Religion-Based Morality in the Classroom

Having experienced teaching in several public schools, I have memories of former colleagues letting slip that they were integrating religion-based morality into their lessons. For instance, one of them once recounted to me how she explained to her students the evil of homosexuality in her Values Education class one afternoon. Citing Biblical passages, she told them that God had an aversion to homosexuals. Apparently, her premise was that the Bible was the word of God, and as such, was as irrefutable an evidence as one could ever wish to anchor her assertion on.

I had half a mind to ask her what made her so sure that the Bible was the word of God—and not the hundreds of other books contending for the title—but the fear of offending her got the better of me. At any rate, I thought that engaging in a debate on religion was always a tricky affair, and I did not want to get myself entangled in one if I could help it. In retrospect, however, I realized that setting aside theological issues, I was still wrong in not openly taking issue with my co-teacher’s  integration of  Bible-based morality into her lessons. Following are the reasons.

First, because it is unconstitutional as hell. It violates Art. 6, Sec. 29 of the 1987 Constitution, which prohibits the use of facilities owned and funded by the government—obviously, that includes public schools—to advance the interest of any religious system or belief. All right, as per DO No. 49, s. 2009, DepED permits religious instruction in public schools (which, in my opinion, is a contravention of the Constitution). However,  while it allows the practice,  it does so only on the following conditions: 1) religious instruction shall be given only to students whose parents have requested for it; 2) it shall not be integrated with values education (and by implication, with any other subjects); and 3) it must not entail extra expenses on the part of the government.

The second reason why we should refrain from integrating religion into our lessons is that such an exercise might spoil our attempts to teach students the democratic principles of tolerance. Why? Because certain religious tenets are undemocratic in nature. Without meaning offense to Christian colleagues, I would cite the Bible as an example. The Old Testament, a collection of documents that were written between 7^th century and 2^nd century BC—and  as such reflects the culture and beliefs of the people who lived in the Middle East 2500 years ago—is replete with passages that promote undemocratic ideas. For example, in 1 Samuel 15: 3-4, God gave the following instruction to King Saul: “I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt. Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass” (emphasis mine).

In the above passage, God gives a rather detailed instruction to Saul about how the latter and his men were supposed to carry out the invasion of Amalek. He commanded him and his men to massacre all Amalekites—men, women, children, and babies. Imagine the effect that such passage—and the idea it contains—would have on our students if we teachers bring it up during, say, an ESP or Araling Panlipunan class. In an age when bigotry and terrorism constitute a real threat to our peaceful existence, what we are supposed to be teaching to our students is the importance of respecting differences among people. How are we going to do that if we are exposing them at the same time to the idea that somehow God wants us to kill people whose beliefs differ from ours?

Finally, we must desist from injecting religion into our lessons because its nature is dogmatic, i.e. it is based on faith and its practice requires the practitioner to accept or reject theories and opinions according as his faith calls for. As such, it is completely incompatible with our mission of teaching students scientific attitudes. Such attitudes include loyalty to evidence alone, willingness to suspend judgment, and openness to criticisms from peers. They cannot be taught to students inside the classroom if at the same time we are teaching them in our capacity as public school teachers that we must be loyal only to what a Holy Scripture is telling us about our world and ourselves.

The foregoing are the reasons why we public school teachers must uphold the separation of church and state inside the classroom. A clarification, however, is in order at this point. While the arguments proposed above were meant to illustrate the wrongness of integrating religion into our lessons, they are not meant to demonstrate to readers that religion is an evil that must be smashed into smithereens. I myself believe that religion has its important uses. However, to allow encroachment of religion on the spheres of public instruction would be an altogether different matter. As public servants, it is incumbent on us to see to it that such an indiscretion does not happen under our watch. Ω