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Lessons/Discussions |
Teaching About Religion |
in support of civic pluralism |
IT IS OKAY |
IT'S NOT OKAY |
To inform about religion through class presentations and discussion, by employing media in instruction, and by assigning readings and research. To use videos of adherents' conduct in order to inform students about the customs, traditions and worship practices that attend a given religion or worldview orientation. [3Rs] To conduct classroom discussions concerning religion in an environment that is free of advocacy. [TGRPS] To permit students to express their own religious and nonreligious views, as long as such expression is germane to the discussion. [TGRPS] To ensure that you do not endorse or disapprove religion, neither promoting nor denigrating it. [ADL] To guard against injecting your personal religious beliefs by means of strategies such as "teaching through attribution" (e.g., you use such phrases as "Most Buddhists believe …" or "According to the Hebrew scriptures …"). [TGRPS] To say, when referring in class to concepts stated in religious documents or texts, "Adherents of ___ believe that these statements are true." Or, "____ [the religion] maintains that…" (at high school levels) To present a brief statement of personal belief, if asked by the class to tell your religious beliefs [TGRPS]. Considering the age of the students, to answer the question straightforwardly and succinctlyy [TGRPS] To not state your own religious or nonreligious view, if asked. Middle and high school students may be able to distinguish between a personal view and the official position of the school; very young children may not. [TGRPS] To avoid sharing your personal religious or nonreligious views with students, particularly those in the lower grades. [ADL] (elementary level) To use tales drawn from various faiths as part of a wide variety of stories read by students, as long as the selected material is presented in the context of learning about religion. [FCG] To use religious symbols, provided they are used only as examples of cultural or religious heritage, as a teaching aid or resource. [TGRPS] To display symbols on a temporary basis as part of the academic lesson being studied. [TGRPS] To invite a guest speaker for a more comprehensive presentation of the tradition or worldview under study: - Consult their school district policy concerning guest speakers in the classroom. - Take care to find a speaker with the academic background necessary for an objective and scholarly discussion of the historical period and the religion being considered. - Advise a guest speaker of the First Amendment guidelines for teaching about religion in public education and that a talk must be academic in nature and must not be advocating a religion. [TGRPS] To excuse individual students from lessons that are objectionable to the student or the students' parents on religious or other conscientious grounds (subject to applicable state laws-schools enjoy substantial discretion to excuse individual students, but students generally do not have a Federal right to be excused from lessons that may be inconsistent with their beliefs or practices) [USDE] |
To organize activities that may be easily perceived, rightly or wrongly, as promoting students' participation in a religious practice. [3Rs] To place students into "role-playing" or other participatory situations where they will experience aspects of belief practices that may be contrary to their own worldview traditions. [3Rs] (More information on role-playing) To advocate for your personal religious beliefs or to solicit or encourage religious or antireligious activity .[USDE] To ask of students that they state their own religious or nonreligious view. [TGRPS] To encourage students to accept or conform to specific religious beliefs or practices. [ADL] To let students proselytize peers or express their views in ways that are disrespectful, coercive or inflammatory. [OABITAR] To affirmatively oppose or show hostility to religion, thereby preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe. [ADL-with court citation] To ignore the consequence for youngsters of their teacher voicing belief statements which do not clearly and objectively ascribe the belief to others. [OABITAR] Parents are recognized as having the responsibility for their children's religious or nonreligious upbringing. [FCG] To recite from religious or nonreligious documents as if their passages are generally accepted. [OABITAR] To endorse as factual the events or concepts from any religious text, no matter how widely revered. [OABITAR] To turn an inquiry concerning your personal beliefs into an opportunity to proselytize for or against religion. [TGRPS] To inject personal religious or nonreligious beliefs into a discussion in an attempt to persuade students to your view. [OABITAR] To reward or punish students because they agree or disagree with your religious or nonreligious views. [TGRPS] (elementary level) To use stories dominated by a given faith or chosen selectively as classroom or assigned reading without appropriate placement in a clearly defined, secular curriculum context. [OABITAR] To assign or suggest use of specific religious symbols. [TGRPS] To display symbols over a prolonged time or when unconnected to concurrent studies. [ADL] To expose students to an ill-informed guest speaker or one who is either indifferent to his/her responsibilities to make a secular presentation or unable to carry out that duty. Sample situations of concern: - Adherents who have no broad academic understanding of their life stance (e.g., history and development of the religion). - Clergy who simply cannot break from habits of indoctrination. - Speakers who over-generalize from a limited base of understanding to the spectrum of adherents in a religion. - Individuals who generalize beyond their own personal experience within a culture to adherents at large (practices often differ). - Speakers who apply stereotypes to adherents of other worldviews. [OABITAR] To encourage or discourage students from availing themselves of an available excusal option. [USDE] To excuse a student from requirements of studying portions of a textbook merely because the student objects on religious grounds to the material. [ADL] (See below for more information on excusal.) |
More information on role playing: Problems: (1) Role-playing prayers and religious rituals runs the risk of blurring the legal distinction between constitutional teaching about religion and school-sponsored practice of religion, which is prohibited by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. (2) Role-playing also runs the risk of trivializing and caricaturing the religion that is being studied. It is more respectful and educationally sound to view a video of adherents practicing their faith than having students pretending to be such adherents.(3) Role-playing runs the risk of putting students in the position of participating in activities that may violate their own or their parents’ consciences. [Read the full 3Rs' advisory] More information on excusal: Public schools can require that all students use a prescribed set of textbooks if the books neither promote nor oppose any religious practice. The students must only be required to read and discuss the material and may not be required to perform or refrain from performing any act forbidden or mandated by their religion. Mere exposure to ideas that one finds objectionable on religious grounds does not rise to the level of a Free Exercise claim; compelled activity would. [ADL-with court citation 1] 1 Mozert v. Hawkins County Public Schools, 827 F.2d 1058 (6th Cir. 1987) cert. denied, 484 U.S. 1066; Grove v. Mead School Dist. No. 354, 753 F.2d 1528 (9th Cir.1985) cert. denied, 474 U.S. 826; Williams v. Bd. of Educ., 388 F.Supp. 93 (D.C.WV.), aff'd. 530 F.2d 972 (4th Cir. 1975) [July, 2002] |