Religion in the Classroom

Dilemmas for Democratic Education

Jennifer Hauver James, Simone Schweber, Robert Kunzman, Keith C. Barton, Kimberly Logan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135053536
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Curricula

Dilemmas surrounding the role for religious beliefs and experiences permeate the school lives of teachers and teacher educators. Inspired by the need for teachers and students to more fully understand such dilemmas, this book examines the relationship between religion and teaching/learning in a democratic society. Written for pre-service and in-service teachers, it will engage readers in thinking about how their own religious backgrounds affect their teaching; how students' religious backgrounds influence their learning; how common experiences of school and classroom life privilege some religions at the expense of others; and how students can better understand diverse religious beliefs and interact with people from other backgrounds. The focus is specifically on classroom issues related to religious understandings and experiences of teachers and students, and the implications of those for developing democratic citizens. Grounded in both research and personal experience, each chapter provides thought-provoking evidence related to the role of religion in schools and society and asks readers to consider the consequences of varied ways of responding to the dilemmas posed.

1
Beginnings

In the spring of 2008, I had an encounter that— though I didn’t know it at the time— would change me forever. It was nothing less than a crisis of identity, an experience that shook my foundation and pushed me to begin to see anew myself, others and the world we shared. It is in that moment that this story begins.

***

Christina was an undergraduate student in my early childhood social studies methods course. A self-identified “Biblical Christian” who attended a local congregational mega-church, she was slightly older than the typical undergraduate education student, and married. In her own words, she had recently “recommitted her life to Jesus Christ, her Lord and Savior.”

Christina was one of 27 students in the course that spring whom I invited to think with me about democratic living and learning as aims of social studies education. Preparation for civic life is a goal embedded in educational vision and mission statements across the nation and a central theme of social studies curricula and standards. As has been my practice for some time, I asked the students in the class to reflect on their own experiences inside and outside of schools in order to answer two questions: “What does it mean to be a ‘good’ citizen?” and “How do we come to understand for ourselves what good citizenship entails?” The purpose of this assignment is twofold: 1) to push students to consider their private understandings of citizenship as they have evolved through personal experience; and 2) to set the state for our shared sense-making of this question in relation to our work with children. They were tasked to write a short paper in response to these prompts before coming to class to dialogue with their peers.

Christina began her paper this way:

If our goal is to manifest a definition of a “good citizen” in respect to a world that harbors not even one of them, we fail to see our innate need to recognize our common condition as humans, which is inherently that opposite of good… Psalm 14:1… “there is no one who does good …” Romans 3:12… “there is no one who does good, not even one …” Obviously it is apparent that my definition of a good citizen does not exist because a good citizen does not exist.

Later she addressed democratic citizenship more specifically, writing:

In an act to be “democratic,” we are limiting the views of those who state that there is absolute truth and an absolute order. It limits the option that there is a right path to take and it eliminates the Author who designed it in the first place.

Christina went on in her writing to depict a scene where a fly grows increasingly knotted up in a web that she weaves of her own confusion (moral relativism), ultimately trapping herself for the spider. She likened this scene to the human condition in which we “weave a tangled web” and create a “fleshy feast” for Satan. “Democracy,” she wrote, “is the devil’s snare.”

Christina was the first aspiring teacher I ever met who so eloquently and vehemently opposed democracy. I admit that I hardly knew how to respond to the paper she submitted. That day in class, I invited her to share her opinions so they might be included in our shared sense-making about citizenship. She did so. Then, after a few subtle exchanges of glances, students began to ask questions such as “What do you mean?” and offer examples of good Samaritans from the local community to challenge her claim. Some students seemed generally interested in understanding Christina’s point of view, while others seemed annoyed by her participation. Christina, however, quickly retreated, saying, “Each of us can believe what we want. I’m used to being the outsider and not having my voice heard.” For the remainder of the class period, Christina withdrew from conversation. After class when I asked her to expound upon her last statement, she shared with me that throughout her time in the teacher education program, she had felt ostracized for her religious beliefs. “You all preach democracy and tolerance,” she said, “but you’re not tolerant of me.”

In the days that followed, I talked with a number of colleagues in the hope of making sense of this encounter with Christina. Where had she learned that listening to alternative viewpoints must mean betraying her faith? I wondered. How did she understand the meaning of the word tolerance? The relationship between diversity and democracy? In what ways had her religious understandings played out in the teacher education classroom before and how had other instructors responded? What was I to make of a future teacher who claimed to want to work in public schools with diverse children, but who rejected the idea that there could be more than one way to understand the world? Reactions from my peers were sharp and varied. My closest colleague advised me to return the paper giving it zero credit. Christina had, she reasoned, not answered the questions posed. She had rejected the questions out of hand. Another colleague suggested that I try to counsel Christina out of the program since she clearly didn’t demonstrate the respect for difference necessary to work in public education. Yet another colleague said he thought Christina was just going through a phase and I shouldn’t take it too seriously. Most often, though, my colleagues were disinclined to discuss the issue. “Leave it alone,” I often heard. “Don’t touch that,” others said. My department chair at the time recommended that I not “poke that bear.”

None of these suggestions sounded quite right to me, but I was at a loss for how to move forward. I was deeply troubled by Christina’s claims about democracy, yes. But I was equally concerned about her feeling ostracized within the teacher education program and her accusations that those of us claiming to be “democratic educators” were acting in hypocritical ways. This brief encounter pushed me to think carefully about the purposes I ascribed to my work, about my practice and about Christina’s experiences of both. Unable to resolve the tensions I felt, I did the only thing I could think to do: I approached Christina and asked if she’d be willing to talk with me. I assumed that talk might help us to push past the anger and resentment that had bubbled up in our last class session together, that perhaps I could help to clear up any miscommunication about the assignment, figure out how to make her feel more comfortable in the class, and sort out my own misgivings about the role religious belief ought to play in a teacher education classroom.

Christina was kind enough to meet with me, first in my office, then at a local diner, eventually with a couple of other students who shared her beliefs and wanted to share their thoughts with me. In these discussions I began to see myself in relief— through Christina’s eyes. Though I had long identified as a Christian, having grown up in the Lutheran church, Christina pointedly questioned my Christianity. She believed that I had strayed, bought into a “light” version of religion that suited my more worldly desires. She explained to me what a real Christian is and does, and how she prayed that I would return to the fold. I, in turn, tried to help Christina see the error of her ways, the limits of her understanding and the need for her to be more open-minded. In hindsight, each of us was trying to save the other. We realized, over time, that we were both on a mission and that those missions were colliding. We agreed that maybe the best way to reach greater understanding was not talking, really, but listening. And so our conversations shifted away from telling, toward asking. We asked each other about our own religious upbringings and understandings, we inquired as to how the other understood words and phrases like “open-mindedness” and “tolerance,” reflected on shared experiences of her teacher education program and puzzled together about how to bridge what sometimes appeared to be unbridgeable chasms between us.

I am grateful to Christina for engaging me in these sometimes difficult conversations. I am forever indebted to her for allowing me to use the muddle of our misunderstandings as a space for inquiry. Christina wasn’t the only one. Many former students over the years— Christian, Jewish, atheist, agnostic alike— have shared pieces of themselves with me, demonstrating a willingness to learn with me, to grow in our understanding of one another and of how our religious understandings intersect with our experiences of learning to teach.

In the months and now years that have followed since that first encounter in our methods classroom, I have gained tremendous respect for Christina and others who share their deep religious convictions. I have grown in my appreciation for the relationship between diversity and democracy. I have learned to see myself through new lenses and to walk more cautiously and humbly in the world. And I have come to believe in the incredible power of talk for bridging difference and growing our capacity for community.

I am unfinished and becoming… There are many questions that remain for me about the relationship between religion, teaching, learning and democracy, and this book is my effort to continue the conversation. As someone I love very much likes to say, “We study who we are— to know ourselves better— in hopes of becoming more fully human.” The pages that follow are exactly that— my quest for understanding. In it, I share what I have learned about religion and teaching since that spring in 2008. I have invited others to contribute their own expertise to the book to attend more fully to the range of questions that plague me still. At the outset of each chapter, I have included guiding questions that I hope you, the reader, will take up with me and with others. I do so in the hope that we might come to know ourselves and each other better, to think deeply and critically about the sort of world we hope to inhabit, and how our work as educators might make such a world more possible.

2
Toward Democratic Living and Learning

Guiding Questions:

What do we mean by democratic education?
How are democratic living and learning related?

We in the United States generally agree that schools ought to be in the business of preparing students for engagement in civic life. We do not always agree on exactly what that preparation might involve or what mature civic engagement entails. Moving beyond the rhetorical space of what schools should do treads on highly political ground that most educators and policy makers wish to avoid. Throw religion in the mix and we are even less likely to touch it. Often, to avoid political minefields, we settle on rather impoverished notions of civic education (striving for increased voter turnout or higher scores on national civics exams) rather than on the difficult demands of preparing young people for respectful and responsible living in a diverse society. But if our aims are small in scope, we shouldn’t be surprised when the payouts are also limited. Volunteerism and voting may be slightly up in this country, but so too is political polarization and avoidance of cross-cutting dialogue. Less than a quarter (23%) of adults in the United States engage in discussion of political issues (Mutz, 2006), a phenomenon that researchers say results from people choosing to live in increasingly ideologically homogeneous communities (Bishop, 2008) and a growing aversion to conflict over political issues (Hibbing & Theiss-Morse, 2002).

What would it mean to hammer a stake in the landscape of civic education— a stake that then serves as a reference point for designing and assessing policy and practice? That is the goal of this chapter. In recent years, I have worked hard to articulate what I mean by democratic education, looking through time and space to others who have sought to do the same. I have read widely and talked with a great many self-identified democratic educators from around the world in my quest for clarity. I have visited schools in multiple European countries, across the United States and in Canada. I have spoken at length with colleagues from Singapore, Japan, China, Australia, Central America and the Middle East in the hope of better understanding how others think about preparing students for participation in democratic life. Some of the most interesting conversations I’ve had have been with educators in non-democratic countries, who, because they have strikingly different conceptions of citizenship and civics than I do, have helped me crystallize my own thinking.

Of course, any discussion of democratic education is necessarily laden with particular ideas about what constitutes “good citizenship” and a “good society.” The one I lay before you here is an ideal, born of understandings and commitments I have gleaned from my many experiences. I offer it here as both a starting place and an end goal, because before we can thoughtfully consider the dilemmas of religion, teaching and learning, we must know where it is we are trying to go. As the old Chinese proverb says, if you want to reach your destination, make sure each step you take is in that general direction. Making sure that we are headed in the direction of democratic learning requires a clear sense of what such learning might look like in the end.

Democratic Education as a Path to Civic Mindfulness

I have come to understand democratic education as a movement toward mindfulness—mindfulness meaning awareness and intention (from the Old English translation); and an ability to move beyond the self into greater communion with others (the Buddhist construct of “enlightenment”). The idea of mindfulness captures two central elements of student development theory that can also be found in contemporary conversations about civic education. The first of these is that civic maturity involves a shift away from egocentrism toward mutuality.

Mutuality

Mutuality in democratic education means that “it is in the interest of all to care as much about each other’s self-development as one’s own” (Brookfield & Preskill, 1999, p. 12). Because there is an inherent symbiotic relationship between an individual and her larger community, mutuality is foundational to a healthy democracy. My right to speak my mind, or to practice a religion of my choosing, depends on the right of others to do the same. In other words, if one person or group’s rights can be taken away, so can another’s. It’s the very presence of small, private “publics” that keep the necessary balance in place to ensure freedom for all (Parker, 2003).

Essential to mutuality is approaching interactions with humility and caution. It requires that we admit we cannot ever know what it is like to walk in another’s shoes and that we acknowledge the ever-present possibility that we may be wrong (Parker, 2003, pp. 92– 93). Parker (2003) writes, “If I am cautious when listening and responding, I will engage carefully so that I am not denying or dismissing the validity of the insider’s point of view, nor even appearing to do so” (p. 93). Humility and caution are necessary only because we cannot ever truly escape the private spaces we inhabit and the ways they shape our knowing. Competent participation in a civic space, then, involves,

listening as well as talking, striving to understand points of view different from one’s own, challenging ideas and proposals rather than persons, admitting ignorance, slowing the rush to decision so as to clarify or reframe the problem or gather more information… even appreciating the principle attributed to Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

(Parker, 2003, pp. 87– 88)

Listening, however, is a willful enterprise. Individuals can, and often do, refuse to open themselves up to new and different ideas; to see others as having important contributions to make to a conversation; to listen. Engaging in genuine listening across difference means we must willingly set aside our deeply held convictions long enough to consider those of others. Though we can never truly abandon the lenses we use to view the world, democratic citizenship demands that we participate in the public sphere with a commitment to identifying a mutually agreeable course of action. If we take the notion of mutuality as central to mature democratic citizenship, then an interpersonal skill like authentic, active listening, and an appreciation for its importance, are critical to democratic education.

Strong Internal Foundation

Also necessary for civic maturity is movement away from blind trust in external authorities toward confidence in one’s own ability to make decisions, or the development of a strong internal foundation. An individual who has a firm foundation trusts her internal voice (Baxter Magolda, 2001). Such a person “[knows] herself well enough to determine when to make things happen versus when to let them happen, to live life on her own terms” (p. 274). Civic educators call this move toward a strong internal foundation the development of individual “autonomy” (Barber, 2003, p. 232). Some scholars describe this as a process of “reclaiming the self,” suggesting that the journey of moral development is a quest for knowing, accepting and naming oneself (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986). Siddle Walker and Snarey (2004) say that naming ourselves, particularly against culturally constructed conceptions of who we ought to be, is an indicator of maturity. In this way, naming oneself is evidence of agency:

Agency is the individual’s ability to process and structure his or her life experiences… Because American society devalues people of color, African Americans have formed a sense of agency that relies upon their self-perceptions, rather than the images depicted by the dominant culture. The elements of agency— self-reflection, consistency, personal responsibility, pride, decision-making ability, self-reliance—are characteristics that allow African American children, youth, and adults to rise above and succeed in adverse conditions.

(p. 10)

General agreement exists about the importance of a strong internal foundation for engaging respectfully, responsibly and in ways that honor ourselves and others within the larger world. A diminished sen...