True North

When it comes to education, the separation of church and state has never really worked. Not that it’s not possible, or even in a sense very desirable, to have a secular education system, really - but ours just keeps getting worse and worse.

Among Minnesota’s charter schools are several successful programs that adopt the structure and ideals of religious schools - with the religion itself kept carefully segregated out. Even amid the chaos (and success) of Minnesota’s charter schools, these schools frequently stand out as excellent ones (although they are far from the only successful idea in Minnesota’s charter system).

So when word came out that someone was going to try an Islamic charter school, I thought “let’s wait and see what happens”. If they followed the model of Minnesota’s other pseudo-religious charter programs, it could be a very good thing, a model for helping Minnesota’s mass of Moslem immigrants both assimilate and retain the parts of their culture they care about. Minnesota already has Hispanic, Afro-centric and H’mong charter schools - and some of them are among Minnesota’s most successful charter schools. They are a success largely because parents are voting for them with their feet; one in eight Saint Paul public school parents has decamped their kids for the charters in recent years.

But Katherine Kersten - the single best columnist at the Strib - shows us that the one bit “if” seems to have come up “No”:

Evidence suggests, however, that TIZA is an Islamic school, funded by Minnesota taxpayers.

TIZA has many characteristics that suggest a religious school. It shares the headquarters building of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, whose mission is “establishing Islam in Minnesota.” The building also houses a mosque. TIZA’s executive director, Asad Zaman, is a Muslim imam, or religious leader, and its sponsor is an organization called Islamic Relief.

Students pray daily, the cafeteria serves halal food - permissible under Islamic law — and “Islamic Studies” is offered at the end of the school day.

Zaman maintains that TIZA is not a religious school. He declined, however, to allow me to visit the school to see for myself, “due to the hectic schedule for statewide testing.” But after I e-mailed him that the Minnesota Department of Education had told me that testing would not begin for several weeks, Zaman did not respond — even to urgent calls and e-mails seeking comment before my first column on TIZA.

Now, however, an eyewitness has stepped forward. Amanda Getz of Bloomington is a substitute teacher. She worked as a substitute in two fifth-grade classrooms at TIZA on Friday, March 14. Her experience suggests that school-sponsored religious activity plays an integral role at TIZA.

Arriving on a Friday, the Muslim holy day, she says she was told that the day’s schedule included a “school assembly” in the gym after lunch.

Before the assembly, she says she was told, her duties would include taking her fifth-grade students to the bathroom, four at a time, to perform “their ritual washing.”

Afterward, Getz said, “teachers led the kids into the gym, where a man dressed in white with a white cap, who had been at the school all day,” was preparing to lead prayer. Beside him, another man “was prostrating himself in prayer on a carpet as the students entered.”

“The prayer I saw was not voluntary,” Getz said. “The kids were corralled by adults and required to go to the assembly where prayer occurred.”

Islamic Studies was also incorporated into the school day. “When I arrived, I was told ‘after school we have Islamic Studies,’ and I might have to stay for hall duty,” Getz said. “The teachers had written assignments on the blackboard for classes like math and social studies. Islamic Studies was the last one — the board said the kids were studying the Qu’ran. The students were told to copy it into their planner, along with everything else. That gave me the impression that Islamic Studies was a subject like any other.”

After school, Getz’s fifth-graders stayed in their classroom and the man in white who had led prayer in the gym came in to teach Islamic Studies. TIZA has in effect extended the school day — buses leave only after Islamic Studies is over. Getz did not see evidence of other extra-curricular activity, except for a group of small children playing outside. Significantly, 77 percent of TIZA parents say that their “main reason for choosing TIZA … was because of after-school programs conducted by various non-profit organizations at the end of the school period in the school building,” according to a TIZA report.

Student “prayer is not mandated by TIZA,” [the schools’ principal] wrote, and so is legal. On Friday afternoons, “students are released … to either join a parent-led service or for study hall.” Islamic Studies is provided by the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, and other “nonsectarian” after-school options are available, he added…Until recently, TIZA’s website included a request for volunteers to help with “Friday prayers.” In an e-mail, Zaman explained this as an attempt to ensure that “no TIZA staff members were involved in organizing the Friday prayers.”But an end run of this kind cannot remove the fact of school sponsorship of prayer services, which take place in the school building during school hours.

Now, charter schools are supposed to be open to everyone. Granted, it’s presumed that parents and kids have an interest in the program; I cant’ see pacifist parents sending their kids to, say, the General John Vessey charter, which borrows heavily from the military school model (with great results, according to some parents I’ve heard), but I can’t imagine Vessey would either turn ‘em down or try to turn them into soldiers. Would TIZA have the same forbearance with, say, a Lutheran kid who had no intention of converting?
What to think…

Conceptually? If we blow open the restrictions about public funding for religious schools, then I say “go to it!”. We can have Moslem, Hindu, Catholic, Buddhist, Jewish and many flavors of Protestant schools to go along with the agnostic ones we already have!

But given the current set of laws that we current have, for better or worse, I’m just not seeing that. And with that as the case, I’m not sure there’s any way around the notion that we, the Minnesota taxpayer, are footing the bill for one brand of religious education that’s barred to everyone else.

Cross-posted at Shot in the Dark. Comments welcome.