Social Injustice and Cultural Identifiers Education Essay

Religious Clothing in K-12 Education
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Religious Clothing in K-12 Education
Religious clothing is still a debatable issue in the United States, although several policies have changed over the years to allow people the freedom to exercise their religious beliefs. There are several cultural identifiers associated with religious clothing. They include religion and religious beliefs, and gender. For instance, according to Moe (2019), the headscarf is a religious cloth worn by Muslim women as a “gendered-expression of sexual modesty.” Muslim women are required to cover their hair and parts of their faces while in the company of men. This is based on their religious beliefs of morality. Also, in the Christian religion, the cross is associated with Christian beliefs; one such example is holding the cross while praying Walker, 2018; Blauwkamp, 2017). Through religious clothing, it is easy to identify which religion a person prescribes to. It also shows the community that a person is affiliated with, such as kippa for Jews and turban for Indians (Moe, 2019). The issue of religious garbs has been controversial across states especially due to the provisions of the first amendment on the expression of religion.
Public K-12 schools have struggled with the issue of whether to allow or ban religious clothing in schools. The point of contention is on enhancing the non-establishment of religion in public schools and promoting the free exercise of religion and religious beliefs (Blauwkamp, 2017). On one hand, religious clothing, such as the Muslim headscarf, is viewed as a religious symbol that should be protected as religious freedom of expression (Moe, 2019). On the other hand, the headscarf is viewed as a cultural symbol and as such, it is not protected under the free expression of religion. Another controversy relates to the secularity of public schools where any expression of religion is seen as the establishment of religion within the schools (Moe, 2019).
As a result of the controversies around religious clothing, the issue of inequality, especially in the employment of teachers in public schools, has been identified. Teachers have, in some cases, been asked to not wear their religious garbs while in the classroom in states such as Pennsylvania and Nebraska (Blauwkamp, 2017). This has limited their opportunities to work as educators in public schools. Consequently, it fails to show students what religious diversity looks like in real life within the school community.
The laws banning religious clothing among public school teachers have been repealed in Nebraska, but not in Pennsylvania (Blauwkamp, 2017). Yet, the legal ban in Pennsylvania fails to meet the general applicability test of neutrality (Walker, 2018). Banning religious clothing in public schools hinders free expression of religious beliefs that have been guaranteed by the Constitution. Teachers who are unwilling to give up their right to freedom of expression of their religious beliefs are forced to forego teaching in public schools.
Repealing the current law to allow religious clothing is the only solution to the issue of unequal opportunities for educators who express their beliefs through religious clothing suc...