Religion and "Civic Virtue" in the Public School Classroom: Is it "A Little" or "Lack of" Knowledge that is the Dangerous Thing for a Society? Teachers of literature, art and music (to name but three) in universities have long lamented their students' lack of general knowledge ; they have also explicitly commented upon the lack of biblical knowledge in their students. My good friend and itinerant lecturer Dr. John Patrick (who travels the world from his home near Ottawa on behalf of the Christian Medical and Dental Society) has for many years pointed out the astonishing lack of knowledge of the Bible amongst medical students and doctors. When a professor asks a group of students to raise their hands if they are familiar with the parable of the Good Samaritan, for example, it is now common to find, apparently, few, if any hands, raised; this in classrooms containing some of our most schooled citizens. The situation is, apparently, uniformly bad whether we are talking about the United States, Canada or the United Kingdom. John Patrick, however, uses the lack of biblical knowledge as an example of something deeper that is missing - - a Christian culture. As a very gifted biblical teacher and committed Christian he wants medical students to find not just any faith, but the Christian faith. His goal, under the auspices of the Christian Medical and Dental Society is education, argument and learning leading to conversion - - he is unapologetic about his apologetics. What about settings in which conversion per se is not the goal but, say, exposure? Is there some sort of middle ground in which it is better to hear about the biblical stories or other ethical stories outside of any express process of apologetics leading to conversion? Some would say "yes" to this, others "no"; this is one of the important questions facing those who are concerned about the kind of curriculum we have in public education, one which has led to the mass ignorance about which so many university and other teachers comment. Is there a danger in reducing the Christian faith to the teaching of biblical stories cut off from claims about the truth of those stories and our responses in relation to such claims? Many thoughtful Christians believe so. They would rather not have non-Christians s teaching children what the Christian faith entails, and since public school teachers come from a wide variety of belief groups it would be best, short of using the provision of school chaplains (unlikely in the current setting) to let sleeping dogmas lie. Faced with a choice between religion taught as an artefact severable from its lived faith in a community of co-religionists, some religious believers would echo the arguments of those separationists who believe there should be a strict wall between any public functions (such as education) and any religious teaching whatsoever. Some years ago George Grant wrote an essay considering the question of religious education in a Canadian context, expressing a concern that religion matters precisely as a set of claims to truth and that to water these down or, worse, have them taught and explained by those who might themselves pass on their scepticism and doubt, would be worse than the alternatives. All this is background to two very useful recent columns by literary and cultural critic (and law Professor) Stanley Fish passed along to me by my old friend Vancouver lawyer Tony Saunders. These two columns from the Opinion pages of the New York Times, place in the context of a reflection on religious truth claims, a very useful set of related questions to those I have outlined above, though Fish himself seems to believe that one cannot draw a line between the ultimate truth claims of a religion and any aspect of its "usefulness" in an educational sense. Those columns may be found here: "Religion without Truth" http://select.nytimes.com/2007/03/31/opinion/31fishs.html?_r=1 and "Religion Without Truth Part Two" http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/religion-without-truth-part-two/?apage=2#comments Fish argues that when any religion is taught implicitly or explicitly as but one of a variety of truths, as is necessary in the classroom, that religion is not being respected and what happens within the classroom will, by this act of bracketing, denigrate, minimalize or neutralize what goes on outside it. Here is what Fish says in his second article listed above: ‘But an academic inventorying of the competing candidates for religious truth will inevitably slight what is at stake in believing any one of them because it will treat the alternatives as objects to be thought about rather than as visions to be lived. To academicize a political topic is to deepen our knowledge of it. To academicize the truth claim of a religion is to kill it, "for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life" (II Corinthians, 3:6)'. Fish argues that a certain amount of biblical knowledge needs to be taught, but is also aware of the danger such minimalization offers to the bigger picture of the religious faith. He concludes his first column by asking "...if you are going to cut the heart out of something, why teach it at all?" I disagree with this way of viewing the matter. There are strong arguments for including religiously informed materials in appropriate ways in public school classrooms - - to lead learners towards the great questions that religions tackle without providing (because public school cannot properly do so) the context within which such questions must be lived to be answered. Perhaps the question can be approached and made more concrete in this way. Let us ask this question: "Is it better that the Parable of the Good Samaritan be taught as the Parable of the Good Samaritan, one of Jesus' illustrative stories from the New Testament, to all students alongside, say, the Aesop fable of the lion freed from the net by the mouse or the story of the tortoise and the hare-- or is it better that the parable not be taught? Few would disagree with the educative value of Aesop's fables, but can we do better than these? Is something to be gained by everyone in knowing this parable regardless of the whole religious story within which it is contained - - the claims about Jesus as the Messiah etc.? Another way of asking this would be to ask "can that parable, standing by itself, convey something sufficiently important that it should be taught as a stand- alone story or as a group of such stories from the Scriptures?" Here, of course, the same questions would also be raised about key stories from various religious traditions. Another way of getting at the question is to ask the following: what is the content of what we might call, for shorthand, civic virtue"? Is there a basic set of widely moral and ethical concepts that we think are matters essential public education in terms of citizenship, as adding, multiplication and subtraction are to any education in mathematics? If so, do the religions contribute to this body of teachings and knowledge? I don't see how we could answer "no" to this question if we claim to be a society in which we jointly affirm such shared notions as "justice" "wisdom" "fairness" and "tolerance", all of which require a certain sort of moral or ethical education for these terms to have any meaning, and if we are at all attentive to the history of where our basic ethical ideas have come from in countries formed within the Judeo-Christian moral tradition. However, once we reach this point there are a series of hurdles to implementing anything "moral" or "ethical" informed by the religions not the least of which is our society's deep contemporary fear of moral language and religions today. I've referred elsewhere to this as a functional metaphobia (fear of metaphysics). We prefer fuzzy and unclear terms such as "values" to anything that might have clear content such as "virtue", yet those terms just referred to-- "justice" "wisdom" and "fairness"-- are if they are to have any meaning at all, objective and therefore teachable as moral (e.g. we "ought to do x or y") categories or we are collectively left defenceless in front of random choices organized by the more powerful wills. The question is, then, how to teach them? And this brings us back to the kinds of stories we use and how we understand the role of religion as the richest ground for many of our stories about what is just and what is fair and what is obligatory and what is not. We need, in short, some approach to educational principles and processes that stand, if they can, alongside religious and other ethical beliefs without denigrating them but providing some core content of "right" and "wrong" and "tolerance" so that children have a better basis upon which to base their own ethical reflections in life and make informed choices about what forms of life are best for them to live in as persons in relationships with others (not just as isolated choosers). Is it better that the civics question "who is my neighbour and what are my duties to this neighbour?" be discussed and informed by the central story in the Christian tradition that deals with this or not? If we recognize, as I think we must, that some children will not receive basic virtues education (and the term basic here is key) in their homes and contemporary urban or suburban alienation, isn't there some basic core that public schooling should introduce for national and community reasons? Here an important point needs to be made. The "story" of the Good Samaritan can be viewed, as practicing Christians obviously view it, as deeply theological - - a story containing much about self-sacrifice and a pre-figuring of Jesus' once and for all sacrifice of God to himself for humanity on the Cross - - and it can also be viewed as a story about how those who are "neighbours" are those who, by their actions, help others who may not be of their clan, community , race or religion. It can be taken, in other words, on several levels. To say it cannot have importance on any level because it is not being introduced for meaning on all levels seems, as the old adage had it, a bit like cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. Both levels are important, but not all aspects may properly be the kind of expression or exploration we want or can legitimately expect in a public school classroom in which the children of atheists and agnostics sit side by side with the children of Christians, Jews, Hindus, Humanists and, perhaps, Wiccans and others (in each of which group there could be stridency of religious or non-religious belief). So what do we do? Well, I want to suggest that there are essentially three alternatives, three difficulties, three important contexts and three important principles that can usefully inform our thinking. Three Alternative Approaches 1.Exclude stories that have a religious origin out of respect for religion (a kind of separation of church and state perhaps being used here both by religious and non-religious citizens); 2.Include stories from religious sources to illustrate aspects of vice and virtue considered necessary (but not by the religious as sufficient) for citizenship where various religious and non-religious believers have their children educated side by side and that it is in all their interests to have the best grounding for genuine tolerance and respect based upon a certain knowledge content regarding religious beliefs; 3.Include ethical and moral stories only from non-religious sources on the assumption that these will have wider appeal and not threaten those from any religious tradition on the grounds that none of them emanate from a religious basis, so they can be used widely. Carefully chosen fables or ethical stories might provide the ground here for common acceptance. These three approaches raise the following three difficulties or concerns (as touched on briefly above): Three Difficulties or Concerns 1.With respect to exclusion of all religious stories - - ignorance of other traditions and deprivation of some of the key illustrations of parable to the detriment of a richer ground for education; 2.With respect to inclusion of religious stories both a concern that the teaching of, say, a biblical story would open the door to religious indoctrination or dogmatic insistence or that inclusion of stories that contain truth-claims as if they were only stories without wider truth claims would water down or neutralize what religions believe in ways that harm religious belief in families and communities; 3.With respect to the inclusion of fables but not religious stories, and similar to the last aspect of the concern about the watering down of religious parables to "only stories" that the inclusion of fables but not religious parables elevates fable and story to a level of authenticity implicitly suggesting that religious traditions or stories are irrelevant or even less true than fables-- again, to the detriment of genuine respect for tradition. In addition, such an approach suggests, wrongly to some, that "ethics" or "morals" are religiously neutral or could arise without any reference to deity, deities or the sacred. Since the approaches in 1, 2 or 3 above and the concerns expressed in A, B and C above may be shared equally by both religious and non-religious parents, is there any approach available that satisfies everyone or seems at least more fair than others? I'd like to suggest that attention to several contexts and principles emerging from these provide some way forward here or at least some principles that should be kept in mind for any future initiatives. Three Contexts and a Principle that Emerges From Each Context One: We Live as Citizens of a Constitutional Democracy and Education is better than Ignorance First, that as citizens in a society such as ours we recognize that our children will be living together with those educated side by side in the public school setting - - in other words, all citizens have an interest in what all children in public education are taught. Thus we would wish education rather than ignorance as a general outcome. This education must be more than just empirical fact education but moral and ethical in the widest sense (including historical) which requires some exposure to religious concepts and stories as important to morals, ethics and history. Principle one: Inclusion of some sorts of story or parables (including religious) rather than exclusion of all is in everyone's interest.
Context Two: The Role of the State and Concerns about Parental and Community Rights: We recognize that the State (law and politics and such public spheres as public education) does not "own" the children of its citizens but provides the means for some (but not all) forms of education for them. Both religious and non-religious parents in a public school setting do not wish the public school to be involved in religious or other forms of specific indoctrination of children. We recognize that there is no clear answer to whose religion and which version of it would be taught if we were to teach a particular religion. Would the Christian parent be happy with their child being taught about Wicca or having the truth claims of Christianity being taught by someone who was not a Christian (or a certain sort of Christian) and could not answer the most basic questions with anything like sympathy for the sometimes subtle theology underlying any particular version of the Christian (or Jewish or Hindu or Muslim) truth claims of the religion or denomination? To ask the question is to see that the answer from each perspective is "no." Religious and non-religious parents would rather the public setting was maximally respectful of their own traditions and beliefs. Principle two: The public school classroom is not the place for public school teachers to teach about the truth claims of various religions as it would lead either to inappropriate proselytizing of beliefs not shared by the parents or insufficient care about the content of the religion so as to water down its claims to truth.
Context Three: While Public Schools are Outside of Religious and Non-religious Communities of Belief the Public System Should Be Maximally Respectful of and Encourage the Involvement of These Communities in the Drawing up of the Curriculum and in Appropriate Ways, its Delivery. Parents and religious communities have an interest in what future citizens will know about their religions, but what the parents and religious communities (or non-religious communities such as atheists, humanists or agnostics - - if the latter have any organized communities) wish is for their religious or non-religious beliefs to be accurately described. These communities wish their children to continue within the communities and do not wish to have the public system steer their children away from family and community involvement until such time as the children are of sufficient age to make their own free and informed decisions. Principle three: The involvement of the widest sort of religious community and non-religious community involvement in the methods and curriculum of public education in relation to civic virtue is necessary. Involvement in delivery in appropriate ways might also be encouraged.
Conclusion: As a matter of civic urgency, the current avoidance of any systematic teaching of morals and ethics by way of key stories relating to virtues such as "courage", "wisdom", "justice" and "moderation" must cease. Where such virtues may, as each can, be illustrated by parables from the different religious traditions or non-religious fables (such as Aesop) the origin of a good story or parable in a religious context must neither be a ground for its exclusion from public education nor its being taught as a complete explanation of how the religion understands the story in context. In other words, religious stories must clearly be stated to be "understood most deeply and coherently within the lived lives of religious communities guided by their religious beliefs and rules" but that does not mean that particular aspects (such as individual parables) have nothing to offer people outside those communities. What conclusions we are to draw from stories of all sorts is informed only in part by learning the bare rudiments appropriate to a public school setting. What choices we make in relation to dogmatic truth claims are to be guided by our families and communities and affiliations, and cannot and should not be answered or raised in a public school setting. What is needed in Canada is a Bill of Educational Rights and Freedoms to go along with a similar Bill of Religious Rights and Freedoms which will jointly recognize the importance and the limits of religious and non-religious beliefs in public education and the necessary role of community involvement in the important but limited role of the State in both public education and religion. Communities must be respected and each has its associational rights independent of the state. We should not be surprised when children who have never been taught "virtue" haven't the faintest idea what "virtues" are, when children who have never been taught the great stories of our traditions (such as the central parables) cannot raise their hands with any confidence saying they know about "the Good Samaritan" or "The Prodigal Son" and what some of the meanings are in those illustrations. We all need to ask "who is our neighbour?" and begin applying the answers to the development of richer school curricula in Canada (and elsewhere) as a matter of great cultural importance. The initiative for this might well have to come from community and national association leaders (including but not limited to the religions) in connection with provincial and federal politicians who recognize the problems herein described. Something like strategic initiatives built around principled articulations of this sort might be of great assistance alongside our developing awareness of the role played by constitutional legal developments. When a question of such wide-spread importance as "what are the basic moral conditions of citizenship?" is or seemingly cannot be addressed in public schools and its solution would necessarily involve so many different communities and much suspicion and fear, a set of principles that recognize the importance and limits of state functions - - such as in public education, while recognizing the importance of diverse communities, is necessary to overcome the current blockages. I hope that this short essay contributes towards the kind of conceptual clarity that leads to the sorts of civil society and legislative initiatives suggested. Iain T. Benson© May 5, 2009 1 By specific indoctrination I mean that where divergent matters of a belief nature are legal (such as with respect to religious or certain sexual matters to name two controversial ones) the public system must not use its powers to force acceptance of particular beliefs whether they be of a dogmatic religious or sexual nature. 2 The Canadian Constitution does not contain an equivalent provision to Section 234 of the South African Constitution (which was adopted about a decade later than the Canadian one) this provision was designed to encourage the involvement of civil society in the drafting of additional "Charters of rights" which would assist the judiciary and politicians in terms of giving detail to the more general terms of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution in that country. There is no reason why the spirit of this sort of provision could not animate comparable pieces of Canadian interpretation legislation on a federal or provincial level.
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