271 - Religion and American Education: Rethinking a National Dilemma

Religion and American Education: Rethinking a National Dilemma
By Warren A. Nord

Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1995. 481 pp. $49.95, $19.95 (pb).

Many of the most violent battles in the contemporary "culture wars" have been fought over the proper place of religion in public education. According to Warren A. Nord, director of the Program in the Humanities and Human Values and professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina, the battle between religious conservatives, who want to restore religious practices to public education, and secularists and religious liberals, who see religion as a private matter, is a false dilemma between equally unacceptable alternatives. Nord, who makes no religious self-identification and leaves open questions about the truthfulness of Christianity or any other religion, offers a compelling alternative, located in what he describes as the "Reasonable Center" of the nation's cultural politics, to this "culture war." On constitutional, moral, and philosophical grounds, he argues that public education in a liberal society must take religion more seriously.

Nord sets the context for his analysis of the status of religion in contemporary public education with a sweeping review of the history of intellectual and social developments in modern Western civilization, American education, and the First Amendment. A study of forty-two high school textbooks in history, economics, and the sciences, which are approved for use in North Carolina schools, reveals that religion receives virtually no attention. More importantly, he contends, these textbooks possess a coherent worldview, a loosely structured set of philosophical commitments that teach students to think about the world in totally secular ways and to see religion as irrelevant, a matter of private and irrational faith or even superstition. If, as postmodernists and others contend, there is no such thing as philosophical neutrality, Nord argues, these textbooks actually "indoctrinate" students with a modern (secular) worldview and against religion. A review of college textbooks yields the same results. Although philosophical neutrality might be impossible, Nord proposes that educators conceive 11 of neutrality as fairness. Rather than offer students a single (and inevitably non-neutral) point of view, educators should take seriously alternative points of view, different ways of judging content, causality, meaning, importance, and truth. This proposal means giving religion a place in a liberal arts curriculum proportional to its importance on a given subject, conveying to students an inside understanding of religion, and contending with it in searching for truth. Furthermore, Nord argues that reasonableness, political civility and inclusivity, respect for the integrity of students, and an informed understanding of the Establishment Clause all dictate a policy of fairness to competing religious and secular ideas. Rather

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than sweeping differences under a rug of silence, Nord contends that the nation's civic life would benefit from an open discussion of the differences. Nord closes with several recommendations. He encourages professors to take sides on religiously debated questions while presenting fairly the range of contesting views. He argues that religious studies departments should include scholars who do normative work in an open manner. Perhaps most provocatively, Nord contends that until secondary education takes fairness seriously and is reformed accordingly, a voucher system, which is adequately funded to enable the poor to participate, should be established.

Nord offers the most comprehensive study of the place of religion in public education to date. His thick historical narratives, richly textured evaluations, thoughtful recommendations, and exhaustive bibliography constitute, an excellent guide to the place of religion, or lack thereof, in Americana education. The work will interest scholars, educators, and parents.

Nord's analysis is not, however, beyond dispute. Antebellum American higher education, despite his criticisms, functions for Nord as an archetype of Christian higher education. Consequently, any change is largely seen as a decline, the inevitable result of secularization. Yet he overlooks the important, though diffuse, ways in which Protestantism continued to inform higher education after 1900. Even today's university is not as thoroughly secular as Nord suggests. Although religiously informed perspectives might not have a place in today's university classroom, he undervalues the significant role that religious activities and interests continue to play in the university's larger educational economy, albeit largely in the extracurricular sphere.

These criticisms, however, do not undermine Nord's persuasive argument for the inclusion of religious perspectives in public education. Whereas other studies, often with great histrionics, offer merely theological or partisan rationales for the inclusion of religious perspectives in the academy, Nord winsomely transcends these parochial arguments by demonstrating how students and American civic life could profit from their inclusion'] in an equitable and judicious manner. In short, Nord provides a genuine alternative to the machinations of both the cultural Left and the Right. Whether one agrees with every detail, Nord has made a most constructive contribution to discussions about the place of religion in American, education.

P. C. KEMENY
Center for the Study of American Religion
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ