Ten Commandments in School
Should public schools be allowed to post the Ten Commandments in their classrooms? And it seems not: For [1] the Supreme Court has ruled that posting the Ten Commandments in public schools violates the First Amendment to the Constitution, which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free expression thereof.” Protestors claim that “posting a religious document in a public space, especially in a school, violates the separation of church and state” (Rosin and Claiborne), and that “the posting of the Ten Commandments in the classroom amounted to an unconditional government promotion of religion, which is forbidden by the First Amendment” (Curnutte). Moreover [2], there are at least two versions of the Ten Commandments. The first appearance of the Ten Commandments in the Bible is in Exodus 20:1-17 and there are slight differences in wording in the Deuteronomy 5:6-21 version. There is also a significant difference between the Ten Commandments of Exodus 20 and those found in Exodus 34:1-28 (Dority). Opponents to the posting of the Ten Commandments question which version would be displayed if “the version chosen by Jews and most Protestants differs from that used by Roman Catholics” (Larue). ... “We are a pluralistic society and are getting more pluralistic,” says Fred Bassett, a public school superintendent (qtd. ... Moreover [5], American culture today is vastly different from that of the ancient Hebrews, to whom the commandments were originally given. ... “The Ten Commandments are in fact only a primitive cultic code of taboos written BY Hebrew men FOR Hebrew men,” says William Edelen (Edelen, emphasis in original). And Larue argues that “[the Ten Commandments] reflect beliefs formulated some 3,000 years ago and have meaning only for those who… constantly reinterpret them” (Larue). ... Concerned parents have written to school districts that have posted the Ten Commandments in their classrooms complaining, for instance, that, “It’s not the school’s job to tell students to believe in God” (Johnson). And the Colorado PTA opposed a bill that required all schools to post the Ten Commandments because religious education is the responsibility of the parents (Todd).