Court Bans Ave Maria

 

A federal appeals court today banned the Jackson High School woodwind ensemble from playing Ave Maria, a religious piece of music by Schubert based on a traditional Catholic prayer.  The court ruled that the district superintendent did not violate students’ first amendment rights by restricting graduation music to secular works.

While it is unclear whether the superintendent made the right decision (there certainly is a place in our school system for religiously derived music so long as the intent of the selection of the music is not to promote religion, and a piece of classical music devoid of English lyrics in this case was probably not violating the establishment clause), it is clear that the court ruled correctly.  School administrators must deal with the often-ambiguous border separating the protection of students’ right to free expression and their right to not be indoctrinated by government promotion of religion.  In a graduation ceremony where a very small number of musical pieces may be played, there is nothing wrong with ensuring that the repertoire remain secular.  The only potential worry is that administrators may take this too far and try to ban high school bands from playing selections with religious antecedents altogether.

Sources:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/08/BAVK19K5EK.DTL&tsp=1

Missouri School Still Stuck in Precambrian Era

 

Shirts worn by the Smith-Cotton High School Band were confiscated by the school administrators because they portrayed the evolution of brass instruments.  Some parents were upset that the t-shirts made reference to evolution and complained, and rather than defend the creative license of their students, the school administrators demanded that the t-shirts be confiscated.   What makes this story more ridiculous is  that the school administration justified their decision by claiming that the shirts violated the establishment clause of the first amendment, because they promoted evolution, which they proclaimed as a religious belief.

If the high school is unable to distinguish between school-promotion of religion and a t-shirt that makes a vague reference to the evolution of man (which is science and not religion, for the record) then it has a serious problem with understanding and implementing academic and constitutional standards inherent in running a public school.  Any admissions official at a university who is looking over the transcript of an applicant from this Missouri high school has to give serious consideration as to exactly how to weigh an “A” in a biology class from a school district which cannot distinguish between  promoting religion and vaguely referencing evolution.  In case any readers from the Smith-Cotton High School administration are reading this,  science is not a religion, and evolution has served as the keystone of biology for well over a century. 

High school marching band can’t wear evolutionary T-shirts,; Tonya Fennel; The Sedalia Democrat; 29AUG2009.

Image Credit: Hal Smith/ Sedalia Democrat