EPS 490: RELIGION AND EDUCATION

In recent years there has been considerable attention given to religious education and to the "wall that separates" religious and public schools. In this seminar we will evaluate legal, philosophical, philosophical and educational challenges to the present arrangement and will explore the viability of a number of alternative proposals.

Syllabus:

• PBS Video: School Prayer and First Amendment Discussion

General Argument (Required):

• James W. Fraser, Between Church and State: Religion and Public Education in a Multicultural America, (St. Martins Press).

Exemplars (Required Background):

• Wisconsin v. Yoder, Selected portions of live recordings of oral arguments before US Supreme Court, May it Please the Court, ed. Peter Irons and Stephanie Guitton (New York: The New Press, 1993) to be heard in class.
• Simmons-Harris v. Goff (Ohio Supreme Court) (packet)
• Simmons-Harris v. Goff (United States District Court; Northern District of Ohio; Eastern Division) (packet)
• Jackson v. Benson (Supreme Court of Wisconsin) (packet)

Elmer John Thiessen, Teaching for Commitment: Liberal Education, Indoctrination and Christian Nurture (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1993), chs. 1-3

Elmer John Thiessen, Teaching for Commitment: Liberal Education, Indoctrination and Christian Nurture (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1993), chs. 4-6

Elmer John Thiessen, Teaching for Commitment: Liberal Education, Indoctrination and Christian Nurture (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1993), chs. 7-9.

 General Argument (Required):

• Warren Nord, Religion and American Education: Rethinking a National Dilemma (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), chapter 1.
• William Connolly, Why I am not a Secularist, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).

Exemplars (Recommended):

• Anthony Bryk, Valerie E. Lee, & Peter B. Holland, Catholic Schools and the Common Good, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993) Sections IV and V (packet).
• Robert Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, (New York: Harper and Row, 1985), ch. 4 (packet).
• Daniel O. Conkle, "Professing Professionals: Christian Pilots on the River of Law," Religion, Morality and the Professions in America, The Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions, March 1999 (packet).
• Louis E. Newman, "Personal Values and Judicial Ethics," Religion, Morality and the Professions in America, The Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions, March 1999 (packet).

• Alasdair MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics: A History of Moral Philosophy from the Homeric Age to the Twentieth Century (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966), chapters 9 and 11 (packet).
• Friedrich Nietzsche, "Critique of Morality" and "Critique of Religion," The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), pp. 85-219.
• Friedrich Nietzsche, "Natural History of Morals," Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. Walter Kaufmann, (New York: Vintage Books, 1966), pp. 97-118 (packet).

Recommended

• Fredrick E. Ellis, "The Concept of Liberty in the Papal Encyclical: Libertas Praestantissimum," Educational Theory, vol. 2, no. 4, Oct. 1952 (packet).
• Lawrence M. Krauss, "An Article of Faith: Science and Religion Don’t Mix," The Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov. 26, 1999 (packet).
• Steven Weinberg, "A Designer Universe?" The New York Review of Books, Oct. 21, 1999, Vol. XLVI, No. 16 (packet).

• Eamon Callan, Creating Citizens: Political Education and Liberal Democracy, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), chapters 5, 7, and 8.
• Amy Guttman, Democratic Education, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), chapter 2 (packet).

Required

• Joseph P. Viteritti, "Blaine’s Wake: School Choice, The First Amendment, and State Constitutional Law, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Summer, 1998 (packet).
• Warren Nord, Religion and American Education: Rethinking a National Dilemma (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), chapters 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 and 10.

Recommended

• Mary E. M. Moore, "The Myth of Objectivity in Public Education," Religious Education 90, no. 2, (Spring 1995), pp. 207-225 (packet).
• George W. Dent, Jr., "Of God and Caesar: The Free Exercise Rights of Publid School Students" Case Western Reserve Law Review, Volume 43, no. 3, (Spring 1993) (packet).
• Stanley Inber, "Religious Children and the Inevitable Compulsion of Public Schools," Case Western Reserve Law Review, Volume 43, no. 3, (Spring 1993) (packet).

• Mary Harter Mitchell, "Secularism in Public Education: The Constitutional Issues," Boston University Law Review, Vol. 67, no. 4, (July 1987) (packet).
• Stephen Jay Gould, Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1983), pp. 253-291 (packet).
• Dorothy Nelkin, "The Science-Textbook Controversies," Scientific American, Vol. 234, No. 4, April, 1976 (packet).

(Required Background Reading)

• Leonard W. Levy, "The Supreme Court and the Clause: Judicial Tests and Aids to Parochial Schools," chapter 7 in The Establishment Clause: Religion and the First Amendment, (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1994) (packet).

(Required Reading for Discussion)

• Shelly Burtt, "In Defense of Yoder: Parental Authority and the Public Schools," Political Stability, Nomos 38, eds. Ian Shapiro & Russell Hardin, (New York: New York University Press, 1996) (packet).
• Shelly Burtt, "Religious Parents, Secular Schools: A Liberal Defense of an Illiberal Education," The Review of Politics, vol. 56, no. 1 (packet).
• Francis Schrag, "Diversity, Schooling, and the Liberal State," Studies in Philosophy and Education, vol. 17, no. 1, Jan. 1998. (packet).

(Required)

• Nomi Maya Stolzenberg, "He Drew a Circle that Shut Me Out: Assimilation, Indoctrination, and the Paradox of Liberal Education," Harvard Law Review, vol. 106, 1993 (packet).
• Rosemary C. Salomone, "Common Schools, Uncommon Values: Listening to the Voices of Dissent," Yale Law & Policy Review, 1996 (packet).

Exemplars (Recommended):

• Hammudah ‘Abd al ‘Atk, Islam in Focus, (Beltsville: amana publications, 1998), pp. 151-190 (packet).
• Suzanne Haneef, What Everyone Should Know About Islam and Muslims, (USA: Library of Islam, 1996) pp. 153-175 (packet).
• Albert J. Mendez, "Heretics, All," What Fundamentalist Schools Teach, (NY: Prometheus Books, 1993) (packet).
• Paul F. Parsons, "The Classrooms & the Headaches," Inside America’s Christian Schools, Macon: Mercer University Press, 1987) (packet).
• Mary A. Grant & Thomas C. Hunt, "Current Concerns: 1982-1991," Catholic School Education in the United States: Development and Current Concerns, New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1992) (packet).
• Days of Awe: Prayer for the Jews, Pamphlet of the International Mission Board, Southern Baptist Convention (packet).
• Gustave Niebuhr, "Coalition of Jews Protests Southern Baptist Convention Tactics," The New York Times, Thursday, November 9, 1999 (packet).

• Joel Feinberg, "The Child’s Right to an Open Future," Freedom and Fulfillment: Philosophical Essays, (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992) pp. 76-97 (packet).
• James S. Leibman, "Voice, Not Choice," Yale Law Review, 101, (1), 259-314 (packet).

• Harry Brighouse, School Choice and Social Justice, (Oxford, 2000), Chapters 4 and 5 (packet).

• Nel Noddings, Educating for Intelligent Belief or Unbelief, (New York: Teacher’s College Press, 1993.)
• Kenneth A. Strike, "Freedom of Conscience and Illiberal Socialization: The Congruence Argument," Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 32, No. 3, 1998 (packet).
• Kenneth A. Strike, "Are Secular Ethical Languages Religiously Neutral?" Journal of Law & Politics, vol. VI (packet).
• Kenneth A. Strike, "Dialogue, Religion, and Tolerance: How to Talk to People Who Are Wrong About (Almost) Everything," Curriculum, Religion, and Public Education: Conversations for an Enlarging Public Square, ed. James T. Sears with James C. Carper (New York: Teachers College Press, 1998), pp. 59-72 (packet).