The Vicar of Education

William J. Bennett, the secretary of education, has exposed his need for some homework on the U.S. Constitution.

He has interpreted recent Supreme Court rulings limiting federal support for parochial school programs as signs of “disdain” for religion and a continuation of “almost four decades of misguided court decisions.” And he has announced plans to circumvent the ruling of the court with forms of indirect aid to church-related schools, perhaps with parent vouchers.

Bennett’s misunderstanding of the Constitutional separation of church and state was at least consistent with the views of President Reagan and Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III. None of them seem to appreciate the fact that the separation was created to protect, not weaken, religion. In honoring the right of the individual to worship or not worship, to believe or not believe, as he or she sees fit, the Constitution also protected religions from trivialization, corruption or control at the hands of hostile forces, among them governments, however well intentioned.

The secretary’s commitment to circumvent the highest court says something also about his grasp of another of the wise separations imposed by the Constitution, the separation of powers among executive, legislative and judiciary, a separation intended not to weaken government but to give it the validity implicit in the balance of those separate sources of authority.

As Bennett said, Judeo-Christian values are very much a part of the American nation, its heritage and its function. But their contribution, and the contribution of other sources of wisdom, are most reliably understood and implemented by individuals, not by governments. Bennett himself has dramatized the risks of the intrusion of prejudice and ignorance when government tries to arrogate powers denied it by the Constitution.