This book argues that the structure of public education is a key factor in the failure of America's public education system to fulfill the intellectual, civic, and moral aims for which it was created. The book challenges the philosophical basis for the traditional common school model and defends the educational pluralism that most liberal democracies enjoy. Berner provides a unique theoretical pathway that is neither libertarian nor state-focused and a pragmatic pathway that avoids the winner-takes-all approach of many contemporary debates about education. For the first time in nearly one hundred fifty years, changing the underlying structure of America’s public education system is both plausible and possible, and this book attempts to set out why and how.

From the founding of Harvard College in 1636 as a mission for training young clergy to the landmark 1968 Supreme Court decision in Epperson v. Arkansas, which struck down the state's ban on teaching evolution in schools, religion and education in the United States have been inextricably linked. Still today new fights emerge over the rights and limitations of religion in the classroom. The Oxford Handbook of Religion and American Education brings together preeminent scholars from the fields of religion, education, law, and political science to craft a comprehensive survey and assessment of the study of religion and education in the United States. The essays in the first part develop six distinct conceptual lenses through which to view American education, including Privatism, Secularism, Pluralism, Religious Literacy, Religious Liberty, and Democracy. The following four parts expand on these concepts in a diverse range of educational frames: public schools, faith-based K-12 education, higher education, and lifespan faith development. Designed for a diverse and interdisciplinary audience, this addition to the Oxford Handbook series sets for itself a broad goal of understanding the place of religion and education in a modern democracy.

During the mid-nineteenth century, Americans created the functional equivalent of earlier state religious establishments. Supported by mandatory taxation, purportedly inclusive, and vested with messianic promise, public schooling, like the earlier established churches, was touted as a bulwark of the Republic and as an essential agent of moral and civic virtue. As was the case with dissenters from early American established churches, some citizens and religious minorities have dissented from the public school system, what historian Sidney Mead calls the country's «established church.» They have objected to the «orthodoxy» of the public school, compulsory taxation, and attempts to abolish their schools or bring them into conformity with the state school paradigm. The Dissenting Tradition in American Education recounts episodes of Catholic and Protestant nonconformity since the inception of public education, including the creation of Catholic and Protestant schools, homeschooling, conflicts regarding regulation of nonconforming schools, and controversy about the propositions of knowledge and dispositions of belief and value sanctioned by the state school. Such dissent suggests that Americans consider disestablishing the public school and ponder means of education more suited to their confessional pluralism and commitments to freedom of conscience, parental liberty, and educational justice.

This book focuses on the problem of religious diversity, civil dialogue, and religion education in public schools, exploring the ways in which atheists, secularists, fundamentalists, and mainstream religionists come together in the public sphere, examining how civil discourse about religion fit swithin the ideals of the American political and pedagogical systems and how religious studies education can help to foster civility and toleration.

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.

How and what to teach about religion is controversial in every country. The Routledge International Handbook of Religious Education is the first book to comprehensively address the range of ways that major countries around the world teach religion in public and private educational institutions. It discusses how three models in particular seem to dominate the landscape. Countries with strong cultural traditions focused on a majority religion tend to adopt an "identification model," where instruction is provided only in the tenets of the majority religion, often to the detriment of other religions and their adherents. Countries with traditions that differentiate church and state tend to adopt a "separation model," thus either offering instruction in a wide range of religions, or in some cases teaching very little about religion, intentionally leaving it to religious institutions and the home setting to provide religious instruction. Still other countries attempt "managed pluralism," in which neither one, nor many, but rather a limited handful of major religious traditions are taught. Inevitably, there are countries which do not fit any of these dominant models and the range of methods touched upon in this book will surprise even the most enlightened reader. Religious instruction by educational institutions in 53 countries and regions of the world are explored by experts native to each country. These chapters discuss: Legal parameters in terms of subjective versus objective instruction in religion Constitutional, statutory, social and political contexts to religious approaches Distinctions between the kinds of instruction permitted in elementary and secondary schools versus what is allowed in institutions of higher learning. Regional assessments which provide a welcome overview and comparison. This comprehensive and authoritative volume will appeal to educators, scholars, religious leaders, politicians, and others interested in how religion and education interface around the world.