Posted: 04/18/07

 

The importance of informed religious education
The religion on campus debate

Michael Connors | contributing writer
mconnors2@smcvt.edu

Faculty and students of St. Michael’s College gathered in the Farrell Room on April 10 to hear Dr. Peter Laurence speak about religious education. The talk, “New Developments in Religion and Spirituality in Educational Contexts,” comes at a time when religious topics are not a paramount element of young adult education, Laurence says.

Is religious education executed properly?

Dr. Edward Mahoney says he considers St. Michael's religious studies as recquirements to be adequete in relation to other Catholic colleges. (photo, Colin Vallance)

Laurence is the executive director of the Education Transformations Project at Wellesley College. The project is aimed toward academic studies that need to revised in how they are taught.

Laurence says religion can be taught without being preached but that it takes considerable skill to do so.

“The difficulty with teaching about religion has been that the teacher does not come well prepared,” he says. “There are very few ways of getting prepared to do that.”

Religious teaching is part of the legal curriculum in England and Canada, Laurence says, but he thinks that teachers in these countries are also not as well prepared as they should be.

The problem is that teaching religion in schools leaves out the religious experiences that occur during daily life, Laurence says.

“Teaching about world religions is done very well in higher education,” he says. “It’s done very little in the educational systems for younger students.”

The state of California has a policy that makes religion a mandatory subject in it's academic curriculum. They are constantly trying to work on it and improve it, these changes are allowing it to grow over time, Laurence says.

“This was the landmark attempt to re-integrate religion into history,” he says.

On the positive side, Laurence says that not a lot of faulty information is put out to students because it is simply not being taught in most schools.

“In order to avoid teaching misinformation, I think most people just don’t get into it,” he says.

Laurence says there have been cases in the past where teachers have tried to present their own religion as normative. This is illegal however, and teachers have been brought to court over the problem, he says. Cases this extreme, however, are not a very common problem, he says.

Religion in schools

Approximately 30 people, half of them students, attended the talk. After his brief introduction, Laurence led the room in a discussion format for the next hour. He began his talk by speaking about constitutional issues regarding the teaching of religion in the public educational system.

“Many institutions of higher education avoid the question of religion entirely unless it falls under the title of religious studies,” he says.

He says that public schools especially have a tendency to follow this academic policy more strictly. Leaving religion out of education does help support non-religion over religion, Laurence says.

“Many institutions of higher education avoid the question of religion entirely unless it falls under the title of religious studies,” Laurence says.

But he says that it is important, if schools choose to teach religion, to teach more than just the Bible. Students will only come to one understanding of religion if they are only presented with one source, so schools need to understand the necessity of teaching the views of many different denominations, he says. Religion teachers must approach the topic in an even, unbiased manner, he says.

Studying religion is important, he says, but to have the full effect, you must study religion as it exists today. Also, Laurence says that we must study religion as it exists in civilization presently, in order to come to a full understanding of what role religion plays in the modern society.

Laurence recalled a story about his starting of an inter-faith council with convicts at a prison. He says he expected it to turn into a riot but the scene stayed calm because the convicts were able to come to an understanding between each other.

Spirituality is another aspect that we must understand, he says.

“Twenty percent of Americans call themselves spiritual but not religious,” Laurence says. Experiencing both spirituality and religion in life means a search for meaning and a purpose of existence, he says.

How St. Michael’s compares

A talk of this nature can raise questions of how St. Michael’s stacks up against other religious studies programs at different universities. Dr. Edward Mahoney, department chair of St. Michael’s religious studies program, says that Laurence’s presentation was important.

“I think the purpose of his presentation really was much more to engage people in a discussion and a kind of dialogue about some of these questions,” Mahoney says. “Particularly, I think, about the question of the relationship of religion or teaching about religion in the context of public education.”

Mahoney says that education majors who attended the event could benefit greatly from Laurence’s talk.

The religious studies department of a college of any denomination is going to be somewhat different than it is at a place like the University of Vermont, Mahoney says.

There are two main differences that Mahoney says exist between catholic colleges and colleges that aren’t affiliated with a religion. First, there is a difference in the relationship to the mission of the college and how some colleges are much more central to the mission than places such as the religion department at UVM, he says.

Second, there are differences of the courses that are taught and the requirements of the curriculum, Mahoney says.

“Unless you’re a religion major or majoring in something that requires a religion course at some of those other schools, it’s completely voluntary to take it or not,” he says. “Here and at other Catholic institutions, students have to take a certain number of courses from the religious studies department.”

Structurally speaking, St. Michael’s religion department is similar to religious studies departments at places such as Boston College or Providence College, Mahoney says.

“The department itself is fairly broad in our ability to offer a wide variety of courses both within the Christian tradition as well as in other religious traditions,” Mahoney says.

He says that the similarities are mainly seen in the structure, focus, purpose and course offerings of St. Michael’s religious studies department.

All of these aspects of a religious studies department are important to Laurence, he says. He also says that students need to come to a proper understanding of religion and how it relates to the world we live in.

Religious studies professor Raymond Patterson says that St. Michael’s is in the mainstream for religious studies requirements, especially in New England.

St. Michael’s has two religious studies requirements while some other schools have three or four.

“There are a number of colleges that actually have more,” he says. “We’re pretty much in the middle.”

“Becoming knowledgeable in today’s religions is critical,” Laurence says. "Otherwise, all the information taught in the classroom would be biased as a result of the lack of knowledge."