In France, students in public schools are prohibited from wearing religious clothing, which authorities fear would contaminate the secular oases public schools are supposed to be. It is a coercive interpretation of secularism, which imposes secular values on religious individuals, instead of protecting state neutrality, pluralism, and liberty.

Is education in the United States heading in the same direction? Religious symbols are fortunately not banned in American schools, but there is concern that secular values are imposed in other ways: the Montgomery County, Maryland, school district recently prohibited students, starting in kindergarten, from opting out of LGBTQ+ readings, including for religious reasons. Indeed, for some renowned public schooling advocates, replacing religiously based morality with other values through the state has been an explicit goal.

In this forum, we will look at education in other parts of the world and the United States to see if the secular has pushed out the religious, whether that would be a good thing, and what to do if it isn’t.

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