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Classroom Self-Check How well does your "teaching about religion" avoid the pitfalls of religious indoctrination? Evaluate yourself on each checklist item. The items apply whatever the religion-related subject matter. __ 1. My approach to the teaching of religion at school is academic __ 2. My approach informs students about various beliefs __ 3. My approach is to strive for student awareness and comprehension __ 4. My approach to teaching involves students in learning about worldview traditions and practices __ 5. My approach exposes students to diversity in religious and nonreligious views __ 6. My classroom manner evidences fairness regarding the spectrum of human worldviews __ 7. My goal is to educate about the worldviews __ 8. My classroom’s approach to religion is not devotional __ 9. I do not seek to conform students to any particular belief, religious or nonreligious __ 10. I never press for student acceptance of any religious or nonreligious stance or view __ 11. I don’t let my classroom’s activities reflect the practices of any religion or belief tradition __ 12. I don’t let my teaching approach impose or seem to advocate any particular view __ 13. I neither encourage nor discourage any religious or nonreligious worldviews __ 14. My methods do not promote or denigrate any of them Evaluation. Ideal? [14 of 14] Source [Adaptation]. Many of the checklist items above are adapted from the public school guidelines published originally by the Public Education Religion Studies Center at Wright State University (1988). The purpose of those guidelines was to help educators distinguish between teaching about religion and religious indoctrination. Whereas the original guidelines referred to schools, the focus here is what goes on in the classroom under teacher auspices. [July, 2002] |
Teaching About Religion |
in support of civic pluralism |