Cite as: 533 U. S. 98 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
to give the principle any weight. Edwards involved the content of the curriculum taught by state teachers during the schoolday to children required to attend. Obviously, when individuals who are not schoolteachers are giving lessons after school to children permitted to attend only with parental consent, the concerns expressed in Edwards are not present.7
Fourth, even if we were to consider the possible mis-perceptions by schoolchildren in deciding whether Milford's permitting the Club's activities would violate the Establishment Clause, the facts of this case simply do not support Milford's conclusion. There is no evidence that young children are permitted to loiter outside classrooms after the schoolday has ended. Surely even young children are aware of events for which their parents must sign permission
7 Milford also refers to Board of Ed. of Westside Community Schools (Dist. 66) v. Mergens, 496 U. S. 226 (1990), to support its view that "assumptions about the ability of students to make . . . subtle distinctions [between schoolteachers during the schoolday and Reverend Fournier after school] are less valid for elementary age children who tend to be less informed, more impressionable, and more subject to peer pressure than average adults." Brief for Respondent 19. Four Justices in Mergens believed that high school students likely are capable of distinguishing between government and private endorsement of religion. See 496 U. S., at 250-251 (opinion of O'Connor, J.). The opinion, however, made no statement about how capable of discerning endorsement elementary school children would have been in the context of Mergens, where the activity at issue was after school. In any event, even to the extent elementary school children are more prone to peer pressure than are older children, it simply is not clear what, in this case, they could be pressured to do.
In further support of the argument that the impressionability of elementary school children even after school is significant, Milford points to several cases in which we have found Establishment Clause violations in public schools. For example, Milford relies heavily on School Dist. of Abington Township v. Schempp, 374 U. S. 203 (1963), in which we found unconstitutional Pennsylvania's practice of permitting public schools to read Bible verses at the opening of each schoolday. Schempp, however, is inapposite because this case does not involve activity by the school during the schoolday.
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