a public or community education within the programme, they would receive tutoring aid – an amount of money which is surely lower than an actual scholarship. Now when we look into the expenses of religious schools, the scholarship offered to cover the tuition would cover it completely.
Now, the petitioners also added that in order to decide on the consitutionality of the programme, the court should also recognise the fact that it was aimed for all-comers. It was clearly stated that the programme was not to discriminate any student based on their race, religion or ethnicity. Therefore the programme would not favour any student of their own faith.
While the above section is a great and important addition in any context, we cannot help but wonder whether the circumstancial factors of religious schools were considered during the argument? The religious school education is based on the theological ideology and values, which are present in the educational processes whether we try to minimise them or not. This being said, we cannot truly put religious schools in the same category as the “traditional” public and private schools. So, why where they included in the scholarship options?
Again, we need to look back into the reason behind the establishment of the programme: to give disadvantaged, low-income children an alternative choice instead of letting them continue in the failing system. However, as was commented in the case [24], the biggest irony is that the parochial religious schools generally have a better reputation than other schools. If we make the correct comparisons between all available schools, it is clear that you choose a religious school if you want to provide your child with the best education. Does this truly represent the true, free choice? Additionally, if the reason was to make this programme a solution to an existing problem, why did they only give the scholarship to such a small percentage (something close to 10%) of students – why not give it to everyone? Now it seems that the programme was supposed to be an attempt to save “the poorest of the poor”, which sounds like the low-income children are some sort of charity case who do not have any other option than succumb to religious education in order to achieve the best life has to offer.
Admittedly, the arguments from the respondents are quite airy, and as stated in the Rebuttal argument [68], all of them have been rejected by the court during the past two decades before this case was submitted. This being said, even if the legal arguments against the programme do not bring out strong emotions, we should still think about the deeper, personal level of the issue: the issue is not merely consitutional but also about the debate on how we are supposed to educate the students of new generations? Do we allow the public perception, which may or may not be presented here, that religious schools offer “more” and parents would choose them even without financial incentive? [37-38]
The issue is not only about the legal facts, but also about the political stance. News articles counted the result of Zelman v Simmons-Harris as a victory for the conservatves – a victory for the christian values that are deeply rooted into our western culture. While it can be admitted, that author has biases and lack of knowledge about how the education is truly managed by the religious schools, we can agree with Justice John Paul Stevens’ comments about the result being “profoundly misguided”. Church and state should stay separated, and religion shouldn’t be combined with current day education.
It’s clear that by putting money up to religious schools we threaten the pluralism of the society. Would the decision have turned out the same if the programme included another type of school, let’s say a school for idigenous people? And, do the religious schools truly accept all students, even if the students do not live up to the religious values? While there’s generally no issue about the existence of religious schools, is the establishment clause fulfilled if public funds are used to cover the functioning of particular religious faith? [684] If we want to built education and scholarship system on the principle of neutrality, that means that schools should be neutral and not base their methods on any kind of ideologies.
By Double S – PKAK