Mission and Purpose
This web site is designed to assist teachers of middle grades and secondary
level history and social science programs in their handling of religion as
curricular subject matter.
The hope is to facilitate instructional
endeavors that will,
regarding religion, nourish in students a demeanor and civic understanding
that is conducive to public civility and religious pluralism.
Appropriately
conducted, public education about religion can be helpful to our achieving a
nation where citizens of diverse worldviews can live their lives side-by-side in harmony.
Inappropriately conducted studies about religion, however, not only will fail to
achieve these worthwhile ends, but run counter to them.
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Public schools exist to serve all U.S. youth and to equip them as
future citizens. The citizenry rightly expects that academic study about
religion in public schools will be fully in accord with our nation’s civic
promise to its diverse citizenry.
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It is important that youngsters understand that
religious liberty is not only for them and for those who think or believe like
them, but also for fellow citizens who have different understandings. Within civil
law, everyone has religious freedom. It must be guarded
even—perhaps especially—for those whose thinking and traditions are
unconventional or unfamiliar. We look to our schools to
foster in students an attitude that is respectful of a citizen’s
right to liberty of conscience.
Specifically, a teacher who is teaching about religion can use site material to better:
1. Encourage students toward open-minded
and objective consideration of
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the diverse worldviews they may study
in history, and
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the varied forms of “different
believing” that they may encounter in their own life and times |
Note: This educational
undertaking is an inclusive one, in that it incorporates the nonreligious
worldview along with the spectrum of religious world views. (For elaboration,
see the site's Rationale)
2. Help students to appreciate those aspects of our American heritage
that safeguard individual freedom of conscience.
This site is supported by OABITAR, (Objectivity, Accuracy, and Balance In
Teaching About Religion), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization. One distinct aim of
OABITAR is to seek the addition of nonreligion to public school curricula which
include instruction about religion, for the purposes of achieving objectivity, accuracy, and
balance. The overarching goal is one of promoting academic integrity and a
constitutionally sound position of religious neutrality apropos to public
education in the United States.
The website was developed and is maintained by Instructional Systems,
Sacramento, California. This company’s prior curriculum project for OABITAR
resulted in the supplemental instructional module for grades 6-12, Different
Drummers: Nonconforming Thinkers in History .)
Curriculum consultants for and leading developers of this website are Dr.
Paul Geisert and Dr. Mynga Futrell. Drs. Geisert and Futrell have been classroom
teachers and teacher educators, and they most recently authored the college
textbook, Teachers, Computers, and Curriculum: Using Microcomputers in the
Classroom, 3rd Ed. [published by Allyn and
Bacon, 2000], and the module of supplemental instructional materials, Different
Drummers: Nonconforming Thinkers in History [published by Trafford
Publishing, 1999].
The website’s religion consultant is Dr. Gerald A. Larue, Emeritus
Professor of Biblical History and Archaeology and an Adjunct Professor of
Gerontology at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California.
Professor. Larue is the author of many books, among them the text, Freethought Across the Centuries: Toward a New Age
of Enlightenment [published by the Humanist Press, 1996].
