Accurate, Respectful Teaching About the Faiths of Our World

One challenging area attracting increased attention is teaching about world religions. California schools have led the nation. With an increased emphasis on history from the early grades through high school, students have the opportunity to study United States and world history for three years each, allowing ample classroom time for the study of religion.

California’s program, which has encouraged similar changes across the nation, reflects the great strides toward building consensus on the need for teaching about religions and the constitutional framework within which it may be taught in public schools. Considering the contentious debates over public education in recent years, the promulgation and acceptance of these guidelines must count as a remarkable development.

Teaching guidelines have been formulated by Warren Nord of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Program of Humanities and Human Values and Thayer Warshaw of the Public Education Religion Studies Center at Wright State University.

They have been published and elaborated on by Charles Haynes and Oliver Thomas of the Freedom Forum’s First Amendment Center. “Finding Common Ground,” Haynes’ and Thomas’ guide to religion and public education, lays out what is appropriate and inappropriate in teaching about religion in public schools.

Their work is backed up in California by the Three Rs Project (“Rights, Respect and Responsibility”). Based on the premises that schools’ approach to religion must be academic, not devotional, and that schools educate about all religions and not promote or denigrate any, the guidelines emphasize:

* Natural Inclusion: Study of religion takes place within a historical or cultural context.

* Fairness and Balance: Teaching through attribution is the most constructive approach to achieving neutrality (i.e. consistently using phrases such as “Christians believe . . .” or “According to Buddhist belief . . .”

* Respect for Differences: Accurate, respectful portrayal of the beliefs and practices of each faith helps students appreciate spiritual ways of understanding the world as they have played out in history. Moreover, reduction of religion to cultural, philosophical or psychological phenomena, explaining away religious beliefs and portraying beliefs as relative constitutes disrespect for deeply held convictions.

* Religious Scriptures, Role-Playing, Guest Speakers: Exposure to scriptures and other primary source readings is emphasized, but they must be treated with respect and used within the appropriate historical and cultural context. Re-creation of religious practices and role-playing are, on the other hand, inappropriate. Guest speakers and audiovisual content should be appropriate for the public-school setting.

The Council on Islamic Education’s training sessions for more than 8,000 teachers in the last decade show that teachers are very interested in acquiring the tools to teach about religion in academically sound and constitutionally appropriate ways. In order to put life into the guidelines and to make learning about religions a valuable experience for students, teacher training at universities must be improved. Much of the current training provides little knowledge of world religion or of methods for teaching about them.

Council scholars consistently emphasize the application of the “Finding Common Ground” guidelines in their interaction with publishers, policymakers and educators. In partnership with the First Amendment Center, the council is preparing an analysis of how various states include religion in history, social studies and other courses. This study will help educators focus on the need for improved teacher education and instructional materials.

Where do students fit in? One gauge of the hope vested in this quiet but important groundswell was a recent teacher-training session held by the Interfaith Conference of Washington. A few years ago, such a gathering might have gone unnoticed.

This year, however, in the tense atmosphere of concern about students’ well-being, local newspapers and the leading TV news outlet taped, interviewed and wrote. The speakers, among them a council representative, discussed effective teaching about human spirituality.

By learning about ourselves and others in the classroom, in the cool shade of the religious liberty clauses of the First Amendment, there is hope that children and future citizens will learn to practice tolerance and respect, and gain important insights into themselves and others.