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The Diversity
Emphasis – Why?:
Customary rationale for teaching about religion in public education is that
students grow in understanding of the nation and the world as they better
comprehend religion as a cultural force, one that has played a
significant role in human and national history. We take a different
slant! |
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The Civic Framework: There are guiding principles underlying
considerations of religion in public schools. Through its laws, our nation
acknowledges certain inalienable rights for every citizen.
There is a responsibility to help ensure these rights for others, as well as to
expect them for oneself. |
| The Civil Public School: Public schools mold students' conceptions of citizenship.
Classroom teachers impart an image to them of how America looks upon its
citizens’ religious freedom. The schools are to be places
where people of every faith and no faith are treated with fairness and
respect concerning their individual faith convictions or beliefs of
conscience. |
| Religious Neutrality: Educators are leaders of
institutions established by the people through their government. As government institutions, public schools
must be religiously neutral in two senses: they must be neutral among
religions, and they must be neutral between religion and
nonreligion. |
| Religious Pluralism: Pluralism is the condition of society in
which numerous distinct ethnic, religious, or cultural groups coexist
amiably within one nation as fellow citizens. The
ideal of pluralism is a hopeful one for educators who prepare the U.S. citizenry of the
future. Growing heterogeneity gives impetus to working toward such an
ideal. |
| Ultimate Concerns: Humans are "meaning-seeking
creatures," and enigmas of large magnitude face every thinking
human. Individuals living in every age and culture seek to satisfy
their need for personal understanding. Philosophers and sociologists
have delineated these sources of internal angst in many ways. Belief systems have their roots in these concerns. |
| Secular vs. Nonreligious: To a large
extent, these two words are used interchangeably in everyday language. But, contextually—concerning public education—the terms apply todifferent
things. The distinction is an important one for educators. U.S. public schools by law are
secular.
This means the educational enterprise must be "religiously neutral."
That is not the same as being nonreligious. |
| Inclusion vs. Exclusion: The very notion of "teaching about religion"
seems to rule out the idea of and any need for providing academic study of
nonreligious
worldviews. Educators need to be aware of a "concept trap" in
the terminology that disregards a very real portion of the spectrum of
human worldviews. Fair-minded staff will seek to ensure that their
schools' content considerations regarding "the religion domain"
are inclusive, and not exclusionary. |
