Skip to main content

The Pew Research Center - A Resource About Religion in the Classroom

The Pew Research Center’s work on “Religion and Public Life” is available online. It includes articles, raw data and analysis. Consistent with the purpose of this blog to provide K-12 public school teachers in Kentucky with resources about the history of Christianity in the Commonwealth, this post is about an October 3, 2019 article, “Religion in the Public School”[1]. The article summarizes the history of court rulings about the national debate since the mid-twentieth century about religion in the classroom. It considers school prayer, the 1954 inclusion of the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, religion in the curriculum and the rights that students and teachers have to express their personal religious convictions at school. All of these issues are grounded in the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the US Constitution. None of these rulings prohibit teaching about religion or using religious texts in the classroom. All of them have been ruled on based on whether the behavior being challenged in court is rooted in the practice of religion being imposed on the students either overtly or by example. This is when a teacher’s freedom to religious expression is allowed to be limited to prevent “a teacher’s coercive potential”[2]. The article explores the tensions that can occur “between the rights of students to engage in religious expression and the rights of other students to be educated in a non-hostile environment”[3]. A law in Kentucky that required public schools to post the Ten Commandments was ruled a violation of the Establishment Clause in the 1980 Stoner v. Graham case. In 2000 the California suit brought by Michael Newdow against the inclusion of “under God” in the Pledge was unsuccessful, not because of its merits or demerits but because of a technicality related to his parental rights. The courts have permitted the study of the Bible in public school curricula when it includes “critical rather than devotional readings and allow[s] open inquiry into the history and content of biblical passages”[4]. When rulings to disallow the teaching of alternative theories to evolution about the origins of the universe such as Intelligent Design or a literal biblical view of a seven-day creation, the basis for the rulings oppose scientific method with faith. In other words, to teach biblical creation in the public school science classroom does violate the Establishment Clause because it relies on faith as the basis for its acceptance. When read in conjunction with the creation accounts from other cultures, however, the Genesis account could legally be included in the curriculum within a literature or social studies classroom, not the biology lab.

The Pew Forum is an excellent resource for learning about religion in the United States. A non-profit think tank, religion is just one of the national issues about which it gathers and analyzes demographic statistics.

By Lesley Barker, PhD


[1] Pew Research Center. “Religion in the Public School” in Religion and Public Life. October 3, 2019. ONLINE at pew.forum.org. ACCESSED 12/1/2020.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why Teach about Kentucky's Early Nineteenth Century Camp Meetings

  Over the next several weeks, this blog will feature posts about the early nineteenth century camp meetings such as the Cane Ridge Revival [1] in Bourbon County Kentucky which happened in August 1801. It was organized and promoted over several months as a Presbyterian celebration of Holy Communion. While Holy Communion remains a very important ordinance in every modern Christian denomination and church, it is usually embedded in a regular congregational meeting, taking no more than about 30 minutes. This was not the case with eighteenth and early nineteenth century Presbyterians. Consistent with the traditions brought to the United States by Scottish Presbyterians, Communion took at least three days. First the prospective participants were required to prove that they were spiritually qualified to receive the bread and wine that represented the body and blood of Jesus Christ. The next day was for the actual sacramental meal. The third day was given to praise and thanks to God for what
Post a Comment
Read more

First lessons about world religion for primary classes

Religion is lumped in with history, literature, languages and art as one of the humanities but we tend not to feel as comfortable teaching about religion as the other subjects. Teaching about religion does not promote any one particular faith. It introduces the fact that there are differences between people and their ideas and practices about God. Primary students can easily be introduced to the idea that there are different religions during social studies units about the community and its people. Different religions use different types of  buildings. Different religions can be identified by the way some adherents dress. When you are teaching about communities, say that people worship in different types of buildings. People who are Christians worship in churches or cathedrals. People who are Jewish worship in synagogues. People who are Muslim worship in mosques, and people who are Hindu or Buddhist worship in temples. Take pictures of any of these buildings in your school community and
Post a Comment
Read more

Arbor Day STEAM (tree) Field Trip for 1st through 3rd Grades Friday, April 28, 2023

  Arbor Day is Friday, April 28, 2023. We're opening the Walking Trail and Arboretum for first, second and third grade classes to come for a 40-minute outdoor STEAM adventure featuring trees. Your students will hear and read poems about trees. They will learn to identify the parts of a tree and count tree rings to figure out how old a tree was when it was cut down. The experience involves a half-mile walk on a gravel trail through a beautiful arboretum at 616 Clintonville Road in Paris, Kentucky. We are charging $2/person. Use this link to select when your group will come and to help us have enough tree cookies on hand. A spacious picnic area is available for your class to use if you want to bring brown-bag lunches. Some souvenirs: books, candy, and trading cards are for sale if your class brings spending money. Please use this link to register your class and to select the time you will come. 
Post a Comment
Read more