From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   Public Schools Serve the Lowest Common Denomination   
   By Readers, Aug. 16, 2023, WSJ   
   Keri D. Ingraham adroitly details how public schools are less accessible to   
   the public than privately owned shopping malls (“‘Public’ Schools That   
   Aren’t Public,” op-ed, Aug. 9). She’s right. No one has been arrested   
   for shopping at a mall    
   that is a district or two away.   
      
   But there is another way that public schools aren’t truly open to all. They   
   often can’t meet the needs of religious students, particularly religious   
   minorities. Even within attendance boundaries, public schools aren’t   
   designed to serve every child,    
   but rather the lowest common denominator—or lowest common denomination.   
      
   Initially, U.S. public schools were de facto nondenominational Protestant.   
   After an influx of Catholic immigration in the late 1800s, followed by other   
   religious minorities, public schools secularized. Now, students are expected   
   to leave their faith at    
   the schoolhouse door, rendering religion as something that is for nights and   
   weekends, not something that informs every part of a child’s life, including   
   his or her formal education.   
      
   What of families who want their children to see—as Newton, Pascal and Kepler   
   did—the hand of God in the orderliness of mathematics and the natural   
   sciences? Or Orthodox Jews, who keep a different calendar and need significant   
   time daily to study the    
   great corpus of the Jewish tradition? Or traditional religious families of all   
   stripes who don’t want their children indoctrinated in the secular   
   progressivist values so prevalent in public schools today? Public schools   
   evidently aren’t designed for    
   them.   
      
   The only system that truly serves all students is one that allows families to   
   choose schools that align with their values: universal school choice.   
   ---Jason Bedrick, Research fellow, Heritage Foundation, Phoenix   
      
   https://www.wsj.com/articles/public-schools-education-religion-s   
   udent-family-de999204   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)