The blog Religion Clause reports on the new Iowa School District policy on religious liberty:
Teachers shall prepare and teach lessons throughout the year and throughout the curriculum that:
Approach religion as academic, not devotional
Strive for student awareness of religions, not acceptance of religions
Study about religion, but do not practice religion in the classroom
Expose students to diversity of religious views, not impose any particular view
Educate about a variety of religions, not promote or denigrate religion
Inform students about various beliefs, not conform students to any particular belief
Demonstrate the impact of economic, social, political and cultural effects of religion throughout history
Are age appropriate
More here
3 comments:
Overall, this strikes me as a carefully considered and crafted policy. I'll be curious to see how it works out on a practical level, however. For example, I'll be curious to see how comfortable everyone is the first time the social studies teacher decides to discuss Hindu belief and traditions when the class is learning about India.
I'm also curious about how things will play out when a teacher talks about "the role that religion has played in the development of our country." Will the teacher simply promote the whole "Christian nation" story? Or will they give a more nuanced discussion of how the religion (what some have come to refer to as "rationalistic theism") of many of the founding fathers often differed significantly from what people most popularly think of as Christianity today?
Do they want me to write the textbooks?
Demonstrate the impact of economic, social, political and cultural effects of religion throughout history
I'd add "...and effect on religion" as well, but that might be asking too much! ;-/
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