Standing Up for the Rights of Students Who Are Different

My name is Antonio Castillo. I am a humanist, a father, and a middle school teacher. I was born and raised in Brownsville, in the Rio Grande Valley – deep South Texas. I started teaching in 2001, moving between a few major cities over 25 years, before finally deciding to come back home.

My family is progressive, for the most part, and Catholic. That makes them part of the majority religion in the Brownsville area. Protestants are in the minority, as well as Muslims, and humanists like myself.

Despite my not practicing a majority religion, my activism had always been met with acceptance. Back in 2015, I led a small diverse group of Rio Grande Valley residents in a campaign to remove confederate monuments and rename a local college building. The group had Catholics, Muslims, and a few other atheists and humanists like myself. I was respected there, and the campaign was successful.

As an educator and an activist, I don’t just teach – I take the time to stand up for the kids who are different, even if it requires legal action. So when our administrators put up prominent posters of biblical scripture in our school atrium and hallways, I knew I needed to do something.

It was a few days before our October open house, where parents met with teachers. Parents started bringing up a poster. They explained that they were surprised and unhappy to see religious messages being promoted in our public school. When I went out to investigate, I noticed, for the first time, a poster that quoted a passage from the Book of Jeremiah about how God walks with us and has a plan for us. Since there was a poster in the atrium, it was the first thing someone would see when walking into the school. It makes sense that parents were concerned – our administrators had recently complied with Texas’s new laws that place the Ten Commandments in every classroom.

I wrote an email to our principal, explaining that the posters were a clear violation of the separation of church and state. I explained that I am not only a teacher, but that I also have rights as a parent, since my child is attending the school as well. And at first, it worked – he removed the posters. But about a week later, he approached me, and informed me that he’d done some research and spoken with the superintendent. He’d been instructed to put the posters back up.

The superintendent’s argument was that the posters had been originally created by a student – therefore, removing them would mean suppressing a student’s free expression. I told them that, as a humanist, I support the freedom of expression, including religious views I may not agree with, but these were the only posters that expressed any point of view about any political or religious subject and therefore suggested that the school was favoring one very specific type of religious expression. These posters also gave no indication that they were created by a student. They were unsigned, and not artistic in nature. They were also placed by our administrators in a very obvious way, which I felt constituted an endorsement, more than an allowance of expression.

It was after receiving another response from our superintendent that I knew I needed to find legal support. That’s when I contacted the American Humanist Association. The AHA’s legal team, with support from the law firm A&O Shearman, wrote to our superintendent, threatening legal action if they didn’t either remove the posters or make clear that all religious expression was permitted equally. Our administrators complied, and the posters were removed.

As a father raising five children with humanist values, I strongly believe religion should remain between a parent and their child. Most members of our community, including most of the Catholics I come across, share this belief. By successfully taking the posters down, we were not attacking religion, we were respecting everyone’s religious beliefs equally. If students want to start their own prayer group, or explore their religion at home with their parents, they should be able to do so freely – without feeling pressure from teachers or school administrators.

Our success was important for not just my students, but for my fellow educators. Our success shows that when you question something that violates peoples’ rights, you don’t need to feel intimidated. There are resources available, and you can actually win.

I hope that parents and educators will remember that it is up to them to take action to protect the separation of church and state – I hope they will feel empowered by this success to stand up for the rights of students who are different. I would encourage you to reach out to the American Humanist Association’s legal team through email legal@americanhumanist.org if you are having to deal with a similar issue in your school system.