Education: Through the Wall of Ignorance

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. . . .

—The Bill of Rights (1791)

Ever since this clause was written into the Bill of Rights, most Americans have considered the separation of church & state beyond debate. But an increasing number of Americans also deplore one by-product of this separation, which the Founding Fathers probably never had in mind: the almost complete exclusion of religion from the public schools and colleges.

In many state-operated schools, religion is as unmentionable as syphilis was in Victorian parlors. Result: a generation of religious illiterates—who perhaps know...

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