When some junior high school students in five states go to history class next year they will listen to pop singer Neil Diamond's "Coming to America" and read from Puritan leader John Winthrop's writings.
The experiences are part of new curriculum developed by the Williamsburg Charter Foundation that aims to help students understand the role of religion in history and promote tolerance in an ever-increasingly diverse nation, its compilers say.The curriculum, titled "Living With Our Deepest Differences," is also one that the developers of the Utah Coalition for Religious Freedom in Public Education hope to use as a model for a curriculum Utah students would study in social studies.
"Public schools are now simultaneously the storm center of the problem and the test ground for any contending solution. Living with our greatly expanding deepest differences while ignoring the public schools is an impossible task," a statement about the curriculum says.
Not everyone, however, believes that such a program can deliver what it promises, particularly in Utah. Michele A. Parish-Pixler, executive director of the Utah office of the American Civil Liberties Union, believes the program may be used by the Utah coalition as a front for a hidden agenda.
"This organization may be used as a Trojan horse to bring in unconstitutional practices (into schools)," she said after attending a recent coalition meeting. "I honestly can't tell what they are up to with this thing. It is disturbing."
In 1990, the foundation's draft curriculum will be piloted in public schools in California, North Carolina, New York, Michigan and Maryland. The curriculum says that teaching about religion in public schools is constitutionally protected. Simply teaching religion is not.
Utah education officials and coalition members attended a US WEST teaching symposium on religious liberty in a pluralistic society at Boise State University in October where they had a look at a the Williamsburg Charter Foundation curriculum.
The foundation, a non-profit organization, has brought together religious leaders, professors and politicians of both liberal and conservative leanings to affirm the nation's commitment to freedom of religion. The Williamsburg Charter was signed by a wide variety of groups in June 1988.
Those backing the program have hailed the new curriculum as a much needed response to more than 20 years of U.S. Supreme Court First Amendment decisions involving religion and the public schools. The decisions have made textbook publishers, educators and elected officials shy away from - or altogether delete - references to religion.
A coalition of 16 educational and religious groups recently joined in a statement, "Religion in the Public School Curriculum: Questions and Answers," which tells how to constitutionally teach about religion in public schools. Included on the list are the American Federation of Teachers, American Jewish Congress, Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, National Association of Evangelicals, National Council for Social Studies, National Education Association and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
"Public schools may teach about the various religious and non-religious perspectives concerning the many complex moral issues confronting society, but such perspectives must be presented without adopting, sponsoring or denigrating one view against another," the statement says.
Thomas A. Shannon, executive director of the National School Boards Association, said that those U.S. Supreme court decisions put "public schools in a paralytic confusion from which they are still emerging today."
"The United States accompanied with most of the rest of the world is deep into a profound school reform effort. Teaching about religion deserves to be a centerpiece in that reform," Shannon said.
He supports the Williamsburg Charter Foundation curriculum that would be a unit in social science classes and emphasizes five "big ideas." They are:
-Religious liberty or freedom of conscience.
-The religious liberty clauses of the First Amendment are the oldest and most successful part of the U.S. Constitution.
-Increasing diversity in the nation has brought contributions and challenges.
-Religion has been a part of some of the best and worst movements in American history.
-The challenge of Americans today is to live with their deepest differences.
Shannon said that the nation needs to capitalize on public opinion that supports teaching about religion in schools. Recent polls have shown support for such programs. He said governors, local school boards and state officials need to be persuaded to make teaching about religion in schools part of their education agenda.
Some education officials also want textbook publishers to incorporate the contributions that religion has made across the world and the United States in history and shaping society. California recently made a request for such an addition to new history textbooks the state will purchase. The Utah Textbook Commission made a similar request in 1987.
A recent American Federation of Teachers study of five commonly used high school American history texts found the impact of religion and religious beliefs upon this country's history is frequently neglected. The textbooks are or at one time were approved for use in Utah public schools.
-How this program is being promoted in Utah and the local reaction to it will be addressed in subsequent parts of this series.
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What high school texts leave in - and out
The following is from an American Federation of Teachers' study of five texts. The study is titled "Democracy's Half-Told Story: What American History Textbooks Should Add," by Paul Gagnon, University of Massachusetts.
-Textbooks do not provide a clear account of the Protestant Reformation or the ideas of Martin Luther or John Calvin. Without these it is difficult to understand the fervor of the Puritans.
-Accounts of the Salem witch trials, Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams end up as melodrama, though students would be better introduced to tragedy - the clash of two right impulses. In one book, the Salem witch trials are compared to McCarthyism. "Salem still symbolizes the difficulty of making moral choices in the face of community pressure," the book says.
-Students are left with the impression that tolerance is the only "religious" idea worth remembering. But its real meaning is incomprehensible without a solid grounding in matters of faith. Modern readers, always ready to mistake their own indifference to religion for virtue of tolerance, could profit from better perspective, the study says.
-Very little is said about the ideas, customs and values brought from Europe by succeeding generations of immigrants from Plymouth Rock to Ellis Island.
-The religious roots of political movements are glossed over. For example, textbooks underplay the importance of churches and religion in the Progressive movement.
-The deep felt religious convictions that motivated many of the nation's leaders such as Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan, Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King are barely mentioned.