Acura of Troy wishes our customers and friends a most HAPPY NEW YEAR Of School And Church As schools reopen nationally, the religion debate resumes. DANIEL KURTZMAN Jewish Telegraphic Agency Washington I n Kansas, the state school board Ac u RA 1828 Maplelawn in the Troy Motor Mall (248) 643-0900 8 r `t) "YOUR PRECISION TEAM AWARD ACURA DEALER" • Are you battling with your child over food? • Is your child sneaking food? Is your child gaining too much weight? Do weight problems run in your family? CC WM Center for Childhood Weight Management Let the professional staff of The Center for Childhood Weight Management help you and your child. For more information about classes and locations, call: (248) 661-6625 "Healthy Kids Are Happy Kids" 9/10 1999 32 Detroit Jewish News decides to remove evolution from its science curriculum. In Cleveland, a federal judge throws parents and students into a state of turmoil when he blocks a state-funded school voucher program that lets students attend private or parochial schools at taxpayer expense — and then reverses his decision. In Mississippi, school officials bar a student from displaying a Star of David symbol in class and then change their policy concerning "gang symbols" in the face of a public outcry. Elsewhere around the country; school districts contemplate posting the Ten Commandments to help counter what they see as a lapse in morality. As the school year begins, no ground has proved more fertile in the ongoing debate over the constitutional separation of church and state than America's public schools. While church-state watchdogs say there is no evidence of any trend link- ing the disparate controversies that have been playing out across the coun- try, such issues appear to have gained a higher profile in recent months. In recent years, prayer in public schools and during graduation cere- monies has been the primary source of church-state contention. Now issues such as school vouchers and displaying the Ten Commandments — topics that are play- ing out in both the political and educa- tional arenas — have been providing additional grist for the church-state mill. Schools have long provided a test- ing ground for many of the most divi- sive issues on the national scene, said Marc Stern, a lawyer with the American Jewish Congress. "If you're going to fight about the values that the government has and that are spoken in the name of society, the only place that surfaces in any sys- tematic way is in the schools," he said. Most experts say the recent attention to religion in schools is simply part of the normal ebb and flow of the debate. "These issues kind of wax and wane," said Joseph Conn, a spokesman for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. "Right now we're just at one of those points where there's a lot of dis- cussion on the issue," he said. Elected officials around the country have been pushing the Bible as a solu- tion to what they say is a breakdown in morality. School board officials in Kansas made no explicit mention of moral concerns when they voted in August to delete any references to evolution from the state's recommended science curriculum and its standardized tests. But some observers believe that the decision reflects parental worries that their children are growing up without an agreed-upon moral compass. Others see a larger trend. Nathan Diament, director of the Orthodox Union's Institute for Public Affairs, sees the focus on religious issues as a reaction to what he calls a long-standing "anti-religion" bias in schools — an attitude he believes is at odds with the fact that most people in this -country are religious. "A lot of this has to do with the fact that the pendulum swung much too far in one direction, which is that reli- gion across the board was really driven out of the schools, and there's still a bureaucratic suspicion, if not antipa- thy, toward religion," Diament said. Now he said, the pendulum is swing- ing back because parents have become "frustrated by seeing such a central part of their lives trod upon and some- times abused in their kids schools." Most church-state watchdogs emphasize that they are not calling for America's public schools to become "religion-free zones. In fact, most continue to support a variety of privately initiated religious activities under a set of guidelines drafted five years ago by the American Jewish Congress and a coalition of religious and public policy groups. The guidelines were intended to clar- ify permissible activity to help schools avoid divisive debates over religious issues in cases in which the law is clear. They have since been updated and cir- culated by the Clinton administration. "I think these guidelines have gone a long way toward addressing that confusion," said Pelavin, formerly of the AJCongress. But, he added, "one of the things we've said all along is that in a country this size, there are still going to be school officials that get it wrong." II "