Well, it's not the case that's ridiculous (though they may well not win it in court), but the action that led to it. Here's one of those situations that just feeds into the paranoia that says people are out to destroy any religious expression in public at all. It's not true, of course, this is just the actions of a stupid administrator who doesn't know the law, but it still has the same effect. At Henry Jackson High School in Washington, an administrator overruled the school's wind ensemble and told them they could not play Ave Maria during graduation because it was religious in nature.
For years, seniors in the wind ensemble at Henry M. Jackson High School have selected a favorite piece of music to play during commencement.
For last month's ceremonies, the 17 students chose an instrumental version of "Ave Maria," which they had performed at a school concert in December 2004.
But their choice was vetoed by Dr. Carol Whitehead, superintendent of the Everett School District. Instead, the ensemble played a selection by British composer Gustav Holst.
This is the kind of ridiculous overreach we really should be avoiding at all costs. Much of the great orchestral and choral music in Western history is religious in nature. Is anyone seriously going to suggest that we should teach symphonic music and skip over all of Bach's contributions because, for him, they were religious? Or Handel's Messiah? Or Haydn's The Creation? Or Beethoven's Missa Solemnis? Or Verdi's Messa da Requiem? One can scarcely imagine an education in symphonic music without them.
Do they really think that the seniors in the wind ensemble sat around plotting to proselytize with a piece of instrumental music with a religious theme that the majority of the audience is probably unaware of? Highly unlikely. They chose it because it's a beautiful piece of music that they enjoy playing and that they play well. And even if they did choose it for some religious reason, so what? It's one of the great musical pieces of Western civilization (I personally have fond memories of it because the mother of one of my friends growing up used to sing it on Mother's Day every year at their church and I would go with them just to hear it).
The Rutherford Institute is preparing to file a suit in this case on behalf of one of the students in the ensemble. Will they win the case? Possibly. The grounds are relatively shaky. It's pretty clear that the school would have won any establishment clause lawsuit that might have been filed if they had allowed it to be played. They were on solid legal ground to allow it. But the free exercise case against them for not allowing it is a bit harder to make stick. I'll be curious to see how this plays out and what arguments Rutherford makes in that regard. But I sure wish school administrators would stop doing stupid things like this.
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"Ridiculous overreach" is precisely right. I'm resolutely, even militantly secular, but I think this world without Bach, Palestrina, etc. (or, for that matter, Mahalia Jackson and Sister Rosetta Tharpe) would be a much poorer place.
Would it be a good idea to have some kind of tutorial program for school administrators and teachers? Of course, that'll cost money and time and you would also run into the problem of differing interpretations of the first amendment...
Any chance the ACLU will jump in on the side of the students?
Kele-
Back in 1994, I believe it was, Clinton ordered the DOJ to send a document out to every public school in the nation detailing precisely what the court rulings say on church/state issues, from teaching creationism to student religious expression to access to facilities and so forth. It was actually an excellent document, which can still be found online. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to have helped things much.
My girlfriend is an assistant principal who is currently working on her D Ed. At both the PhD and masters level she was required to take a school law class. So that's not the problem.
The real problem is administrators are not lawyers, and really don't have the time to become one. So they look for bright line rules; the Lemon test can be a bit of a challenge.
When they need legal advice, they shoot off an email to the District office, who then calls or emails the attorney's office, which is answered by some junior flunky, or if the lawyer answers, it starts out "It depends..." which is where the administrator stops paying attention.
Most of the calls I get from Lori are of the "It depends" class, unfortunately. I say unfortunately, because a lot of the advice administrators get is garbled or outright wrong, such as advice from the school's Resource Officer (deputy sheriff) about the legality of searches a few months back. Ask a law enforcement officer about searches and they're all in favor; reasonable suspicion and probable cause are just lawyer words.
Keep in mind that the #1 goal of most administrators is to avoid trouble. So we get ridiculous policies against carrying bibles in school or singing a relious-themed song at Christmas. Beurocracies are stupid by nature, let's face it.
As to the merits of a potential suit, unfortunately I do not see a case. The whole case results from the decision to allow the group to select their own material. In that sense, it's a little like the Nevada graduation case with the prior restraint, only with only one veto, rather than a series of them.
Does the group have a right to a corporate sense of free speech in their choice of music? Perhaps, but I would be very surprized if any of the young musicians had this in mind when they chose the piece. Basically, the administration made a decision to not allow anything that might have offended anyone. This would be a stupid policy, but there is a rational relationship between the policy and the end sought (some imaginary person not being offended).
So it is a group rather than an individual, there is no evidence the group specifically intended the speech to be religious in nature, and, presumably, they had a backup piece already picked out. Stupid administrator, but de minimis harm to the musicians.
The piece is indeed beautiful, but then, all the settings of Ave Maria I have ever heard are good. Good thing the text is out of Luke, or else I'd have to consider converting to Catholicism.
Actually the music was written for a text out of sir Walter Scott, its a prayer from the Lady of the lake, the music has since been used for the prayer, but as the students were to play the music only, you could choose to believe it either the prayer or the german translation of Scotts work!
http://www.carolinaclassical.com/articles/schubert.html
I hope it wasn't from The Planets, since it's about Roman gods (and horoscopes).
Of course it was [i]Planets[/i]! What better way send graduates marching off into the future than to the strains of "Mars, Bringer of War"?
(Which I've been humming ever since this weekend's Venture Brothers episode.)
Somehow I'm reminded of the joke about the woman who ordered her daughter to break up with the new boyfriend because "He whistles dirty songs."