World History Teaching and Public Education

Teaching about Religion

By Susan L. Douglass  - November 23, 1998

A second significant trend affecting world history is the widespread acceptance of teaching about religion. Guidelines for teaching about religion have been the key to restoring this content in public school classrooms, and history has become its major curricular vehicle. Among the advances in scholarship over the past two centuries, improved knowledge about the various religious traditions has been one of the most culturally significant. Of all the world’s nations, public schools in the US have probably traveled farthest along this path. This is attributable to the religious diversity of this country, and to a persistent strain of religiosity among Americans. These factors have increased awareness of religious content and its role in education. Another essential and uniquely American element is the shared realization that knowledge of the diverse faiths of fellow citizens can strengthen the civic framework of contemporary America and lessen social conflict. The trend toward including the world’s religious traditions in curriculum and textbooks has been growing over the past two decades. With the promulgation of state standards, teaching about religion has become a basic element of world history curriculum nationwide.

Coverage of the human spiritual experience is widely recognized as an element of historical knowledge. The development of guidelines indicates that teaching about religion requires a special type of discussion and interpretation in order to make it valid. If the guidelines for accurate, authentic and fair presentation of a religious tradition are not followed, the focus of the subject becomes something altogether different from what was intended. An inauthentic, slanted presentation about the beliefs and teachings of a given religion in fact teaches little or nothing about the religion itself. It teaches only what those outside the tradition think about it. A discussion based on others’ religious opinions is valid only in a very narrow historical sense, such as studying the effect of one group’s ideas about another’s faith in a specific historical period, explaining episodes of religious persecution, conquest, or missionary efforts. If students expecting a neutral portrayal of beliefs and practices receive no cues that the text is based on opinion rather than a carefully nuanced and objective account, then such presentations are profoundly, though often unintentionally, dishonest. Teaching about religion involves perceptions that often seem neutral to the educator, so bias often goes unrecognized.

Exploring the implications of meeting such guidelines presents both challenges and opportunities. Teaching about a wide variety of religious traditions in public education, often under the eyes of these faiths’ adherents, is an excellent exercise in teaching about multiple perspectives, in recognizing and overcoming bias and oversimplification. There is surely a spillover effect to be gained in doing it properly and thoroughly, with careful attention to sound sources and scholarship. Educators and instructional material developers have struggled with presenting the basic description of world religions, delved into their scriptures and scholarly traditions, examined the changing social and political ramifications of their teachings, researched their historical and artistic influences. If teaching about religion had rendered no other benefit to history teaching than broadening coverage of social, intellectual, and artistic history, this would be enough to earn it praise. Educators, however, have also ventured into the realm of non-qualitative comparison and contrast among religions and have begun to sort through important issues of interpretation, belief and practice. They try to examine how ideas influence behavior, how religious influences combine with social status, ethnic and geographic factors, honing their students’ skills in examining and analyzing evidence, gaining appreciation for the complexity of human experience. In addition to improving their skills, students of many religions in world history classes are also building a foundation for public discourse which is essential to practicing tolerance in the civic arena and in professional life. It helps students with or without religious loyalties to gain some distance from their own convictions by discussing them with others and learning about the beliefs of others, overcoming parochialism and discovering common teachings and values as well as those that contrast with their own.

Continuing implementation of teaching about religion and developing coverage based on these guidelines will open similar opportunities to those already noted. The status of religion in world history has definitely changed from what it was several decades ago. Practice has shown that mandates to teach about world religions do not increase the tendency to proselytize in the classroom, though it has not eliminated problems concerning religious expression in some schools. In world history, teaching about religion has become a standard part of textbooks and standards, but is largely limited to five or six lessons that provide thumbnail sketches of each religion, with a few more lessons on the development of European Christianity, and scant information on modern fundamentalism. One of the most frequent critiques concerning religion is that world history survey courses often avoid the subject of religion in the modern era. Several state standards documents reflect the need to redress this omission, which gives the impression that secular modernity has supplanted religion.

Once the basic unfamiliarity with religious traditions has been overcome, historical discussion can develop beyond the initial sense of the exotic to proceed toward understanding the role of change in interpretation and practice in societies across the globe. History curriculum is not a zero sum game, particularly given adequate attention to the structure and integration of content. The idea is not to push aside other topics, but to examine another facet of history wherever appropriate, just as the addition of art and literature to history courses has not supplanted other types of information, but enhanced them.