Myths and Magical Thinking: American Civil Religion, the Establishment Clause, and “Codified Irrationality” in Anti-CRT Measures

Authors

Kyle Reinhard

Abstract

(Excerpt)

In Part I, I preview some of the overlapping tensions in U.S. public schooling created by the occasionally competing mandates of education federalism and democratic theory; describe the current state of the law with respect to the constitutionality of state and local governments seeking to inculcate (allegedly) prosocial community values in curriculum; and consider how battles over the meaning of “patriotism” through the decades show that ideology and religion often blend—and still, inevitably, make it—into the public square broadly nonetheless.

In Part II, I describe how religion is a useful tool, both descriptively and as a constitutional jurisprudential framework, for handling extremist incursions into the domain of public schools. I preview sociologists’ conception of the American Civil Religion and argue that the anti-antiracist movement, through (among others) its tactical manipulation of national symbols, has emerged as a concerning “sect.” I evaluate the mythological content of an anti-CRT worldview and show how teachers are prevented from discussing factual truths bearing on systemic racism or from communicating, in any way, that existing societal institutions may have played a role in perpetrating and upholding historical injustice.

In Part III, I consider whether anti-antiracist curriculum promotes an orthodoxy of “magical thinking,” and what the consequence of this might be for students who are trying to learn to think critically, to make analogies, and to relate their current experiences to their parents, ancestors, and others. Instead, many laws insert nonrational propositions into lessons which demand violating principles of cause and effect—thereby turning the presumably, formerly “secular” space of a public school U.S. History classroom into a “religious” one. Such religious ideology—as I will argue over the course of the Article—may pose unique, heightened risks to civic institutions when imposed or pursued by another name.

To make a thriving multicultural democracy a reality, a free exchange of ideas and perspectives is crucial; such exchange is impossible if students and teachers have their expression suppressed and chilled. Eighty years ago the Supreme Court held, in the school setting specifically, that “[i]f there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion . . . .” Since then, the Court has continually reaffirmed that academic freedom is “a special concern of the First Amendment, which does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom.” Where we find mythology inserted into “secular” curriculum, it signals an effort to cast just such a pall of orthodoxy. Beyond that, in communities where emerging antiracist ideas or materials are being censored and countered with enough fervor, people might conclude their schools are under full-on ideological attack.