What people are saying:

• Facebook User: Sounds like a great argument for universal vouchers?
• Facebook User: Just waiting for the lawsuits to start. I’m so glad that my district has rejected this BS.
  • Secular Education Association: Facebook User depending on your state your district might not be able to reject this BS. Lifewise has been busy lobbying states to make it mandatory for schools to cooperate with them.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User Texas is a Shall state.
• Facebook User: I’m guessing in the same locations they don’t teach history. America went through the Bible wars, it turns out that when evangelical types aren’t punching down on minorities, they’ll punch each over over which Bible to use in schools.
  Seriously, how many Christians out there want some other Christian to teach their version of a Bible to their kids? I think they’ve been so wound up about putting their God back in school they forget how many gods there are within Christianity.
  It’s a bummer that everybody else has to keep relearning, something others are too stupid to learn.
  • Secular Education Association: Facebook User THIS
• Facebook User: If you want your kid to pray in school then send them to religious schools!!!! It’s really that simple
• Facebook User: I went to school in a town that was about 95% Roman Catholic. The Catholic church owned some of the school buildings, which they leased to the public school system when the local Catholic church got out of the parochial school business. Religion classes were held before school hours, but at 8:30, it was strict separation of church and state, even though a couple of nuns were still teaching. The local Catholic parents trusted the rest of society to help educate their children, without demanding statues of Mary in the school buildings as a condition. Contrast with today.
• Facebook User: Serious question, can teachers “opt out” of this nonsense as well?
  • Secular Education Association: Facebook User nope. And every single one of them is affected by it. Classes interrupted. Time wasted. Makeup work creation. Quieting down after they leave and after they come back. Coats and hats to leave in cold weather. We can keep going, but you get it.
• Facebook User: Free your kids, folks! Homeschool!
  • Secular Education Association: Facebook User that’s absolutely not the answer. And you can take it somewhere else.
  • Facebook User: Secular Education Association Texas has some of the most permissive and liberal homeschool laws in the United States, giving parents broad freedom to educate their children with minimal government regulation.
  • Secular Education Association: Facebook User let us fix that for you. Texas (and many other states) have decided that homeschooled children are not their problem and the restrictions in place to make sure those kids are not neglected, or abused, or lack an education was stripped away. We will see the effects of this in the next decades and it will be a wild ride. Good luck!
  • Facebook User: Secular Education Association Good luck to you as well as part of the “captive audience”!
  • Facebook User: Facebook User that lack of government regulation helped kill a lot of kids at Camp Mystic. Right?
  • Secular Education Association: Facebook User you’re likely a product of that yourself on here being a fool. Byeeeee.
  • Facebook User: Enjoy your government curriculum,
    Facebook User.
• Facebook User: Remember when parents were in an uproars when Pres. Obama did an address for school children? “Indoctrination !!”
• Facebook User:
  • Facebook User: Facebook User
  • Secular Education Association: Facebook User shut up bigot
  • Secular Education Association: Facebook User hahahaahaha oh ok. We just aren’t gonna waste our time explaining how wrong you are. But yesssss. You’re right. Keep commenting genius.
• Facebook User: They don’t want religious freedom, they want religious entitlement.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User well said!
  • Facebook User: Facebook User Freedom o religion mean FREEDOM FROM RELIGION
• Facebook User: One sure way to drive people away from God is to shove it down their throats instead of doing the hard work of being the salt and light for our neighbors. It’s just Sharia Law with bacon.
• Facebook User: Nothing like a bit of fear mongering to make a point for who knows what exactly, other than a life of “sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity”
  • Secular Education Association: Facebook User stop talking about yourself. It’s not nice.
• Facebook User: Yes!
• Facebook User: A captive audience being fed lies. Look at the fruit of your lies… American schools used to be the greatest in the world. You’ve created chaos by design. Our only real strength is through God.
  • Secular Education Association: Facebook User Whose god?
• Facebook User: I feel like you mostly just criticized public schools.
  • Secular Education Association: Facebook User then you haven’t been paying attention. All we do is support public schools.
• Facebook User: A spiritual or religious practice is a deeply personal and intimate space. When a group of people in power force their particular interpretation of a religion into another’s personal and intimate spiritual space, it is a violent act. It is the spiritual equivalent to sexual assault.
  Studies have shown that physical sexual assault is not about sexual gratification. It is about power. The satisfaction for the sexual predator comes from controlling the victim.
  Like physical sexual assault, spiritual assault is not about anything having to to with religion. It is about power. It is about control. It’s about spiritual predators exerting their will on victims and controlling them.
  Physical and spiritual assault are especially heinous when children are the victims. That is why the politicians who are imposing their will on helpless children, taking their spiritual education away from their parents, are especially reprehensible. Politicians using their positions of power to force their particular interpretation of one religion on, not only non-Christian, but Christian children should be a crime. They must not be allowed to succeed in this terrible policy.
  Some might say that comparing sexual assault to forcing a particular interpretation of a religion on others may seem extreme. Only powerful people who are doing the forcing or who follow the particular interpretation would think it extreme. People who are victims or whose children are victimized will not find the comparison extreme.
• Facebook User: It is an uncomfortable truth for most religious people that who you were born to and where you were raised, have much more to do with which religion you follow than anything else does.

  PS-Emphasis on “Most”

  • Facebook User: Facebook User
    I wonder what percentage of the world’s religious people were born in societies with the religion they currently have? I would venture a guest that it’s the high 90 percentile. Depend depending on the nation even higher. I mean how many people in Saudi Arabia converted to Judaism or Christian?
  • Facebook User: Facebook User more than you would believe.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User oh I would believe pretty high. As a kid this was one of the nails in the coffin that proved that religion is man-made. As opposed to science, if we destroyed every science book in the world, eventually they would all come back again because they are self-evident in nature. Water will still boil and freeze at the same level of heat and pressure. They will still study nature and find an odd thing that points to the same place and they’ll call it evolution or something comparable because all the evidence for it will still be there. Destroy the knowledge of religions in other books. Superstition will come back but they’ll all lead to different stories
  • Facebook User: Facebook User did you actually read or see where I pulled my studies from?
  • Facebook User: Facebook User
    I see no study or information about a study from you, but that could be based on how Facebook formats comments, but then my statement is independent of any studies.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User your thought experiment was devised by a man named Ricky Gervais who used that exact analogy to say all religion is man made.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User doing a quick Google search and after insisting it remove those that leave religion or become atheists, the numbers are predictable: about 3% to 7% of people globally change from one religion to another during their lifetime. The United States, about 5-8% That’s when you don’t count people leaving religion.
    https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/06/26/globally-1-in-10-adults-under-55-have-left-their-childhood-religion/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
• Facebook User: I don’t see “public education” under the Bill of Rights anywhere.
  • Secular Education Association: Facebook User keep driving our reach! Thanks!
  • Facebook User: https://bridgelegal.org/education-constitutional-right-united-states/
  • Facebook User: Facebook User or machine guns, AI or pipe bombs, but we still write laws about them. Keep up.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User It is the jewel of our national that we educate every child.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User Do you mean we shouldn’t promise such a thing in our country? We have many rights that are not listed in the Constitution.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User so the parents who refuse to assilmate are to believe in your diety or risk losing their kids?
• Facebook User: Indeed. A captive audience being forced to endure fake gender ideologies
  • Secular Education Association: Facebook User ‘Gender ideology’ isn’t part of any public-school curriculum in this country, you absolute dingus. You’re inventing a captive audience while defending an actual one. And shut up alreadyyyy, no one is buying the transphobic propaganda.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User Can you show me a classroom where that is happening?

    No?

    Then sit down, child.

  • Facebook User: Facebook User So you and I were victims of the fake gender ideology of “only two sexes and genders” that our culture and its schools taught before we figured out gender reality…

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the-idea-of-2-sexes-is-overly-simplistic1/

    https://fb.watch/HPfz5ESapF/

  • Facebook User: Facebook User ma’am, this is a Wendy’s.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User So if that is wrong what’s the difference?
  • Facebook User: LOOK! It’s one of those Goobers that think there are litter boxes in public schools!
  • Facebook User: Facebook User schools should stick to the science that shows 2 distinct genders. Everyone wins.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User Your bigotry is incongruent with the current clinical literature, nose picker.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User another ignorant-as-fuck white man talking about shit that scares him as if it’s a part of the general curriculum in every school at every level…thanks for telling all of us you didn’t move beyond the most basic levels of biology, dumbfuck.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User Gay people exist, Justin. As you know very well.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User But does it…..
  • Facebook User: Facebook User huh?
  • Facebook User: Facebook User Your inability to understand something doesn’t make it fake. Lol. LGBT ppl actually EXIST. Your god is a fairy tale you are choosing to believe in. You don’t get to make that choice for others—public school exists to prepare kids for reality, not membership in your death cult.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User , where?
  • Facebook User: Facebook User that is false rw bullsh
  • Facebook User: Being forced to accept people as they are, you mean? Completely different conversation, bigot.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User nobody would ever have children with you so this affects you?…how exactly? 🤨
  • Facebook User: Facebook User I have kids. Try again.
  • Facebook User: Exactly what someone with no kids would say.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User Says a man who hasn’t stepped foot in a school in 35+ years and only watches Fox News.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User you’ll have to guess again.
  • Secular Education Association: Facebook User even more horrifying then.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User in what world do you think you have a right to FORCE your beliefs on other peoples children?
  • Facebook User: Facebook User inventing a imaginary solution to solve an imaginary problem. Is that what you can only do? Did you get the script from pastor, politician or podcast bro?
  • Facebook User: Facebook User you sound agitated. Maybe check your medications
• Facebook User: This is totally voluntary. If a trans man was teaching you would be all for it
  • Facebook User: And you’d be all for a voluntary Islam class where the teachers encourage the kids to come back to school and spread the word of Allah, right?
  • Secular Education Association: Facebook User well. We are all for a trans man teaching in most scenarios, but Lifewise would NEVER allow that. Not knowingly anyway. They require employees and volunteers in teaching roles to affirm their statement of faith and adhere to its doctrinal expectations. 👀
  • Facebook User: Facebook User Why would the teacher’s gender matter in a case of captive audience for a religion?
  • Facebook User: Secular Education Association I’m thrilled with their adherence to faith and rejection of sexual confusing
  • Facebook User: Facebook User What about students of a different faith?
  • Facebook User: Facebook User no one is being forced, this is totally voluntary and not being done in school
  • Facebook User: Facebook User who’s stopping them from having the same program. Muslims have prayer rooms in public schools
  • Facebook User: Facebook User That’s an accommodation for currently observant kids- not a recruitment drive.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User who’s recruiting? The parents must give permission
  • Facebook User: Facebook User And you think there’s absolutely NO social pressure or outside enticement (we have cookies, we get to play games) to participate?

    If they wanted to be useful, they could have an afterschool for kids with working parents. But this is about indoctrination and social control.

  • Facebook User: Facebook User They don’t have “prayer rooms”. They use an unoccupied room. Only thing that would stop them would be schools not allowing it. You know damn well that in places like Texas they would do everything possible to stop it.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User may your bigotry become a stage iv cancer today.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User you realize a transman looks like this, right?
  • Facebook User: Facebook User well Lifewise will absolutely allow non custodials to sign kids up too.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User Imagine having your entire critical thinking capacity capped at ‘but the parents gave permission’ Truly a breathtaking display of intellect👏But it gets better! You’re also ‘thrilled’ by their ‘rejection of sexual confusing’ Let’s be real. The only thing ‘confusing’ here is how you are celebrating Lifewise’s morality when multiple Lifewise teachers/volunteers passed their background checks with some being hit with child sex crime charges. But, sure let’s keep worrying about ‘sexual confusion’ while the actual safety protocols of your favorite program are a complete joke. Your ignorance is genuinely terrifying.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User as an atheist the outrage is a little silly I was mad at first ..but if a parent truly is against it the students removed till the session is over an given different alternative assignments
• Facebook User: Yes, totally agree.
• Facebook User: Is the program voluntary? Religious education is still education and was part of the normal school day up until about 100 years ago…
  • Facebook User: Facebook User anything other than voluntary would be unconstitutional. and that 100 years ago shit doesn’t mean it’s a good thing. keep your fucking religion out of public education.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User thats what church is for, too bad many dont teach emoathy and morals. But public school teachers do in my experience.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User that is an anecdotal argument. If a parent wants to put their child into a religion class during the school day it is their right to do it. The Supreme Court has ruled on it a long time ago. The program has to be opt-in and voluntary.

    Who are you to judge what a parent thinks is right for their children’s well-being?

  • Facebook User: Facebook User taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for indoctrination. Thats what church is fir. After all churches dont pay taxes to even fund religious indoctrination in schools.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User the fuck this is. Education is accredited learning for all. This is religious indoctrination from the Southern Baptist Convention.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User oh you are absolutely lazy to use class time for your evangelical bs.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User The Satanists could—and have—said the same. Sure that’s what you want?
  • Facebook User: Facebook User Lifewise is coming to the schools.
    What you are talking about is parents taking their children to a church function during the course of the day.
    Huge difference. If you don’t see it that is sad.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User who is paying for release time? It is a free period the school gets the same pay as anything other period…
  • Facebook User: Facebook User Lifewise is off school grounds as required by law. Tell me where they are on school grounds?
  • Facebook User: Facebook User they tried. It flopped. Lack of sign ups.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User hmm?
  • Facebook User: Facebook User false. SPECIALS are education time not free periods.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User Elmwood Elementary.
    https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19AraSQSsM/
  • Facebook User: Facebook User Hmmm?
  • Facebook User: Facebook User The legal standard is off-property, privately funded, parent-permitted — that’s real and it’s what makes release time constitutional. If Elmwood specifically is renting district property to LifeWise, that’s worth scrutiny under that same standard, not evidence against it. Two different questions: is release time itself legal (yes), and is this district doing it correctly (open question, and FFRF’s letter says maybe not).

    Also Specials are not normal classes. Again this is the government dictating what is good for a student not what the parents say is good for their child.

  • Facebook User: Facebook User
    》The legal standard is off-property, privately funded, parent-permitted,

    You keep forgetting the FOURTH STANDARD-
    Per Zorach a Release Time for Religious Instruction program must:
    ☆ Off school property
    ☆ Not using 》tax payer resources《 or funds
    ☆ With written parental permission
    ☆ School must do NO MORE than release- Zorach v Clauson: “If in fact coercion were used, if it were established that any one or more teachers were using their office to persuade or force students to take the religious instruction, a wholly different case would be presented.”

    》 that’s real and it’s what makes release time constitutional. If Elmwood specifically is renting district property to LifeWise, that’s worth scrutiny under that same standard, not evidence against it.

    Nope, there’s clear collusion happening. I invite you to check out the full file, 2nd page:
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JfW5USpYnkSrOuAL7sfHwSOU5K0-f4x2/view

    》Two different questions: is release time itself legal (yes)

    When ALL 4 standards are met. Yes. Clearly not.

    》 and is this district doing it correctly (open question, and FFRF’s letter says maybe not).

    No. Its not the only one.

    》Also Specials are not normal classes.

    Please tell Facebook User that his STEM class isn’t a normal class or worthless. I dare you.

    》 Again this is the government dictating what is good for a student not what the parents say is good for their child.

    Parents CHOOSE public education. They don’t get to upend that education for religious entitlement. Its laziness at its core.

  • Facebook User: Facebook User im nit, but public taxpayers money shouldn’t fund it. It takes time away from actual academics that they will need to get through life. Religion isnt a necessity. Its a choice.
    Maybe churches should fund the classes or maybe it should be taught at church. I took Sunday school and a girls group to learn about Religion as a kid.
    Thats where it should stay, or send your child to a religious parochial school at your expense.
    Religion is a choice and should not be forced upon anyone.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User because of the food lures likely.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User You’re arguing against things that aren’t happening.

    Funding: No tax dollars involved — by law it’s 100% privately funded.

    Force: No one’s forced. A child only attends if a parent signs a permission slip.

    Character development: The idea that religious instruction doesn’t matter ignores the psychology here. Research consistently links family/religious culture to moral development in children, and shows religiosity fosters identity formation, civic engagement, prosocial behavior, and life satisfaction.

    “Taking time from academics”: Schools pull kids from class for sports, pep rallies, and away games constantly — that’s fine, but a privately funded moral instruction class a parent chose is a problem? That’s not an academics argument. That’s just targeting religion.

    Sources:
    Moral Reasoning in Adolescence: https://adolescentpsychology.pressbooks.sunycreate.cloud/chapter/moral-reasoning-in-adolescence/

    Psychological Functions of Religion in Youth (Cambridge): https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/values-religion-and-culture-in-adolescent-development/psychological-functions-of-religion-in-youth-a-historical-and-cultural-perspective/4167F20AA71DED8818476CEE23DDA7B8

    Frontiers (original journal, full text free): https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1061416/full

  • Facebook User: Facebook User it is still parentally consented and constitutionally protected.
  • Facebook User: And was wrong then, too, which is why the courts ruled against religion in schools.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User Religious education is NOT education in the modern age. 100 years ago pre dates today’s technology and understanding of brain development. Teaching tools were nearly non existant. This example is not equivalent.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User First, thank you for conceding the core legal point: when the four standards are met, released time is entirely constitutional. That means your issue isn’t with the legality of the programs themselves; your issue is just with how Elmwood’s administration specifically managed it. If Elmwood broke the rules, hold Elmwood accountable. A local school’s administrative failure doesn’t make a Supreme Court ruling void.

    Regarding the STEM class—no one said it is worthless. That is a strawman argument. The point is about the chain of command: a parent has the fundamental right to decide if 45 minutes of STEM or 45 minutes of moral instruction is more valuable for their specific child on any given day. The government doesn’t get to override that.

    But let’s look at your claim that parents ‘CHOOSE public education’ and therefore shouldn’t expect ‘religious entitlement.’ That argument completely ignores economic reality. Most working families cannot afford to drop $10,000 to $15,000 a year per child on a private Christian school, especially when a massive chunk of their income is already taken via property and income taxes to fund the public school system. For the vast majority of taxpayers, public school isn’t a luxury ‘choice’—it is an absolute economic necessity.
    Parents do not surrender their constitutional rights or their authority over their children simply because they are utilizing a taxpayer-funded public service.

    Using the public school system doesn’t mean you hand the state total ownership of your child’s moral development for eight hours a day. Utilizing a legally protected, privately funded released time program isn’t ‘religious entitlement’ or ‘laziness.’ It is parents taking active, legal ownership of their child’s upbringing within a system they literally pay to keep running.

  • Facebook User: Facebook User see cited sources
• Facebook User: Time is god, spontaneous life is the miracle along with peach trees, peacocks, and people that all “evolve” from that miraculous single cell.
  You have more faith than me.
• Facebook User: So tell us, how’s that different than private schools?
  • Facebook User: Facebook User Parents who send their kids to private (religious) schools waive their kids’ right to freedom from their religion.
• Facebook User: Maybe if they actually read the Bible they will start calling everyone out after they understand it enough & become good atheists
  • Facebook User: Or Great Constitutionalists
  • Facebook User: Facebook User great comment
  • Facebook User: Facebook User TY