English Other Education / Pedagogy

Hello everyone,

From the book Thank You for Being Late by Thomas Friedman.

This was an era in which Title IV-C Education Department grants enabled public school teachers to apply through their districts to create new curricula that other districts could purchase for low or no fees. It made high school teaching, for those who aspired to it, a very creative job—it wasn’t just a matter of rinsing and repeating what was handed down from the central school’s office. For instance, my World Studies teacher, Lee Smith, and his colleague Wes Bodin created a World Reli-gions curriculum, stimulated by the multireligious nature of the student body in St. Louis Park and the desire by the St. Louis Park School Board to set some guidelines in 1971–1972 on ***what could and what could not be done religiously in the local schools***. Their curriculum was adopted by schools all over the country. Bingham recalled that in 1977 she and Susan Gross, a teacher from Robbinsdale, one suburb over, won a Title IV-C grant to create an area studies program called Women in the World, to introduce high schoolers to women’s history. They ended up distributing the curriculum they wrote nationally—more than a hundred thousand books.

https://www.adl.org/education/resources/tools-and-strategies...

In sum, there is a critical difference between teaching religion and teaching about religion. While it is constitutionally permissible for public schools to teach about religion, it is unconstitutional for public schools and their employees to observe religious holidays, promote religious belief, or practice religion.

What Mr. Friedman writes about took place in 1960s-1970s and I'm not sure that what is written on the liked site applied back then. So my question is: What does "what could and what could not be done religiously in the local schools" refer to? Does it refer to what religios holidays and rites could or couldn't be observed/celebrated? Or does it refer to something else?

Thank you.