Emile Lester

How Teaching World Religions Brought a Truce to the Culture Wars in Modesto, California.

Despite a growing consensus among scholars and activists about the importance of religion, proposals for teaching about it have often been a source of division rather than unity in American public school districts. Faced with familiar cultural conflicts, Modesto, California, chose to become the first public school district in the USA to require all high school students to take an extended and independent course in world religions. The results of the first, large‐scale empirical research on the effects of teaching about religion in USA public schools provides evidence that Modesto’s bold approach was worth the risk. Surveys and interviews administered to students show statistically significant increases in students’ knowledge about other religions, and levels of passive tolerance – willingness to refrain from discrimination – and active tolerance – willingness to act to counter discrimination. The course has not been the subject of lawsuits or complaints by parents and has gained acceptance among all of Modesto’s religious groups.

Learning about World Religions in Modesto, California: The Promise of Teaching Tolerance in Public Schools

After cultural and religious controversy in Modesto, California, community leaders attempted to increase tolerance and respect by requiring an unique world religions course for high school students. The first large-n empirical study of the effect of teaching about religion in public schools indicates that students taking the course showed statistically significant increases in passive tolerance, their willingness to refrain from discriminatory behavior, and active respect, the willingness to take action to counter discrimination. This research documents the circumstances that gave rise to the course and evaluates the courses effects using qualitative and quantitative evidence. It also connects the course to a larger research tradition in political science on the effects of civic education programs that promote liberal, democratic values.

A More Neutral Liberal Education: Why Not Only Liberals, But Religious Conservatives Should Endorse Comparative Religious Education in Public Schools

If we value religious tolerance and autonomy, we must breach the silence about religion in public schools, and add a comparative religious education to the compulsory curriculum at the high school level. This education would expose students to a variety of religious beliefs in a fair manner by allowing religious denominations themselves to participate in deciding how their beliefs are presented to students. The major obstacle to the implementation of such an education is the objection of religious conservatives and fundamentalists that it would violate neutrality. Not only is a comparative religious education able to survive the criticisms that religious conservatives routinely make against a liberal education, but the inclusion of such an education is the only way to make a liberal education truly neutral. This education would provide the recognition of the importance of religion in general and of conservative religions in particular that religious conservatives complain is lacking from the status quo compulsory curriculum in public schools.

The Right to Reasonable Exit and a Religious Education for Moderate Autonomy

Political and comprehensive liberals are both pessimistic about finding a satisfactory way to resolve the debate over whether and how to expose students in public schools to religion. An examination of John Tomasis Liberalism beyond Justice and William Galstons Liberal Pluralism reveals that a central cause of this pessimism is the presumption that an education for autonomy must encourage students to become rational choosers of their beliefs. This essay suggests that it is possible to found an education for autonomy on the more modest goal of ensuring that students have a reasonable ability to exit from their communities when they feel that membership is too painful. An education for exit would involve exposing students at the high school level to alternative religious beliefs to ensure they are aware that it might be possible to lead tolerable lives and achieve salvation outside of their communities of origin.

British Conservatism and American Liberalism in Mid-Twentieth Century: Burkean Themes in Niebuhr and Schlesinger

This article looks at how Reinhold Niebuhr and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. drew on themes in Edmund Burke’s conservative writings to express ambivalence about equality and populism on behalf of progressive goals, and how they offered an alternative understanding of liberalism as the pursuit of progressive values restrained by respect for conservative virtues. The article pays particular attention to Niebuhr’s and Schlesinger’s views on successful leadership. Like Burke, these mid-century liberal theorists advocated the adoption of the virtues of the British aristocratic ruling class to check leftist populism. On the surface, their praise of aristocratic virtues may seem incompatible with their undeniable celebration of American democracy during the mid-twentieth century. Closer examination suggests, though, that their praise of democracy has a Burkean tinge.

The Examined Life

Warren Nord’s new book Does God Make a Difference? is endlessly generous. In part, this is due to Nord’s meticulousness. Many other authors on religion and education, myself included, focus on the most controversial issues. Nord gives these controversies their due, but also pays careful attention to equally important yet less examined issues. His chapter on religion, science and education, for instance, analyzes the debate over intelligent design, but also reflects upon various alternatives to intelligent design, and how schools should treat cosmology, and inform students about debates on ‘‘consciousness, minds, and souls.’’ In part, the book’s generosity is a credit to Nord’s possession of what John Keats called negative capacity. A crucial element of Nord’s liberal education about religion is the encouragement of empathetic imagination and understanding of different people’s viewpoints from the inside, and Nord models the empathy he preaches. He views the religion and education debate from the perspective of and provides sage advice to public school teachers of various levels, university faculty, textbook publishers, public school administrators, parents, and, of course, students. But most of all, Does God Make a Difference? is endlessly generous because Nord has the virtues of a Renaissance-style scholar, or more fittingly, a Renaissance-style philosopher. Near the book’s end, Nord affirms the central Socratic wisdom that the unexamined life is not worth living. And we have here abundant evidence that Nord took this creed to heart. Indeed, there seems to be precious little that Nord did not examine. His book uses informed disquisitions on philosophy, moral and political theory, science, literature, history, and economics to determine how religious perspectives can play a role in their teaching. This makes Nord’s book an act of protest against the

Deweyan Democracy and Education About Religion

Québecs “Ethics and Religious Culture” curriculum shares many similarities with John Deweys child-centered approach to education. The curriculum suggests how and why Deweys approach of encouraging students to think critically and engage in sympathetic imagination can be integral to democratic citizenship and essential to the securing of respect for religious freedom in particular. Still, that a Deweyan education about religion is superior to the alternatives does not mean that it is flawless. If the Québec curriculum for the most part highlights the strength of the Deweyan approach, it also suggests that, at least in the case of religion, an education aimed at developing critical and imaginative skills can sometimes also violate democratic norms of religious respect. The article concludes by briefly considering how Québecs curriculum could be altered and supplemented to make its implementation practically feasible in the United States and consistent with widely shared views in the United States on religious freedom.

Ralph Waldo Emerson and Teaching About Religion in American History

ABSTRACT The question of how to teach about religion in American history has been a major point of contention between conservative Christians and progressives in recent years. Nowhere has this issue been more contentious than in Texas where the State Board of Education (SBOE) in 2010 adopted controversial standards regarding the influence of the Bible upon America’s Founding Fathers. The thought of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and particularly his essay “History” provide a valuable normative framework for analyzing the goals of teaching about history in public schools. “History” contends that the study of great individuals is crucial for self-cultivation.

World Religions in Modesto: Findings from a Curricular Innovation

Beginning in the fall of 2000, the Modesto City Schools district required that all high school students participate in an extended course on world religions.1 The course takes place in the 9th grade and lasts for 9 weeks. The first two weeks of the course examine the basic principles of religious freedom, and America’s heritage of religious freedom. The subsequent seven weeks of the course examine major Eastern and Western religious traditions including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Sikkhism, Confucianism, and Hinduism. The course was made possible by the confluence of two events. In 1999, the superintendent became particularly concerned with incidents of harassment of gay and lesbian students in Modesto’s schools. Members of gay and lesbian civil rights groups were invited to high school campuses as part of the district’s “safe schools” policy, which angered religious conservatives in Modesto’s community. Meetings open to the community and mediated by Charles Haynes, senior scholar at the First Amendment Center, were organized to resolve this dispute. These meetings produced a wide-ranging discussion about what sort of curriculum would be most consistent with the safe schools policy. A consensus eventually emerged that a world religions course would be consistent with this policy. At the same time, California eliminated its social studies requirements for the 9th grade and allowed each school district to decide whether and what type of social studies courses to offer. Curriculum administrators and social studies teachers consulted and agreed that the time would be best spent by implementing a semester-long course divided equally between discussion of world geography and world religion. After the basics of the course had been designed and a textbook identified, the district sent letters to religious leaders in the Modesto community to request their participation in an advisory council to review the course. The board was composed of representatives from the Protestant, Catholic, Islamic, Sikh, Jewish, and Greek Orthodox communities. Members of other religious communities were solicited but chose not to participate. The course was implemented