Thomas Courtney: The Ten Commandments For the Outside of My Classroom Door
Teacher Thomas Courtney considers just a few of the problems with displaying the Ten Commandments.
I’ve decided I’m not waiting for it to arrive outside my classroom door unprepared. I’m not waiting for those domestic actors who missed basic civics and history classes to create unconstitutional conditions in my public institution. I take oaths seriously, and I plan to defend the US Constitution still, and I plan to fulfill that duty in and out of my classroom.
Even more so, I only need half the number of commandments Louisiana teachers are asked to hang inside theirs right now.
Here they are:
The Five Constitutional Commandments
- Thou shalt, as I must, observe the US Constitution in this institution.
- Thou shalt, as I must, study US History and honor the decisions made by the US Supreme Court regarding the separation of church and state spanning generations before us.
- Thou shalt not force me, or any child in my classroom, to unduly favor one religion over another. If thou wishes a child to favor a religion, thou shall send them to a private school, which you have a constitutional right to do.
- Anyone in this institution, if that person wishes, may honor thy Bible. Equally, thou shalt, if thou wishes, honor they Quran, thy Torah, or honor no religious texts at all.
- Thou shalt not place any religious set of conditions inside of our classroom, from any religion, because this is a classroom of the State of California and the government of the United States of America. It is not a classroom in a theocracy.
Let me repeat that again. We are not a theocracy. We are a representative democracy, or if you will, a democratic republic. We are a government of representatives of the people, for the people. Of free people. And the people who wish to defend that freedom, any of them, are patriotic Americans honoring their sworn duties. This is the way it always has been in our great United States of America. It is the way we always will be, so long as we remain united as a democracy in the first place.