‘Respect for creator’ doesn’t respect all

I was more than a little surprised when I recently sat in on a public middle school mathematics class. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why the words “respect for the creator” had been written on the blackboard.

Perhaps, I thought, it was just a holdover from a civics debate in a previous class. But as the instructor extolled the virtues of cross-multiplication and common denominators — writing and erasing, writing and erasing — those words stayed on the board for the duration.

It took a few e-mails, phone calls, and Web searches, but I soon learned that this was part of a comprehensive character education program that was developed for Georgia public schools about 10 years ago. In response to legislative mandate, the State Board of Education drafted a “Values and Character Implementation Guide,” which enumerated a “core list of values and character education concepts that should be taught in Georgia’s schools.” The state board encourages, but does not require school systems to adopt the curriculum.

My unscientific straw poll of other parents in the neighborhood suggested to me that most parents — and most Georgians, for that matter — probably do not know much about this curriculum. That same straw poll suggested that there are many parents who may not like what they are about to hear.

To be fair, I should say that of the 41 values and character traits articulated in the guide, many of them struck me as innocuous. I don’t really have any problem with “cleanliness,” “fairness,” “honesty,” or “respect for others.”

Others bothered me only slightly, though they left me a bit confused. Why was “moderation” listed, but not “passion?” Why was “cooperation” listed, but not “leadership?” Why are both “honesty” and “truthfulness” included? Are these somehow understood as different qualities? Is it really the charge of public educators to instill “cheerfulness” in the student? And what on earth do they mean by “virtue?” Aren’t the other forty traits supposedly “virtues?”

But my real concern here is that there are a few qualities that carry considerable baggage. I know many people of goodwill who would have serious philosophical reservations about the prospect of public educators teaching “patriotism” or “respect for authority.” But for me, the smoking gun was really the one that I stumbled onto quite by accident, that of “respect for the creator.”

One does not need to be a social scientist or a legal scholar to recognize that this is a blatant attempt to smuggle religious testimony into the public school curriculum, but it is truly comical to see the various contortions and gyrations the powers-that-be have affected in order to deny the obvious.

The values guide, in a bizarre pre-emptive strike against anticipated criticism, states: “This cannot be interpreted as a promotion of religion or even as a promotion of the belief in a personal God, but only as an acknowledgment that the intrinsic worth of every individual derives from no government, person or group of persons, but is something that each of us is born with and which no thing and no one can ever deprive us of.”

Right. We are expected to believe that the only reason why public educators should teach “respect for the creator” is to acknowledge “intrinsic worth” of the individual?

Even if we accept the questionable opinion from the state attorney general’s office — that the curriculum “does not endorse any particular theory of creation, nor does it disparage those who do not hold a belief in creation” — it is hard to imagine that this would be true in practice. Most public educators are not broadly trained in the academic study of religion, are not aware of the different conceptions of deities and creation in the various religious traditions, and in all likelihood would, however good their intentions, communicate their own theological orientations and biases.

As a scholar of religious studies and a parent, I am really quite alarmed at the prospect of “respect for the creator” being taught in the public schools. Yes, I have a deep, “liberal” respect for the separation of church and state, and do not want to see public education shaped by any particular religious agenda.

But I also have a deep respect for practitioners of religious traditions, whose personal or cultural preferences and perspectives may not fit well with “respect for the creator,” whether it is the overtly Christian variety or the watered-down version of it that is couched in the deceptive language of “intrinsic self-worth.” To paraphrase a dear friend and former chaplain, “It’s not that I want religions to keep their hands off my school, it’s that I want the schools to keep their hands off my religion.”

• Jonathan Herman, a resident of Decatur, is director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Religious Studies at Georgia State University.