At ILYBYGTH, we’ve been following stories in Missouri and New Hampshire about religion, authority, and public schools.

Today in a guest post on Valerie Strauss’ Washington Post Education blog, I argue that these kinds of laws just won’t work.  In this post, I allow myself to get a little more strident than I usually do on these pages.  I argue that rules allowing parents and families to opt out of school rules a la carte just won’t work.  Nor are they new.  In the 1920s, anger at and fear of a steamrolling anti-religious curriculum drove the first anti-evolution campaign.  In the 1970s and 1980s, in places such as Kanawha County, West Virginia, and Hawkins County, Tennessee, battles over school curriculum led to a new generation of conservative school activists.

The maturation of that generation can be seen in laws and amendments such as those in Missouri and Tennessee.  I am deeply sympathetic to parents who don’t want schools to dictate hostile ideas to their children.  But putting up a wall of separation around each individual student just won’t work.