Written by Don Byrd
Typically when I write about religion in schools, it is to highlight some potential overreach by school officials intent on infusing public education with their own religious views, either out of tradition or opportunism.
In Georgia, for example, a school is under fire for its marching band’s performance of “Amazing Grace” at every football game; a Kansas school recently was forced to remove a portrait of Jesus that has hung in the hallways for dozens of years; In Colorado’s Fremont School District, a lawsuit, subsequently settled, described an extensive entanglement between a public high school and a local church.
When religion in schools is in the news, it is usually a church-state red flag.
Writing in the Washington Post, however, author Linda Wertheimer argues that some religion in schools, done correctly, is a good thing. In curricula all across the country, she says, teachers are providing students important instruction *about* religion, without imposing their own religious views on the class. Wertheimer makes the case that we need more, not less, of this kind of religious literacy education, and we need to start younger.
Here is an excerpt:
[S]chools should do more to give religion a firm place in the curriculum, beginning as early as the elementary grades. That way, kids will be prepared, as they grow, to evaluate what they see every night on cable TV based on real information, rather than a set of stereotypes.
They should know the difference between Shi’a and Sunni Islam — not as a perfunctory nod to diversity, but because they’ll be able to better form opinions about the Middle East conflicts that dominate the news. They should know the difference between Sikhism and Hinduism, considering that those are the respective religions of the last two prime ministers of India — the world’s largest democracy. They should have a historical perspective on the differences between Catholicism and Protestant denominations when the pope visits their country, as he’s doing this month. It’s problematic, as Texas State University’s Joseph Laycock notes, to wait for college to teach religion as a subject, because “many Americans never have the opportunity to go to college.”
Read the whole thing. What do you think? Is religious literacy education for young students a good idea?
