It’s a matter of “how” rather than “whether” to teach religion in public schools, according to the panel over at “On Faith.” [1] The question put to the panel was whether religion should be taught in public schools. There was one naysayer [2] (a retired episcopal priest), who argues that trying to teach religion objectively is too prone to abuses.
Among those who said “yes” was Daniel Dennett. He quoted from his recent book, Breaking the Spell. [3] Here’s an excerpt:
“Let’s get more education about religion into our schools, not less. We should teach our children creeds and customs, prohibitions and rituals, the texts and music, and when we cover the history of religion, we should include both the positive–the role of the churches in the civil rights movement of the 1960’s, the flourishing of science and the arts in early Islam, and the role of the Black Muslims in bringing hope, honor and self-respect to the otherwise shattered lives of many inmates in our prisons, for instance–and the negative–the Inquisition, anti-Semitism over the ages, the role of the Catholic Church in spreading AIDS in Africa through its opposition to condoms.
“No religion should be favored, and none ignored. And as we discover more and more about the biological and psychological bases of religious practices and attitudes, these discoveries should be added to the curriculum, the same way we update our education about science, health, and current events. This should all be part of the mandated curriculum for both public schools and for home-schooling.
“Here’s a proposal, then: As long as parents don’t teach their children anything that is likely to close their minds — through fear or hatred or by disabling them from inquiry (by denying them an education, for instance, or keeping them entirely isolated from the world) then they may teach their children whatever religious doctrines they like.
Elaine Pagels concurs:
Yes, emphatically! We should teach comparative religion in public middle schools, high schools, colleges and universities.
At that time, many people believed (as my biologist father did) that religion would wither away as science, psychology, and humanism took its place. Now we need the resources of all of these to help us understand the phenomenon of religion, as well as neurology and sociology . . . [I]f we don’t understand more about it than we do, we are not going to understand the 21st century.
Compare most of the respnonses to the response of Chuck Colson, who wants to teach religion as an “us versus them” mentality. [4]
Print this post [5]
[6]