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A cycle of religious (il)literacy beginning with students today
Society for Scientific Study of Religion
Wing Yu Alice Chan, McGill University
October 2014
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Religious Literacy• Religious illiteracy*:
Lack of understanding re:
• “1) The basic tenets of the world’s religious traditions and other religious expressions not categorized by tradition;
• 2) the diversity of expressions and beliefs within traditions and representations; and
• 3) the profound role that religion plays in human social, cultural, and political life historically and today.” (AAR, 2010, 4)
Religious literacy:
• The ability to discern and analyze the intersections of religion within social, political, and cultural life (Moore, 2007).
Religious Bullying• Religious bullying is a type of bullying
• Occurs due to the differences in religious identities between the bully and bullied.
• Can be manifested through intentional emotional, mental, or physical degradation through physical, psychological, or verbal means in-person and/or online.
• (Kirman, 2004; PrevNet; stopbullying.gov).
Agenda• Positionality
• Theoretical considerations
• Implications
• How realistic are these implications?
Adult and student perspectives today
• What of tomorrow’s adults?
Positionality
•Teachers are uncomfortable discussing religion
•Youth teased for religion without teacher support
•Religious bullying in the classroom
•Disgruntled employees
EmployeeGrade 6-8 Teacher
Teacher-Researcher
Community High School Counselor
Youth
Adult
Parent/Teacher/
Adult
Theoretical considerations regarding religious bullying
• Research on bullying has identified an intergenerational link: parents who bully in childhood are likely to have children who also bully their peers (Farrington, 1993, in Craig & Edge, 2012).
• Bullied youth can carry their feelings of hurt and fear into their adult life (Craig & Edge, 2012).
Cram’s (2001) nine themes:
1. The feeling of abandonment by significant others.
2. The desire to seek revenge.
3. “Deep feelings of repulsion, fear, and hate.”
4. The level of violence in childhood.
5. Children are familiar with bodily experiences.
6. Children know the pain of emotional abuse.
7. The hurt child, the victim of the bully, is part of the unhealed, hurting adult.
8. Adults feel guilty because of childhood behaviour.
9. Those who watch bully behaviour are as deeply affected as those who are directly bullied.
2012 and 2013: 500+ Sikh students surveyed, 700+ in focus groups, 50 students interviewed (http://sikhcoalition.org/documents/pdf/go-home-terrorist.pdf, 2014)
Religion in Education: Contribution to Dialogue Key findings (4 of 17):
• The majority of students appreciated the religious heterogeneity in their societies, although a range of prejudices were expressed.
• The most important source of information about religions and worldviews is generally the family, followed by the school.
• Irrespective of their religious positions a majority of students are interested in learning about religions in school.
• Those who learn about religious diversity in school are more willing to enter into conversations about religions and worldviews with students from other backgrounds than those who do not have this opportunity for learning.
(REDCo, 2009, retrieved from http://www.redco.uni-
hamburg.de/cosmea/core/corebase/mediabase/awr/redco/research_findings/REDCo_policy_rec_eng.pdf
Modesto, CaliforniaIn response to the religiously bullied Sikh students and the over 300,000 Sikhs residing in California, the Bill “Declares that the World Geography-World Religion class has been very successful in helping Sikh pupils feel more accepted and in helping pupils understand their First Amendment rights, understand and practice the character traits of respect and responsibility, become informed about the religious diversity in their community and the world, and obtain greater understanding about the six major world religions.” (California Assembly Committee on Education, ACR 154, 2014).
Implications
Implications• Problematically, religious illiteracy promotes
religious and racial bigotry, violence, “and hinders cooperative endeavors across the full scale of human interactions from interpersonal relationship to negotiations between and within nation-states” (Moore, 2014, p. 379).
• This type of bullying requires immediate attention as witnesses or victims of religious bullying are often alienated and exposed to injustices, which can lead to mental health, suicide, and religio-political affiliation through religious extremism, thus harming the global society (Keddie, 1998; Moghaddam, 2005).
Adult & Student perspectives today
Source: http://www.economist.com/news/business/21600694-managers-are-having-accommodate-workers-religious-beliefs-while-taking-care-expressing
Muslim students• “Run-of-the-mill bullied child
syndrome” exists among all Muslim American children (Kabf, 1998).
• Muslim Canadians have similar experiences
“My cousins who came from Iran when they were 8 or 10…went to public schools…and they were ostracized for wearing the veil…They still believe in Islam and everything, but they don’t wear the veil, and they’ve loosened up a lot and very much become Westernized in order to fit in and to be able to make friends...” (Ali, research participant, Beyer, 2013).
Photo source: Reza, National Geographic Society,
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/10/photogalleries/InsideMecca/index.html
What will the future bring?
http://www.pewforum.org/2014/04/04/global-religious-diversity/
Hindu students
Sonya: University cohort of 42 student teachers had a handful of ‘brown people’: “…you can count the brown people on your hands.” (Nason Clark and Holtmann, 2013)
Sonya: Introduced
Diwali to Gr 2 students
during a lesson on
celebrations around the
world because it had
been missing in her own
public education
experience.
Students: saw
Indian dress,
pictures, home
videos, and
were very
impressed.
Photo source: Joe McNally, National Geographic, http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/diwali-festival-of-lights/#
Citizenship & Worldview education
“…combining democratic education for citizenship and religious and worldview education in schools” (Miedema, 2014, 370).
“The moral of the story is not just that we need mere tolerance. It is that we need better education – and not because it is nice to be multicultural but because the world’s religions, no longer quarantined in the nations of their birth, now live and move among us: yoga in the church halls, nirvana in our dictionaries, and Sikhs at our gas stations.” (Prothero, 2007, 3).
Lingering thoughts• Are there connections to religious literacy programs
and religious bullying?
• If a cycle of religious (il)literacy really exists, is Modesto, California’s World Geography & World Religions (WGWR) course and/or Montreal, Quebec’s Ethics and Religious Culture program the solution?
• Is a cycle of religious (il)literacy perpetuated in some areas and not others?
• The UK (and possibly other countries) have had RE programs for decades and yet still have religious bullying problems. Are schools not the solution?
• Is parent and community involvement the solution? What if this is unattainable?
ReferencesAmerican Academy of Religion. (2010). Guidelines for teaching about religion in K-12 public schools in the United States. American Academy of Religion. Retrieved from http://www.aarweb.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/Publications/epublications/AARK-12CurriculumGuidelines.pdf
Beyer, P., & Ramji, R. (2013). Growing up Canadian: Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
California Assembly Committee on Education, ACR 154. (June 2014). http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/13-14/bill/asm/ab_0151-0200/acr_154_cfa_20140609_162804_asm_comm.html
California Legislature, AB 1750. (May 2014). http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/13-14/bill/asm/ab_1701-1750/ab_1750_cfa_20140527_183032_asm_floor.html
CBC News. (January 9, 2014) “EMSB says secular charter endorses bullying: Montreal's largest English school board says Bill 60 'brings out the worst in Quebec society '” Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/#!/content/1.2489840.
Craig, W., & Edge, H. M. (2012). The health of Canada’s young people: a mental health focus. Public Health Agency of Canada. Retrieved from http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/hp-ps/dca-dea/publications/hbsc-mental-mentale/bullying-intimidation-eng.php
Cram, Ronald Hecker. (2001). Memories by Christian Adults of Childhood Bullying Experiences: Implications for Adult Religious Self-Understanding. Religious Education. 96(3), 326-350. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/003440801317081370.
Jeong, Seokijn and Byung Hyun Lee. (2013). A Multilevel Examination of Peer Victimization and Bullying Preventions in Schools. Journal of Criminology, 2013 (2013), Article ID 735397, 10 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/735397
Keddie, N. R. (1998). The new religious politics: Where, when, and why do "fundamentalisms" appear? Comparative Studies in Society and History, 40(4), 696-723. http://www.jstor.org/stable/179307
Kirman, J. (2004). “Using the them of bullying to teach about human rights in the social studies.” McGill Journal of Education. 39(3), 327-341.
Lee R.T., and Brotheridge C.M. “When prey turns predatory: Workplace bullying as predictor of counteragression / bullying, coping, and well-being”. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology. 2006, 00 (0): 1 -26
Miedema, S. (2014). “Coming out religiously!” Religion, the public sphere, and religious identity formation. Religious Education, 109(4), 362-378.
Moghaddam, F. M. (2005). The Staircase to terrorism: A psychological exploration. The American Psychologist, 60, 2, 161-169.
Moore, D. (2007). Overcoming religious illiteracy: A cultural studies approach to the study of religion in secondary education. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan.
Moore, D. (2014). Overcoming religious illiteracy: Expanding the boundaries of religious education. Religious Education, 109(4), 379-389.
Nason-Clark, N. and C. Holtmann (2013). Perpetuating religion and culture: Hindu women in Growing up Canadian: Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists by P. Beyer and R. Ramji. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Prevnet. (2014). “Facts and solutions”. Retrieved from http://www.prevnet.ca/bullying/facts-and-Solutions.
Prothero, S. (2007). Religious literacy: What every American needs to know – and doesn’t. New York, NY: Harper San Francisco.
REDCo. (2009). Religion in Education: Contribution to Dialogue. Policy recommendations of the REDCo research project. Retrieved from http://www.redco.uni-hamburg.de/cosmea/core/corebase/mediabase/awr/redco/research_findings/REDCo_policy_rec_eng.pdf
Sikh Coalition. (2014). “Go Home, Terrorist”: A Report on Bullying Against Sikh American School Children . Retrieved from http://sikhcoalition.org/documents/pdf/go-home-terrorist.pdf .
Stopbullying.gov. (2014). “Religion and Faith” Retrieved from http://www.stopbullying.gov/at-risk/groups/index.html
Appendix
Source: http://torontoist.com/2014/10/the-rise-of-islamophobia-in-torontos-election/
Parti Quebecois’s proposed Charter of Values (2013)
Photo source: http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2014/01/21/the-current-is-coming-to-montreal/; http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/#!/content/1.2489840; Article: http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/lester-b-pearson-school-board-condemns-charter-of-values-1.1602905#ixzz2t4EthBoJ
“EMSB says secular charter endorses bullying” (CBC News, Jan 9, 2014)
