The Colorado General Assembly has been considering a bill to require public schools to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms. It won’t go anywhere; legislators have spent most of their time arguing about whether they should be discussing it in the first place.

Senate Democrats have criticized the Republican author of the bill, Sen. John Andrews, for wasting their time on matters of church rather than matters of state. We happen to think it’s good for the legislature to consider such a proposal, if only to understand why it’s unconstitutional. Any requirement to post the tenets of a specific faith on classroom walls would certainly violate the "establishment of religion" clause of the First Amendment, and "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me" is about as specific as it can get.

The legislators must be frustrated, though, because they do want to ensure that children receive a comprehensive education, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that moral values need to be a part of that. Those can’t come from public schools, for many reasons. The thought of a group of politicians attempting to legislate and then enforce values is somewhat amusing. But those politicians are realizing, as are the rest of us, that the forces of good are losing ground. Most parents and most teachers are doing the best they can, but it’s an uphill battle.

Today’s political cartoon shows ten commandments as some kids encounter them. One of those commandments is a spoof on one of the original 10: "Honor thy father and mother (or your step-dad or step-mom, or dad’s girlfriend or mom’s boyfriend or dad’s boyfriend or whoever that guy is with mom this week)." Several of the others’ deal, directly or indirectly, with peer pressure. Clearly, the influences on children these days are not entirely benign.

Sen. Andrews is right in believing that school should be a place where good values are modeled. Students spend many of their waking hours in school; positive influences there can make a big difference in their lives and go a long way toward counteracting negative forces elsewhere. If all kids followed the same basic rules — thou shalt not lie, steal, cheat, kill, etc. — we’d all be better off, wouldn’t we?

In theory, at least, schools can enforce such an ethical code. Educators have been trying to do just that since the first schools were organized. What American public schools cannot enforce, and should not attempt to promote, is a specific religious faith, to the exclusion of others.

Besides being offensive, it’s counterproductive. No one believes that all the "good" kids are those who’ve had a Christian upbringing and the "bad" kids are unchurched or adherents of other faiths. Ethical atheists exist, and other religions have their own moral codes as strict as the Ten Commandments.