Educational Leadership

This points to a crucial distinction between the private and public realms. Students need to recognize that the public square cannot simply be a mir ror of their private beliefs, religious or otherwise. This doesn’t mean that religion must be constrained solely to the private realm of society. That’s not a requirement of democracy, and it’s certainly not how people actually live. But few of us want to live in a theocracy, even of our own making, much less one crafted by others’ religious beliefs.

of “learning as you go” when striving to understand unfamiliar perspectives and beliefs. It’s simply not possible for teachers to be sufficiently informed about every public issue, much less the ways in which various religious perspectives inform citizens’ stances on those issues. But students can ben efit from walking through the process of investigation and deliberation with their teachers, observing the questions they ask, such as, What are my biases in approaching this issue? What are

Students need to learn how to talk across
religious and other ethical differences as
we navigate our public life together.

The distinction between public and private not only protects and accommo dates reasonable disagreement but also provides room for those who believe in absolute or singular truth. The message to such students should be that good citizens don’t need to abandon their convictions that absolute truth exists, and they have substantial room to live their private lives in accordance with those convictions, but no one gets to fully impose his or her version of that truth in the public square.

the strongest arguments for competing perspectives? How do competing per spectives criticize my own views? and How does this issue affect people whose perspectives and experiences I don’t, or can’t, share? Students also benefit from observing the sources their teachers consult to increase their knowledge as well as their teachers’ commitment to civic multilingualism.

As political theorist Benjamin Barber (1992) reminds us, citizens are not born—they have to be made. Neither can this capacity be developed in a brief unit on character education or demo cratic engagement. Teachers need to be intentional and persistent in their focus on modeling and encouraging civic multilingualism in their students, creating a classroom culture in which conversations about religion and other deeply held beliefs are seen as integral to the education mission. When this culture of conversation is embraced by the school as a whole, the prospects for civic multilingualism become even stronger.

Schools need to help students learn how to keep the civic conversation going—even when religion is part of the mix. Ignoring the reality of our religion infused milieu will only come at our peril. It’s when we sidestep the role of religion in our society that we ensure the conversation will stop well short of what we need to craft a civic life together. EL

7. Students should know their
teachers’ convictions—about
respectful conversation.

There’s a wide range of opinion about how much teachers should disclose about their own personal beliefs. Some of this will undoubtedly be determined by context—the age of students, the matter under discussion, the relation ships and culture in the classroom. But one thing teachers should always dem onstrate passionate conviction about is that respectful conversation and reason able disagreement are essential practices in a democracy.

Teachers can also model the practice

A Commitment Worth Making

Gaining proficiency in a language obviously entails learning vocabu lary, grammatical rules, and other propositional knowledge. But to truly understand a language, to gain genuine fluency, speakers must understand the cultural context in which it is spoken. In the same way, although civic multi lingualism requires communicative skills—active listening, delaying judg ment, acknowledging the strength of opposing arguments, and so on—it must also extend beyond procedural techniques and explore the contested cultural terrain of religion and what it means to the faithful.

Civic multilingualism will not emerge spontaneously in classrooms.

References

Barber, B. R. (1992). An aristocracy of everyone: The politics of education and the future of America. New York: Oxford University Press.

Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
(2008). U.S. religious landscape survey.
Retrieved from http://religions.pewforum
.org
Putnam, R. D., & Campbell, D. E. (2010).
American grace: How religion divides and
unites us. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Smith, C., & Sikkink, D. (1999). Is pri vate school privatizing? First Things, 92, 16–20.

Weithman, P. J. (2002). Religion and the obligations of citizenship. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Robert Kunzman is associate professor in the school of education at Indiana University Bloomington. His most recent book is Write These Laws on Your Children: Inside the World of Conservative Christian Homeschooling (Beacon Press, 2009); rkunzman@indiana.edu.