Plan to Curb Humanism in Schools Hit : ‘American Way’ Unit Objects to Influence by ‘Religious Right’

A First Amendment education group today urged the Department of Education to drop a proposed regulation denying funds to school programs that teach “secular humanism.”

The proposed regulation to govern the Magnet Schools Assistance Program would deny funds for “any course of instruction the substance of which the LEA (local education agency) determines is secular humanism.”

Secular humanism has emerged as a rallying cry for the “Religious Right’s” criticism of public education. It is loosely defined by conservatives as a philosophy that denies the existence of God and stresses that people are the center of creation.

Definition Problem

In comments on the proposed regulation submitted to the Department of Education, People for the American Way said local school districts already “face enough problems without having to wrestle with defining what, if anything, secular humanism means.”

Neither the magnet schools act nor the previously passed Education for Economic Security Act, which also prohibits funds for “courses of instruction the substance of which is secular humanism,” define the term.

“It is unfortunate that the Department of Education has been shackled with a law that prohibits the use of federal funds for a purpose that remains undefined,” said Anthony Podesta, executive director of People for the American Way.

Podesta said that in the past, controversies over secular humanism in the schools have led to eliminating from reading lists works by such authors as Homer, Hawthorne and Hemingway, and to attacking guidance counseling programs, child abuse prevention programs and sex education.

“Left undefined,” Podesta said, “the term ‘secular humanism’ can be expected to become an even more divisive issue now that it has the force of federal law and the threat of the withholding of federal funds to back it up.