A Ten Commandments poster that hangs in one suburban Dallas teacher’s classroom is surrounded by hot-pink placards featuring tenets from Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam.
A substitute teacher north of Houston is sending her twin daughters to school wearing First Amendment buttons and offering the same pins to other children in their neighborhood.
Meanwhile, a teacher in southeast Texas said she’s playing a “risky game” after deciding she won’t display the Ten Commandments in her classroom at all. But if she must, she said, she will hang it upside down.
These quiet acts of defiance are unfolding as a new Republican-crafted state law — known as Senate Bill 10 — takes effect this month requiring Texas public elementary and secondary schools to hang the Ten Commandments in every classroom. A school district “must accept any offer of a privately donated poster,” otherwise it “may, but is not required to, purchase posters” using district funds, the law states.
It’s unclear how many districts have complied with the law since the start of the school year.
In addition, a handful of school districts where parents and faith leaders have filed legal challenges remain exempt from the mandate as federal litigation plays out. The plaintiffs contend that forcing the Ten Commandments into public schools is an unconstitutional violation of the separation of church and state.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, however, said Sept. 4 that districts not tied to the litigation must be in accordance with the legislation. The legislation does not have an enforcement mechanism, and it’s unclear what might happen to schools or individual teachers who refuse to comply.
Paxton’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Regardless of how individual school districts enforce the law, teachers who spoke with NBC News said they are being placed in an awkward position in order to comply and feel conflicted with their own beliefs. Some also worry the posters appear to favor one religion over others and may spur uncomfortable conversations about Christianity that they don’t want to have in a public school setting.
“It says, ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.’ First of all, that means zero to my students,” said an elementary school art teacher in suburban Dallas who asked not to be named for fear of job reprisal. “If it was in wording like, ‘Be kind to one another. Don’t steal. Don’t lie,’ or, ‘Be a good person,’ because as an elementary school teacher, I teach those things all the time. Like in the first week of school, I have this whole presentation I do, and part of it is, ‘Please don’t steal our art supplies.’”
The teacher said her district is diverse, and because her school includes students of different religions, she decided to hang posters of other religions’ tenets around the Ten Commandments poster. The displays include the Five Pillars of Islam, the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism and a list of Hinduism’s ethical principles, which include nonviolence and truthfulness.
So far, no administrators have noticed the posters or told her to take them down.
“One of my teacher friends came in and she saw it, and she kind of laughed,” the teacher said. “She said, ‘You know, I’m for hanging the Ten Commandments,’ and I said, ‘OK, well, do you think I shouldn’t hang these other posters?’ And she said, ‘No, I’m for the hanging of the Ten Commandments, so I’m for you hanging the rest of that, too.’”
A middle school art teacher who spoke with NBC News said she has refused to put up a Ten Commandments poster, calling into question lawmakers’ intentions. Legislators also passed a bill this year permitting school districts to adopt policies allowing for a period of prayer in schools and the reading of the Bible or “other religious text” with parental consent.
“Where do you draw the line?” asked the teacher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she is worried about getting fired, adding that “we have constitutional rights, including freedom of and from religion.”
“I am playing a risky game of how long can I not have it up before they tell me I need to put it up or get fired,” the teacher said. “If I have to put it up, I would put it up upside down. I believe that would not, technically, break the rules of the bill.”
The law requires displaying a “durable poster or framed copy” of the Ten Commandments in a “conspicuous place in each classroom of the school.” The displays must be at least 16 inches by 20 inches and include the Ten Commandments as written in the legislation, which mirrors a Protestant version of the text.
Christian groups in support of SB 10 are collecting donations to help schools in Texas receive Ten Commandments posters, as well as in Arkansas, where a similar law went into effect this school year and is being challenged in court.
Restore American Schools, a website supported by conservative commentator Glenn Beck, says it has “adopted” more than 4,100 schools in Texas and more than 300 in Arkansas.
“Together, we can bring truth, hope, and moral clarity back to our classrooms — one school at a time,” the site says.
Others have begun producing posters as an alternative to the Ten Commandments.
Bob Peck, a writer and philosopher in Austin, has designed posters involving other religions that teachers could hang in their classroom as well. About 100 parents and teachers have reached out through his Etsy store since he began selling them over the summer.
“The law says teachers are required to display the Ten Commandments, but my understanding is that there’s no prohibition on framing the doctrines of other faiths,” Peck said, adding that “children deserve to see the beauty of Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism.”
Angela Achen, a substitute teacher for the Conroe Independent School District in Montgomery County, north of Houston, said SB 10 sparked a conversation with her twin daughters in the sixth grade.
At first they thought about creating a poster about their opposition to the law, but that morphed into creating buttons.
The buttons promote the full text of the First Amendment, inspired by the first clause: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
Achen, a former practicing attorney, does not distribute the pins herself or wear them in the classroom, but her daughters bring them to school and she leaves a bag of them on her front porch for others to take. She estimates nearly 300 have been distributed.
“We had a whole talk, like: ‘Before you start handing these out, you have to know what you’re talking about. Let’s talk about the five different freedoms that are in the First Amendment,’” Achen said. “We talked about them, I asked questions, I made sure they understood it. I’ve heard from their teachers that not only are they giving out these buttons, but they’re explaining them to the other kids. At first, we didn’t know if kids were going to wear them, but it’s getting popular.”
A spokesman for the Conroe Independent School District said it is in compliance with state law and that people are welcome to share concerns at Board of Trustees meetings or with district administrators.
Teachers in school districts where Ten Commandments posters have yet to be distributed say they are mulling over how they want to address them with students, if at all.
Ajha Farrow, who teaches English and theater to students ages 10 to 14 in a rural area of north Texas, said a local church has announced it would be donating posters soon.
When that happens, Farrow said, she plans to design a “world religions wall” to be inclusive of all faiths and ideologies.
Teachers at her school have the ability to post “sentimental things” in their classrooms, she added.
“We have teachers who have Bible verses, as well as teachers who have photos of them with their LGBTQIA+ partners. That freedom should be there,” Farrow said. “But to mandate one walk of life, one religion, it’s extremely unconstitutional. And I plan to be as maliciously compliant as possible so that all of my students, regardless of religion, or lack thereof, feel valued, comfortable and seen.”
The post How some Texas teachers are fighting the Ten Commandments law in classrooms appeared first on NBC News.
