Religion. Culture, and School Flashcards
Religion:
- It involves shared consciousness and shared activities, and has its own language.
- It can exclude outsiders and provide a set of social mores into which individual members are socialized.
- It provides an overarching ethos for legal systems, ideologies, educational systems, even whole civilizations.
- It is a source of personal identity learned from contact with other members of faith.
- It is permanent and objective.
Major Groups:
- Christianity - Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant
- Secularism
- Judaism - Hasidic, Orthodox, Conservative, Reform
- Islam - Sunnis, Shi’ites
Responses to the Church and State Conflict: (kid who didn’t want to dance)
Assimilationist:
• Sees it as inappropriate for school authorities to make concession to cultural or religious minorities, since all children living in the Western world, irrespective of their ethnic origins, should be initiated into the traditional values and way of life of their country of residence. (Children should assimilate to majority group)
- Issues in School:
- Lack of continuity between home and school
- Celebration of holidays
- Content of the curriculum
- Prejudice
- Behaviors (boys/girls, clothing)
- Social issues (dating, sexual behavior)
- Religious observances (dieting, praying)
- Constitutional & Legal Issues:
- The rights of all religious liberty should be respected by school officials
- No religion should be endorsed in public schools
- The school must help students develop knowledge and understanding of religions and world views other than their own, and teach them to respect the rights of those who hold such beliefs.
- Not legal to teach Ten Commandments
- Legal to read Commandments as part of lesson about religion
- Students can engage in voluntary prayer
- Teacher cannot engage in voluntary prayer
- Issue of what content to cover: balanced approach (religious and nonreligious) vs. non-balanced approach
Worldview –how we view:
- Death and dying
- Loss of physical ability
- Illness
- Relationship loss
- Abortion
- Sexuality and sexual orientation
- Victimization by violence
- Natural disasters
- Depression
- Psychiatric conditions
- Mental retardation, learning and behavioral problems
Examples
- Chinese culture: spirit possession, soul loss as causes of illness; treatment with exorcism, magic, shaman
- The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (Fadiman); Hmong child and epilepsy
- Latino: psychological states (embarrassment, envy, fear, fright); environment (bad air, bad food); supernatural causes (bad spirits, bad luck, witchcraft); fold diseases (mal de ojo, susto); curandero, santero
- Taking spiritual and religious history
- How important was/is religious practice and affiliation in the family?
- Importance of religion in extended family?
- How has religion influenced individuals, marriage, family?
- How do family members celebrate religious holidays?
- How does religions influence your everyday life?
- Beliefs, practices? Expectations?
Responses to the Church and State Conflict: (kid who didn’t want to dance)
Celebrationist:
• Claims that the boy in the story is making an authentic moral decision based on his personal moral values. As such his decision should not only be supported but celebrated as part of the enriching diversity of the multicultural school. (We should celebrate differences as part of diversity)
Responses to the Church and State Conflict: (kid who didn’t want to dance)
Secularist:
• Claims that the purpose of schooling is not to support any particular religious position, but to increase understanding and expand students’ horizons beyond the present and particular circumstances of their home and cultural communities. (Schools should not support any particular religious position)
Responses to the Church and State Conflict: (kid who didn’t want to dance)
Neutralist:
• Their response involves the claim that school officials should neither promote nor denigrate religion, but that they should respect the right of students to act in accordance with requirements of their religions, and to be free from any compulsion to act against their religions. In correspondence with the first amendment.
