World religion study enhances respect

Posted: 5/26/06

World religion study enhances respect

By Robert Marus

Associated Baptist Press

ARLINGTON, Va. (ABP)—A new study suggests mandatory teaching about world religions in public schools can increase teenagers’ respect for religious freedom and other constitutional rights.

The research studied 400 ninth graders who took the course in the Modesto, Calif., public schools. The district has offered the class since 2000. It is the only required course of its type in the United States, said Charles Haynes, senior scholar at the Freedom Forum’s First Amendment Center, which sponsored the study.

Modesto’s program offered a unique opportunity to ask, “What does it mean to take religion very seriously in the curriculum?” Haynes said. “In many places, people are very afraid to touch it; many teachers and administrators are afraid that if you touch it, you’re going to get into trouble.”

But the study “shows the ingenuity and initiative of Modesto paid off,” said Emile Lester, the study’s co-author and a professor of government at Virginia’s College of William and Mary.

Modesto—population around 200,000—is located in California’s Central Valley, sometimes referred to as the state’s “Bible Belt.” Unlike other areas of the vast and diverse state, the Central Valley has long had a largely Protestant population, with a high percentage of conservative evangelicals. How-ever, recent decades have seen dramatic growth in Asian immigrants to the area—among them large Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist and Hindu communities.

As part of a response to tensions that arose in the late 1990s in Modesto, the district began a “safe schools” campaign to find ways to get students to respect each other’s differences. One of the ways district and community leaders suggested was by teaching more about religious differences. After consulting with educators, parents, students, lawyers and local religious leaders, the district designed the half-semester course and began teaching it in 2000.

The class initially studied seven major world religions in the chronological order of their establishment. The course also included study of the First Amendment’s guarantees for freedom of conscience, taking note to include that atheists and agnostics also are protected by the same guarantees.

“Modesto handled the inevitable tensions brought about by diversity in a productive way, by crafting a course on world religions and the American tradition of religious liberty,” said Patrick Roberts, a political scientist at Stanford University, who was the study’s other co-author.

Students, whom researchers interviewed in-depth before and after the students took the course, emerged more likely to have respect for those of other religions and for religious freedom and other First Amendment ideals.

For instance, prior to taking the course, 80 percent of students said it was acceptable for students of all faiths to wear religious symbols on their clothing while in school. After taking the course, 85 percent agreed with that statement. There were similar increases in the percentage of students saying a candidate’s religious views should not exclude him or her from public office, and people of all faiths had an equal right to erect religious displays on private property.

Although the increases were modest, the researchers said, they nonetheless were statistically significant.

The study also suggested students had a marked increase in the respect they held for other First Amendment ideals after taking the course. For instance, only 25 percent of the pre-course students agreed that whichever political or social group they liked least should have the right to hold public rallies. After the course, 35 percent of students supported extending that right to their least-favored group.

The study also found students gained more respect for the similarities between world religions after taking the course. Prior to the course, about 46 percent agreed with the statement, “all religions share the same basic moral values.” Afterwards, more than 63 percent agreed with that statement.

But that result did not reflect an increase in syncretistic religious beliefs among students, the study’s authors stressed. There was not a statistically significant decline in the percentage of students who agreed with the statement, “I believe that one religion is definitely right, and all others are wrong.”

“Religious conservatives might worry that the course sheds light on similarities of religions traditions, but simultaneously might promote relativism,” Roberts said. “Modesto shows that, even in the most diverse of school districts, this conclusion is wrong. Bringing religious differences out in the open can help students realize that, in America, even religious believers and nonbelievers share a belief in the freedom of conscience.”

That’s because the course was not designed to change students’ views of their own faith, and because parents and religious leaders of all stripes were included from the beginning in the curriculum’s development, said a Modesto teacher who helped design the course and teaches it.

“The religious leaders in our community were very enthusiastic and very supportive of what we wanted to do and what we were trying to do,” said Jennie Sweeney, who teaches the course as well as history classes at Modesto’s Johansen High School. She also serves as the social science curriculum coordinator for the school district.

The full report is available on the First Amendment Center’s website at www.firstamendmentcenter.org.