A Busload of Faith
Religion forms a large part of the American experience. Public schools may lean on the first amendment to duck teaching about faith, but belief and dissent are at the core of the nation’s foundation. In the depths of his 1990s dispair, New York rock icon Lou Reed sang, “You need a busload of faith to get by.”
For some, however, religious faith is not a part of their identity. Not that they would explicitly discriminate against believers. Maybe they just find the supernatural less relevant to their lives. God seems a bit ‘old school,’ and believers a bit curious.
It’s ironic that in avowedly progressive places like Brooklyn, embracing diversity sometimes excludes people of faith. Nearly 90% of Americans believe in God or a divine power; at my diverse-by-design school I found plenty of believers.
In 2015 I told The New York Times a complicated story about the tension between belief and doubt. In the article it was reduced to “Matthew Levey thinks he’s doing God’s work.”
A prospective parent asked me, subsequently, if classical curriculum are part of an effort to indoctrinate students. And, given my newspaper statement, did my own religious beliefs align with this plan?
I was taken aback and did not respond particularly well.
The simple answer is that I’m not privy to plans to inculcate religion at any charter school in New York. Classical or otherwise.
Like yours, my religious beliefs are personal. But tolerance is critical, and not optional.
I’ve always advocated for a coherent, content rich curriculum that challenges and informs. At ICS first graders compared and contrasted the beliefs of Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Aztecs, and Mayans. Second graders studied Buddhism and Hindu gods. Our third graders learned about Roman gods.
An education that puts facts first might find it challenging to teach about faith. Yet religion is critical to our history and must be taught, dispassionately. After all, it is a fact that Christians accept Jesus as their Savior, but Jews do not. Massachusetts Puritans disagreed with Pennsylvania Quakers, yet they found common ground to forge a nation. Sikhs wear turbans; that does not make them Muslims. Factual knowledge of others’ beliefs can help heal our divisions.
Teaching about religion allows to us examine an inherently human phenomenon: the vexing, fascinating, ubiquitous fact of faith. Some argue that faith without factual foundation is just like today’s mulish insistence on one’s own political narrative. But there’s an important distinction: religious faith exists in absence of facts, not in contravention of them. Science has chipped away at religion, but believers still believe. There is room for subjectivity, and a case for contemplation. These topics need not compete with math and science.
That’s a hard concept for kids, or adults. Which is why the certainty of belief is so comforting. Psychology teaches us that whether it’s politics, religion, film, or sports belief is wrapped up in self-identity. Ask Bill DeBlasio, a faithful member of the Red Sox Nation, who somehow survived among millions of unenlightened Yankees fans.
Rather than ducking religious history – both the good and the bad – we must teach it, to build empathy, a critical predicate for the kind of understanding so sorely missing from our national debate.
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In 2002 reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and killed by terrorists who justified murder with a warped view of religion. Honoring his memory, Bret Stevens asked us “to believe in an epistemology that can distinguish between truth and falsity, facts and opinions, evidence and wishes.” To fulfill this request we must respect both facts and beliefs, and teach kids to know the difference.
As Stevens concluded, “Danny Pearl died for this. We are being asked to do much less. We have no excuse not to do it.”