Constitutional Law. First Amendment. Establishment Clause. Fourth Circuit Holds That a School Board Policy Allowing a Religious Group to Distribute Bibles in Public Schools Does Not Violate the Establishment Clause. Peck v. Upshur County Board of Education, 155 F.3d 274 (4th Cir. 1998)

This chapter examines yoga as a spiritual and a social practice. It considers three institutional contexts for interpreting yoga spirituality: religion, law, and education. Social institutions such as public schools and courts of law must arbitrate interpretive contests by formulating and applying definitions for the purposes of educational policy and legal precedent. In making such determinations, it would be naive to accept all assertions of identity and meaning as full disclosures. Sometimes the same people describe the same practice as “spiritual” or “secular,” depending upon whether the legal context is First Amendment religious free exercise clause protection or establishment clause restriction. Decisions about how to categorize practices rest in large part on pragmatic concerns. This case study invites scholars of spirituality to pay closer attention to how legal and social contexts shape how people think and talk about practices in relation to the interpretive categories of “spirituality,” “religion,” and “secularity.”

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Constitutional Law. Establishment Clause. Eighth Circuit Holds That Public School Opened with Concessions to Religious Group Does Not Violate Establishment Clause. Stark v. Independent School District, No. 640, 123 F.3d 1068 (8th Cir. 1997), Cert. Denied, 118 S. Ct. 1560 (1998)

Harvard Law Review ◽

10.2307/1342470 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 111 (8) ◽

pp. 2450 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Keyword(s):

Public School ◽

School District ◽

Constitutional Law ◽

Independent School ◽

Religious Group ◽

Establishment Clause ◽

Independent School District

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Promoting Diversity in the Public Schools (Or, To What Extent Does the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment Hinder the Establishment of More Genuinely Multicultural Schools?)

Constitutional Politics ◽

10.2307/j.ctv1ddd0f6.13 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 193-222

Author(s):

SANFORD LEVINSON

Keyword(s):

Public Schools ◽

First Amendment ◽

Establishment Clause ◽

The Public ◽

Multicultural Schools

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“We Can't Let Chicago Outdo Us, Can We?” Sex Education and Desegregation in New York City's Public Schools

History of Education Quarterly ◽

10.1111/hoeq.12033 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 53 (4) ◽

pp. 335-368 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Kurt Conklin

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Public Schools ◽

School Board ◽

Sex Education ◽

School Desegregation ◽

Board Of Education ◽

Biology Students ◽

Pregnant Students ◽

Racial Desegregation ◽

The 1960S

Faced with demands for racial desegregation of its public schools, and grasping at half measures to appear responsive, New York City's Board of Education took action in 1967 by ending medical discharges for unwed pregnant students and authorizing the curriculum “Family Living, Including Sex Education.” Approving sex education in part to avoid action on school desegregation, Gotham's school board relied on a resolution written by a parent advocacy group in 1939—a resolution the 1939 school board had rejected following months of debate on the merits of providing instruction on mammalian reproduction for junior high biology students. By the time the Board of Education revisited the issue of sex education in the 1960s, popular understanding of sexuality and sex education had changed considerably. Yet the resolution supporting sex education, submitted by the city's United Parents' Associations (UPA), had not changed at all.

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