Haynes, Charles & Nord, Warren. (1998). Taking Religion Seriously Across the Curriculum. Washington, D.C.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
$18.95 ISBN 0-87120-318-9
Reviewed by Jessie A. Moser
August 5, 2002
Should religion be taught in the schools? Before you say that could never happen, two authors have persuasively made a case for a religious studies course in public school in their book, Taking Religion Seriously Across the Curriculum. After September 11, books about Islam became overnight, national best sellers as news anchors scrambled to understand the distorted motivations of Islamic fundamentalists. Journalists were the first to seek relief from their ignorance, finding books and authors to define jihad and understand the connections between religious fanaticism and the motivations fueling the suicidal pilots. World cultures, religious conflicts, history, art, literature; how can they be taught or understood by an educated person without an essential understanding of what motivates people of faith throughout the world.
Without an understanding of religious differences, we fumble through life and run the risk of learning the hard way, by offending someone. I can testify with personal examples where experience was a hard teacher. I gave a high school friend a Christmas present only to have it returned; she was a Jehovah's Witness and didn't celebrate Christmas. I didn't understand the denominational differences that divided my own faith let alone the nuances of other religions.
Taking Religion Seriously Across the Curriculumis written to argue the need for religion to be taught and to make people aware of an agreement made fifteen years ago endorsing the study of religion in public schools. The little known agreement called the New Consensus made in 1988 by a group of major religious and educational organizations appeared in a report entitled, "Religion in the Public School Curriculum: Questions and Answers". They agreed that "failure to understand even the basic symbols, practices, and concepts of the various religions makes much of history, literature, art, and contemporary life unintelligible. Study about religion," they concluded, "promotes cross-cultural understanding essential to democracy and world peace." (The organizations that participated in the agreement, the New Consensus, include the American Jewish Congress, the Islamic Society of North America, the National Association of Evangelicals, the National Council of Churches, the American Association of School Administrators, the National School Boards Association, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.)
The authors, Warren A. Nord and Charles C. Haynes, argue that public education fails to take religion seriously. Nord and Haynes give three reasons why there is so little religion in a public school education: 1) Educators are paralyzed by the separation of church and state issue. They don't have to be. As long as no one faith is promoted and there is no religious instruction, the school would be within the law. 2) Society is secular. We may be a religious nation but material success defines happiness in this world rather than access to or reward in a world to come. 3) Scientific discoveries define existence and supersede religious views in popular culture.
Increasing understanding of world religions makes for better citizens and provides a better education. The authors give civic and educational reasons for advocating for a designated religious studies course in high school and the integration of religion within the curriculum in lower grades. Nord and Hayes quote the National Council on Social Studies: "Knowledge about religions is not only a characteristic of an educated person, but is also absolutely necessary for understanding and living in a world of diversity."
But who can blame educators for not offering a course in world religion? After all, didn't the courts just jettison God from the Pledge of Allegiance? There is precedence to imagine that a designated religious studies course in public school would meet with any number of lawsuits. But it could be argued that atheism could be represented as a world-view along side of the major world faiths. The authors note that some religions—the oldest forms of Buddhism, for example—make no claims about any god, rather they place more emphasis on traditions, community, and how people live, than on belief in God.
Organizations like churches, mosques and synagogues serve a greater purpose than transferring faith. In a community, they are glue and mortar. To families they are means of connection. These institutions are integral players in cultural identity and therefore history. History is all about this; when it is taught, the institutions that help define relationships in a community and the motivational forces of faith that determine world events cannot be ignored.
The motivation and subject of many artists is to glorify God. Some religions teach that that is our sole purpose. This fact must be taught in Art History. The authors find other subjects where religion can be integrated.
The authors acknowledge that teachers cannot become masters of all religions. If someone wrote the perfect textbook, would the teaching follow? Would world religious leaders submit a description and content for a school textbook on the subject, approved by each organization comprising the New Consensus? Would that move the issue forward? Is there such a book available? An editor of public school textbooks told me their publishing house is developing a series on world religions set for marketing in 2003.
While Nord and Hayes propose more solutions, they identify a dearth of scholarly literature available. What would an outline for a core curriculum in religious studies in the public school look like anyway? No outline is presented, however, the authors realize that time would limit discussion to the major faiths.
The book tries to find the middle ground, the need for understanding. There isn't a ground swell of discussion about this. September 11 may have only temporarily increased the national appetite for non-fiction literature. But, as the saying goes, if you don't pay attention to history you are bound to repeat the mistakes of the past. The need to understand world conflicts throughout history and their religious underpinnings is not reason enough to see the topic of religion in public school debated or discussed anywhere soon. Curricula is caught in a culture war between the religious right who want school prayer, creationism taught and who don't want sex education taught and liberals who don't want school prayer and don't want religion taught and who do want sex education.
Information can be presented without proselytizing or advocating any one faith. There is a need to understand the philosophy that drives and motivates so much of history, art, and human behavior and the choices made by individuals and nation states. The United States is still a religious nation. Biblical quotations are in many great works of literature. "I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together." Students of Dr. Martin Luther King's speech should know that he is quoting parts of Isaiah 40:4 and 5 in the Old Testament. Dr. King's insights on equality and freedom emerge out of his faith and the Bible's teachings. About 90 percent of Americans claim to believe in God, and almost 80 percent say that religion is an important part of their lives. September 11 begged the nation to go public with its faith as it turned to its various expressions to help grieve in a context of hope. Experience is a hard teacher. The authors should be taken seriously.
Where
can you find the book, Taking Religion Seriously across the
Curriculum? Barnes and Nobles found the book in their
listings and offered to order it, but oddly enough, my local
Christian bookstore did not show it on its book-listings. I
checked the Internet, and found it in an online format that I
could read. It was also available for purchase at
http://www.ascd.org/readingroom/books/nord98book.html.
About the Reviewer
Jessie Ann Moser
Wescosville, PA 18106
Email: Moser@ptd.net
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