Warren Nord's thoughtful book tackles an issue of great importance in contemporary America: the role of religion in our public schools and universities. According to Nord, public opinion has been excessively polarized by those religious conservatives who would restore religious purposes and practices to public education and by those secular liberals for whom religion is irrelevant to everything in the curriculum. While he maintains that public schools and universities must not promote religion, he also argues that there are powerful philosophical, political, moral, and constitutional reasons for requiring students to study religion. Indeed, only if religion is included in the curriculum will students receive a truly liberal education, one that takes seriously a variety of ways of understanding the human experience. Intended for a broad audience, Nord's comprehensive study encompasses American history, constitutional law, educational theory and practice, theology, philosophy, and ethics. It also discusses a number of current, controversial issues, including multiculturalism, moral education, creationism, academic freedom, and the voucher and school choice movements.

Religion and American Education: Rethinking a National Dilemma (H. Eugene and Lillian Youngs Lehman Series)

Religion & Spirituality

Nord, Warren A.

Religious Studies

The University of North Carolina Press

In this book, Warren A. Nord and Charles C. Haynes chart a middle course in our culture wars over religion and public education--one that builds on a developing national consensus among educational and religious leaders. While it is not proper for schools to practice religion or proselytize, it is not permissible to make them into "religion-free" zones either; schools must take religion seriously. Unfortunately, religion is taken far from seriously in the K-12 curriculum, as the authors' review of textbooks and the new national content standards makes clear. 
In Part One Nord and Haynes explain why schools should take religion seriously, and they outline the civic, constitutional, and educational frameworks that should shape the treatment of religion in the curriculum and classroom. In Part Two they explore the major issues relating to religion in different domains of the curriculum_in elementary education, and in middle and high school courses in history, civics, economics, literature, and the sciences. They also discuss Bible courses and world religions courses, and they explore the relationship of religion to moral education and sex education. The result is a book that is unique in the scope of its consideration of the relevance of religion across the curriculum. Anyone interested in the future of public education will find much that is worth considering in this timely, thoughtful, and provocative volume.

Taking Religion Seriously Across the Curriculum

Haynes, Charles C.

ASCD

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Books by Nord, Warren A.