A few days ago I was having dinner with a couple of friends that happen to be opposites in every way. I usually hesitate getting them together, but it couldn’t be avoided. One of them purposely antagonizes the other and likes to watch as I try and diffuse the situation and make everything “all better” as he likes to say. Well, today we started talking about religious instruction within schools and the topic itself “lit the fuse” for an explosion. My one friend said he wouldn’t mind seeing certain aspects of religion being taught, like a unit on religious belief of creation in a science class. He also mentioned a religion or christian class as an elective. These statements proceeded the explosion, which came from my other friend screaming about how religion doesn’t have a place in schools. All of this seemed pretty convenient because as I was browsing my Google reader I came across a variety of articles dealing with religious instruction in schools. Recently both Texas and Alabama have approved the creation of a elective Bible class as well as integrating christian elements into other classes in school. This idea has long been a controversial topic but some states are beginning to take steps in this direction. Ann Work, in her article Let it be Done, states:
“In the 80th Texas Legislature, the state required any district that offers K-12 instruction must offer an enrichment curriculum that includes “religious literature, including the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) and New Testament, and its impact on history and literature.” The offering, however, does not have to be a stand-alone course but may be incorporated into existing English or social studies courses.”
Im not sure how i feel about this. The Bible, as well as other religious texts, have a incredible amount of value to both history and English classes. Including the writings and religious history from the bible, if done appropriately, could work. The Bible is literature and if a teacher can seperate the religious relevance from the text and make it simply a very important piece of historic literature then I believe it can be used within the classroom. However, this is a very thin line and it makes more sense to offer it as an ellective class for students who are interested in the subject can take. Alabama school boards are researching textbooks that deal with the bible. These books connect the bible to literature, history, and art. In Dana Beyerle’s article Dueling Bibles Study Books Approved, Not Used she quotes a local principal who sates:
“It makes some people nervous to think the public schools may actually get into teaching the Bible. . . . Although we live in a state where the Christian influence is strong, we’d have to make sure we teach the Bible as literature and not otherwise,” he said.
Its interesting that these districts have the opportunity to create religion classes, they have not really felt any great desire to do so. School districts have no desire to accumulate any more negative or controversial publicitiy and creating a class or intigraiton process based on the Bible would be very controversial. As a future teacher, I would welcome the opportunity to teach portions of religious texts as documents of historical importance for English or History classes. Ideally, teachers and educators would be able to keep personal belief seperate from these teachings. Unfortunately, this can be a very difficult thing to do. However, effective use of religious texts could be another way to draw students into their work. Religion is a topic in which everyone has delicate feelings about and this can be controversial. However, these feelings can inspire students to explore, interprete and analyze topics at a deeper level than they have done before. Passionate interest or opinions on a subject, like many have with religion, are a inroad to student interest and motivation that is often overlooked.
This is always a very interesting topic to discuss because of the wide range of opinions that are drawn in by the idea of teaching religion in school. I strongly believe that there should be an elective for every major religion because of the need for students to be culturally competent. There have always been major disagreements among religions, many leading to violence, and it may be a stretch, but I believe that if people had a better understanding of the world’s religious beliefs tolerance would be easier to achieve. I am not naive enough to think that there would be no more radical factions, but I am naive enough to believe a little understanding could go a long way. An example would be a fight, any fight, that I have with my wife; when she says I make no effort to understand her the fight escalates, but when I see her side and she sees mine it generally leads to the make-up. Understanding other religions is an important piece to being global citizens, not only other religions, but understanding one’s own religion fully can flatten many stereotypes.
I found your post to be very interesting. I had never heard of any public school using the Bible in a history or literature course. I don’t really know how I feel about this, either. I suppose it would depend on how it’s used. I think it is something that would have to be handled carefully. Many students are going to have differing views on certain portions of the Bible that might come up during class and make some people unhappy. Also, there is the question of which version of the Bible they would be using. Catholics consider some books to be part of the Old Testament that Protestants do not. Of course, there is no denying that the Bible has had a huge impact on history and literature, and incorporating it into a class could help students to gain a greater understanding of a historical event or piece of literature. It is just something that would have to be approached in an appropriate fashion. I think that it probably would be better as part of an elective course. That way students could opt out of it if it made them feel uncomfortable for some reason. At any rate, using religious texts in schools is an interesting subject to think about.
I found your post to be quite interesting (perhaps this has something to do with the fact that I also discussed this topic in addition to discussing the effect of parents’ religiosity in students). Teaching the Bible as literature is obviously quite dangerous in the public sphere but it seems to me to be essential to students’ learning. You mentioned school districts’ concern for creating controversy – this is something that seriously concerns me, particularly given my somewhat politically incorrect viewpoint. I think it quite likely that at some point I will spend time teaching in a district where I am asked to ‘tone down’ some aspect of my insistence on students’ seeing as many viewpoints as is reasonable.
Another interesting aspect of this discussion is the difference in viewpoint of high schools and colleges in their treatment of religion – colleges are obviously much freer to teach about religion. I think this comfortability and its opposite discomfort as a result of parents is well worth analyzing.
Interesting stuff!
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