More on church-state issues and public schools

Just a few days after my posting about public schools and separation of church and state, I find this article on the same issue, written by Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn.

The column tells of a Richard Sherman, son of an outspoken atheist, who had been offered a teaching job with High School District 211 in Chicago's northwest suburbs. The job offer was withdrawn after a meeting between Sherman and District 211 personnel director Robert Grimm. Here is how Zorn tells the story:

Sherman said Grimm expressed keen interest in Sherman's "famous father" and warned him that "some parents might give you a hard time."

Monday morning, [Sherman] said, Grimm called him and said the district had new, "serious concerns" to discuss with him. At a face-to-face meeting that afternoon, ... Sherman said Grimm then told him he felt Sherman's "philosophies on teaching didn't mesh well with those of other teachers and division heads" at the school. He said Grimm told him he therefore would not recommend Sherman be formally hired in a pro-forma motion at Thursday night's board of education meeting.

Such an abrupt and peculiar withdrawal of a job offer would raise significant questions under any circumstances. But here it raises an odor as well -- the smell of fear, of religious intolerance and injustice.

As I was reading this, the name of the school district administrator struck me as familiar. I attended high school in District 211, and I had a physics teacher named Mr. Grimm. First name Robert, if I wasn't mistaken. Couldn't be...

Mr. Grimm was, I recall, an excellent teacher. It was he who taught me those formulas in my previous blog entry. And he won the Illinois Teacher of the Year award in 2002. If it is true that he denied Mr. Sherman a teaching job based on Sherman's religious beliefs, he ought to know better. Physics wasn't the only course I took in high school; here's a little something I learned in civics class: "No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." That's from Article VI of the U.S. Constitution.