Catholics in public schools walk church-state high-wire

Public school teachers have to walk a fine line when questions of religious beliefs come up in their classrooms.

A public school teacher in New York City was fired recently after officials said she crossed the line while answering students' questions about death. The discussion began when the class learned that a schoolmate had died. When students began asking about death, God and heaven, she announced that anyone who didn't want to participate in the conversation could read a book or work on the computer.

In the end, she asked the students to accept Jesus as their personal savior, an action that was unacceptable to the public school district.

Without commenting on that specific case, local Catholics who are public school educators agreed that the separation of church and state can be challenging at times in the classroom.

Delicate issue

"You have to walk a fine line," said Kathleen Fiorillo, a school nurse in the Albany Public School District and a parishioner at St. James Church in Albany.

When it comes to questions about death, she is more concerned about the child getting in touch with their feelings and helping them not be afraid of death than with religious questions.

"We try to refer the family to a grieving support group," she said. "I also go into the classroom and let the class know that it's okay if the child cries and try to get the class support."

As a school nurse, she finds that most of her conversations about death take place in a one-on-one conversation with a student. "I try to assess if they have a religious persuasion," she said. "I talk about it with those children who have a belief in God."

Disadvantage

Public schools are at a disadvantage in dealing with death because they must separate religious beliefs from death, according to Thomas Fitzgerald, assistant superintendent of schools for the Albany Diocese. He taught in two public school systems in Massachusetts and worked for 25 years for the New York State Education Department before coming to the Diocese.

Dr. Fitzgerald explained that most societies have a ritual connected with death to help members of the culture deal with it. Because of the diversity in the United States, there isn't just one ritual and some people have no rituals.

Children today also may have more questions about death because death is not something they are exposed to, he said. "In the United States, we discourage talk about death," he noted. "Children don't necessarily see older people dying. Being raised Irish, wakes were a social event. When young people died, the wakes were tragic; when old people died, the wakes were joyous. In public schools today, you can only talk about death when it's a tragedy. They focus on crisis and have crisis intervention teams. The interpretation is that death is a tragedy to be dealt with."

Context

When religious questions came up for Dr. Fitzgerald in the public school classroom, his answers were shrouded in a historical context.

"We could deal with a historical sense and say, `Some people believe....' But we couldn't say, `I have a belief,'" he said. "I might ask the student to do some research on their own if that was appropriate."

Questions of a religious nature set off alarms for public school teachers, he said. "Separation of church and state is in the mind of the public school teacher," he said. "It can set off an immediate warning signal."

Parental role

Children are often encouraged to bring questions of a religious nature to their parents, said Gloria Francis, a retired administrator from the South Colonie School District and a parishioner of St. Clare's Church in Colonie. "We're not going to get into the religious beliefs."

When religious beliefs came up in the classroom, she would explain that different people have different beliefs.

"We try to refer to the different customs that go along with different holidays," she said. "We invite parents into the classroom to share their traditions."

Cultural aspect

As a Niskayuna Central School District teacher who must teach about different cultures as part of the state's fourth grade curriculum, Judy DePasquale, a parishioner of Our Lady of Fatima Church in Schenectady, has found that she talks about the cultural aspect of different religions in the classroom.

While studying immigration, for example, Mrs. DePasquale and other fourth grade teachers turn their classrooms into an immigrant ship. Like their immigrant ancestors, who could often bring only what they could carry with them, the fourth graders are asked to bring three items of importance to school.

"Out of the 75 to 80 children we have in fourth grade each year, three-fourths bring religious objects," she said. Those items include rosaries, crucifixes, menorahs and the Koran. Each student then explains the importance of these items to them personally.

Religion in class

There are other lessons that look at religion from a historical view in Mrs. DePasquale's classroom.

"We talk about how Europeans came to this country for religious freedom," she said. "We also talk about how in schools in the 1800s children learned to read using the Bible. Then I tell them that today we would not do that because of separation of church and state."

When questions of a religious nature come up in the classroom that can't be handled in a historical or cultural context, Mrs. DePasquale will say, "That's something to talk to your mom or dad about." She added, "I would not bring my personal belief in the classroom. I'd be asking for trouble."

Family issues

Many topics that come up in the classroom, Mrs. DePasquale believes, are for families to handle. She doesn't want to step on the parents' toes by discussing something they should really handle. For example, she would not have a classroom discussion about death because her students would be at different levels of understanding about it.

When a student experiences death in their family, Mrs. DePasquale is prepared to help with books in the classroom and with honesty. During the past school year, the mother of one of her students died. While she was prepared to deal with questions in the classroom, her students had none because their parents had answered them in the home.

The teacher found the school community to be supportive of the grieving family. Since her class had begun chorus that year, Mrs. DePasquale thought they might be able to sing at the funeral.

Many voices

After checking with the pastor at the Catholic church where the Funeral Mass was being held, Mrs. DePasquale and the music teacher called the parents of the fourth graders to invite the children to sing at the funeral.

She was impressed by the number of children who came, all wearing their best clothes.

"It's like the United Nations here," she said. "We have lots of Muslim and Buddhist children. There were children of all religions singing at the Mass."

(07-16-98) [[In-content Ad]]