Steve Martin once said that he had no problem letting immigrants into the country as long as they spoke our native language: Apache. Well, I have no problem with posting the Ten Commandments in schools, as long as they are posted in the original Hebrew.

I’m joking, of course, but it is as good a response as any to the current movement towards posting the Ten Commandments in every public place you can think of, from schools to courtrooms to government offices. In the wake of Columbine (which occurred, hard to believe, one year ago), a number of people have determined that these ten simple sentences can help to restore the moral fiber of our country.

Twelve different states have considered measures this year to permit the Ten Commandments in public buildings. In two, Indiana and South Dakota, the measures have become law, and a measure in Kentucky awaits only the governor’s signature. A USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup poll last summer found that 74% of Americans supported displaying the Ten Commandments. In Kentucky, supporters began sporting white ribbons on shirt lapels and car antennas after the ACLU threatened a lawsuit, proving that silly ribbon-wearing is not the sole purvey of liberals.

They forgot one thing. It’s still unconstitutional.

Supporters of posting the Ten Commandments argue that the commandments put forward universal precepts that people of all religions can agree with. "We're promoting the fact that there are important values we should hold to, values that cross religions," says John Paulton of the South Dakota Family Policy Council in a USA Today article on the subject. This is true of Commandments like "Thou shalt not murder," "Honor your mother and father," and even "Thou shalt not commit adultery" (despite the problems that our Commander-in-Chief might have with that one).

The problem is with commandments like "Thou shalt not have any gods before me" and "Thou shalt not make graven images." Last time I checked, Hinduism had not yet been declared illegal, and neither had paganism or atheism or any other non-monotheistic religion. For the state to post the Ten Commandments is tantamount to declaring monotheism as the state-approved theistic viewpoint. Jerry Falwell, meet our friend the Establishment Clause.

The controversy really swells around public schools. For all that Kentuckians might support putting the Ten Commandments in courtrooms, I’m sure that even the most hardcore of evangelicals will admit that a double murderer is unlikely to gaze at the wall and suddenly realize the error of his ways. It is more important to question whether our schools need to teach our kids values, and if so, which values.

The statement that there are values that cross religions is a true one, and it is this idea that allows our public school teachers to tell students that, for example, stealing Katie’s lunch money is wrong. There is a question of whether constant bombardment with the Ten Commandments will actually convince kids not to covet their neighbor’s wife; the message might get through to them better if Fred Durst wore it on a T-shirt. The more pertinent question, however, is why Americans feel that kids aren’t getting exposed to the Ten Commandments at home and in church, necessitating the document in schools.

Christians, and conservative Jews, often question why it is that most Jews oppose public posting of the Ten Commandments, when after all they are our commandments as well. Perhaps, but for Jews they are simply ten of 613 commandments. I have yet to hear Pat Robertson, or for that matter Don Feder, arguing that we should also post "let your land lie fallow in the seventh year" and "thou shalt not wear wool and linen together" on our classroom walls.

But there is another reason why Jews are hesitant to post even Jewish precepts in the public domain. The reason lies in the fundamentally different experience of Christianity and Judaism throughout history. Christianity, having experienced 1600 years as state religion, is accustomed to being paraded about in the public sphere. Judaism, having experienced an even longer period of minority status, has taken its original state-centered focus (after all, what other religion has an agricultural code in its holy book) and adapted it to a home-centered religion.

From the Muslim Spain to today’s America, Jews have participated in the larger culture and then returned home to teach Jewish values to their children. This is why, for the most part, Jews who support such things as school prayer and public display of the Ten Commandments are Jews who have their children in day schools, where they experience school prayer and public display of religion with a Jewish focus. Public school prayer and display of the Ten Commandments worries you less when you know that your child is not going to be faced with questions from his classmates about why he prays differently.

Those who want to be part of the American public experiment, at least when it comes to schooling, understand that it should be the responsibility of parents to teach their children religion and values. Many conservative Christians push solutions like the Ten Commandments and school prayer because they understand that many mainstream American parents have abdicated their positions as teachers of faith and morality. Rather than create a movement to return their fellow Christians to teaching their children, they move to have the state do it. It is something they are comfortable with because of the history of Christianity as the majority doctrine.

That’s fine when it comes to math, but Christian parents, not the school, should be teaching Christianity to their children, just as Jewish parents should be teaching Judaism to their children and Hindu parents should be teaching Hinduism to their children. And to that last group, among others, the Ten Commandments simply do not apply.