Is there a way to teach the fundamental tenets of world religions in an unbiased, faith-detached way to diverse groups of impressionable young people?
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The opening chapter of The Pearl, John Steinbeck’s classic tale of good and evil, is loaded with biblical references to the Garden of Eden. When I taught the book to middle schoolers, we did a short background lesson on those Genesis parallels.
One thing became clear: my students with a Christian background had an advantage in reading the text.
About half my students had at least a passing familiarity with Adam, Eve, and the forbidden fruit. This may be indicative of suburban Texas, where church attendance is more common than many other parts of the country. Whatever the reason, the kids who had frequented Sunday School and Youth Group read Steinbeck’s allegory with ease.
Understandably, finding the layers of symbolism was a much steeper task for the rest of my students. They first had to learn and absorb the original story, then try and apply it to a 20th century retelling.
Many students seemed baffled by the Bible being in class at all, and others were offended at the implication that Adam and Eve were only characters in a story; Genesis meant something much more to them than just one more fictional tale.
One thing became clear: my students with a Christian background had an advantage in reading the text.
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And despite all this, much of the brilliance in Steinbeck’s novella is dependent upon the reader knowing the original text it references.
I confronted then a question that looms over Education:
Should schools teach World Religions?
Teach Religions!:
European and American literature demand an understanding of Catholic / Christian knowledge. Whether you’re reading James Joyce, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Toni Morrison, or Don DeLillo, authors from Europe and America throughout history relied upon biblical narratives to layer their writings. This doesn’t mean they are Christian writers. Sometimes authors use these ancient texts as tools of subversion.
It doesn’t require modernity to question orthodoxy either. Of all the characters in John Milton’s epic poem from 1667, Paradise Lost, the character of Satan is probably the cleverest, most interesting of them all.
But extending beyond the subject of English, students would experience a host of benefits from studying the major world religions. The most obvious and immediate example is giving young people a basic understanding of Islam. There are so many in the media and elsewhere who are ill-informed or under-informed on what Islam actually teaches. Same goes for most of the population.
That ignorance can be manipulated.
Western countries are not homogenous, and the United States is perhaps the most diverse of them all. We live with and among people who represent manifold religious beliefs. To go on living in oblivion as to their doctrinal content seems absurd.
We live with and among people who represent manifold religious beliefs. To go on living in oblivion as to their doctrinal content seems absurd.
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And it is not just fostering a calmer secular society in which multiple belief systems are tolerated. Having a foundation in World Religions offers students new and different perspectives on history and culture. It will likely spark curiosity. And it may help young people understand that humans of diverging beliefs can nevertheless connect with one another. There are powerful historic examples, and it would be one of those rare, precious opportunities to demonstrate in real-world events that strength is often compromise, not violence.
For the love of God, No!:
The most glaring problem, to me, seems teacher bias. Whether Mr. Smith is an atheist, devout Catholic, or recent Buddhist convert, to imagine he can mentally and emotionally drop all that personal attachment at the door of 1st period defies rational inspection. So students will, like it or not, be at the mercy of their instructor’s conscious or unconscious bias.
On a tangential note, teachers will likely be more familiar with some religious belief systems than others. Someone who grew up Mormon, even if she has since dropped that identity, will bring a depth of knowledge to the discussion of Joseph Smith that another person would not.
Same goes the other way around. Teachers are people, and ergo capable of making irrational judgments and assumptions. Could an atheist teach Islam the day after a terrorist attack perpetrated by radical jihadists without bringing any bias into the lesson?
Bill Maher would suggest the answer is no.
Teachers are people, and ergo capable of making irrational judgments and assumptions. Could an atheist teach about Islamic beliefs in the aftermath of a terrorist attack perpetrated by radical jihadists?.
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All of these issues are wrapped up in the obvious fact of belief. Students and teachers have personal beliefs, as do their parents, their families, and their friends. These will inevitably be, at times, at odds with each other.
I remember a friend of mine observing during the 2012 Presidential election that Mitt Romney was weird. That Mormons, and what they believed, was just really weird.
The statement was flat-out shocking, because this is an extremely intelligent, liberal friend, who chooses words carefully. I pointed out that all religious beliefs seems weird to the outsider. A baby being born to a virgin, just to name one, seems incredibly weird if you’re hearing it for the first time.
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But I suppose I was most disheartened because I happened to have a substantial number of Mormon students that year, and I loved them. Eventually, 13 and 14-year olds will turn anyone Ecumenical, in at least one sense: you love all of them.
And it was strange and terrible to hear any of them described as “weird.”
So I think the final question is this:
Is there a way to teach the fundamental tenets of world religions in an unbiased, faith-detached way to a diverse groups of impressionable young people?
If someone has an answer, let’s hear it.
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Photo: Flickr/Vinoth Chandar
Well in Switzerland we do have such a kind of education integrated in the regular school system. Its most important part is a 2-lesson-per-week course for three years when we’re about 13 to 16. I guess we didn’t learn too much – as usual at that age – but it did no harm to have a bit of background knowledge about the world religions.
The foundation for most of my knowledge of religion was in my 10th grade World History class. That teacher believed that the major world religions – Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism – exerted such a powerful influence throughout history that to gloss over them would leave students with a flawed or inaccurate perception. Fifteen years later, I still think his assessment was a valid one. The possibility of bias is a legitimate issue, but I don’t consider it an insurmountable one. Given the demographics of my hometown, that teacher, as well as the one for US history were both almost… Read more »
I attended a Jesuit prep school: one at which, not coincidentally, my dad was a teacher. Although begat through Catholicism, the school was purposely designed to be inclusive. There were some Catholic-based courses, but they were electives. The literature courses, to some extent, suffered from the same Christian bias, especially since the required courses were American and English Literature. In two areas, I would say, the school was particularly geared toward universal understanding. One was in the courses taught by my dad and those in his social studies department. His focus was on critical thinking: he put upon his students… Read more »
As an English teacher, it is enormously helpful to me when students have knowledge and background information in religious texts and traditions of all kinds– it gives them, like you said, insight into parallels, primarily, as well as symbolism. I have also noted that students with knowledge and understanding of religion are more empathetic and tolerant– regardless of whether or not they themselves are religious. That being said, I would agree that it is hard for teachers to drop their biases– my world history teacher in high school was a vehemently anti-Christian atheist, and while I gained a very thorough… Read more »
Why would we give archaic, make-believe stories a stage in the classroom? You mention Islam, for example – if a young mind reads that text, they are set up to think in a very black/white, right/wrong, us/them way, which only leads to psychological distress. That is in addition, of course, to all that pesky “kill” stuff mentioned in the text, as well as the subjugation of women. Same with the Bible. The texts are maybe some of the worst books around that we continue to insist are important, and for what? They do more harm than good. Why keep giving… Read more »
No.
No. Religion cannot constrain itself in such a way as to be taught in an unbiased, faith-detached way. Its entire raison d’etre is to arrogate followers, power and money to itself, and there is nothing it craves like a captive audience.
It can be taught at the college or university level inasmuch as a college student is in a better position to decide for him/herself whether to enroll in such a course or not, and has presumably acquired at least some critical-thinking skills at that point