According to the IDEALS survey of college students on 122 U.S. campuses, conducted by researchers at North Carolina State University, Ohio State University and the nonprofit Interfaith America, just 32% of students said they had developed the skills “to interact with people of diverse beliefs.” Although almost three-quarters of students spent time learning about people of different races, ethnicities or countries, less than half of them reported learning about various religions. Most students received “C” grades or below on the survey’s religious literacy quiz.
Objective education about the world’s religions has the potential to foster tolerance and understanding, and various research groups provide guidelines for religious literacy education. Yet the study of religion may be hindered by hesitation about what is and isn’t legal in public classrooms – a topic I write about often as a professor of law and education, with a particular interest in these fields’ relationships to religion.
Other countries also face challenges in deciding what kind of religion-related instruction can or can’t be legally taught in public schools, and each deals with the question in different ways.
Credit: Jessie Wardarski
Credit: Jessie Wardarski
Though there have been many Supreme Court cases over issues of church and state in public schools, most deal with the First Amendment freedoms of students, staff and parents rather than what’s officially taught in class.
There has been relatively little litigation about what teachers can and can’t instruct students in matters that touch on religion. Two of the exceptions involved lessons about evolution: one decided in 1968, the other in 1987. In both cases, the Supreme Court upheld educators’ right to teach evolution, rather than the biblical accounts of creation, to explain human origins.
Federal trial courts in Mississippi and Florida banned courses in the 1990s that included instruction about the New Testament, ruling that the way they were taught crossed a line and violated the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution. However, this was because the courts determined instruction was being given from a Christian perspective. The court in Florida did allow teaching about the Hebrew scriptures, because the focus was on the texts’ cultural and literary significance.
In the Supreme Court’s closest response to the question of teaching about religion in public schools, 1963′s School District of Abington Township v. Schempp, eight of the nine justices agreed that state-sponsored prayer and Bible reading in public schools violates the establishment clause. Yet the court recognized that “the Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities. Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may not be effected consistently with the First Amendment.”
The court’s decision “plainly does not foreclose teaching about the Holy Scriptures or about the differences between religious sects in classes in literature or history,” Justice William Brennan added in a concurrence. Thus, consistent with religious literacy programs’ approach, public schools can teach about religion, but not in ways that seek to instill systems of belief.
What happens in public schools in the U.S. today will significantly shape tomorrow’s society. I believe encouraging teaching about religion can help America’s rapidly diversifying population to understand and respect others’ beliefs or lack thereof. Discussing religions in an inclusive, objective and academic way can certainly be challenging in a classroom, as there is a fine line between teaching about it and proselytizing – but not doing so has risks as well.
Charles J. Russo is the Joseph Panzer Chair in Education and Research Professor of Law at the University of Dayton.
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