The Religion and Public Education Resource Center coordinates the CSU, Chico Religious Studies Department's ongoing "Project on Religion and Public Education." This project consists of three main components:
Professional development for classroom teachers
Pre-service teacher education
Regional coordination of the California 3 Rs Project (Rights, Responsibility, Respect): A Program for Finding Common Ground on Issues of Religion and Values in Public Schools.
Professional Development for Classroom Teachers
In California, the world history curriculum for sixth, seventh, and tenth grades deals explicitly with the religions of India, China, and the Middle East. Other grade levels deal with the role of religion in American history and society, and some general knowledge of world religions is a necessary background for understanding many of the "current events" that are discussed throughout the K-12 curriculum. Teachers must also be prepared to understand and cope with the religious diversity that typically exists in their own classrooms. A basic knowledge of the world's religions will not only help teachers to teach more effectively about ancient civilizations, current events, or the history of the United States, it will also help them to communicate with students and parents from religious communities ranging from evangelical Protestants to traditional Hmong, from Latter Day Saints (Mormons) to Muslims, from Catholics to Sikhs, and from Bahais to Buddhists to secularists.
Despite the historical and cultural importance of religion, many teachers feel unprepared to deal with the range legal, curricular, and pedagogical issues that arise in connection with this topic in the public school setting. Without proper preparation and support, teachers and schools will continue to ignore and avoid the topic due to a legitimate fear that discussions of religion are fraught with the potential for conflict and controversy.
Since 1989, members of the CSUC Religious Studies Department's faculty have participated as presenters and resource scholars in a series of professional development workshops, forums, and institutes designed to prepare and support teachers in their efforts to teach about the world's religions in constitutionally permissible and academically responsible ways. The RPERC, working in collaboration with local school districts, the California International Studies and History-Social Science Subject-Matter Projects, and the CSUC Department of Education, has organized a variety of presentations, workshops, and field trips to local religious sites for classroom teachers. Representative titles of these activities over the past several years include: "A First Amendment Framework for Thinking about Religion and Public Education"; "Learning to Live with Our Deepest Differences"; "What, Why, How, (and How Not!) to Teach about Religion in Public Schools"; "Children of Abraham: Learning and Teaching about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam"; "The Historical Roots of the Arab-Israeli Conflict"; "Beyond the Veil: Women, Islam, and Cross-Cultural (Mis-) Perception"; "Religions of India: Conflict and Continuity"; "Religions of the Ancient Greeks and Hebrews"; and "Religion, Politics, and Global Issues: Teaching about Religion after September 11."
In 1988 the California State Board of Education adopted a History-Social Science Framework which includes attention to the topic of religion in the K-12 curriculum. This document stresses the importance of religion in world and U.S. history and states that "students must become familiar with the basic ideas of the major religions and the ethical traditions of each time and place" (1997 p.7). Yet many teacher education programs do not adequately prepare future teachers to deal with this topic. In an effort to address this gap in the education of future teachers, the CSU, Chico Religious Studies Department has designed and implemented a new course, RS 158 "Teaching abut Religions in American Public Schools."
This course introduces prospective teachers to First Amendment principles and U.S. Supreme Court decisions that set the framework for the treatment of religion in the public schools, and it introduces them to the basic beliefs, practices, and histories of several of the world's major religions. RS 158 (formerly RS 210) was first offered in the Spring of 1997, and since that time two sections of the course with thirty to forty students per section have typically been offered every semester. The constituency for the course is made up of social science majors who plan to apply to a single-subject teaching credential program on their way to becoming junior or senior high school teachers, and by liberal studies majors who plan to apply to a multiple-subject credential program and become elementary school teachers. The course has also been selected for inclusion in the new CSU On-Line Liberal Studies Degree Program, which has been funded by a grant from the CSU Chancellor's Office and developed jointly by CSU, Chico and CSU, Sacramento.
The California 3 Rs Project (Rights, Responsibility, Respect)
As stated in its brochure, the California 3 Rs Project is built on the conviction that the guiding principles of the First Amendment stand at the heart of democracy and at the foundation of citizenship in a diverse society. The 3 Rs Project reaffirms the shared civic principles of the Religious Liberty clauses of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
Rights
Religious liberty for people of all faiths and none is a basic and inalienable right founded on the inviolable dignity of the person.Responsibilities
Religious liberty is not only a universal right, but it depends upon a universal responsibility to respect that right for others.Respect
Debate and disagreement are vital in a democracy. Yet, if we are to live with our differences, how we debate, and not only what we debate, is critical. At the heart of good citizenship is a strong commitment to the civic values that enable people of differing ethnic backgrounds and religious convictions to treat one another with civility and respect.
Launched in 1993, the California 3 Rs Project is a non-profit,
non-partisan teacher and community education project of the Freedom
Forum First Amendment Center in cooperation with the California
County Superintendents Educational Services Association. The 3 Rs
Project has a statewide organization with a well-developed agenda
for working with public school teachers and administrators. Training
sessions bring together teams from the public schools - consisting
of community members, teachers, administrators, and school board
members - who attend a seminar on the First Amendment and the history
of Supreme Court decisions regarding religion and public education.
Participants become acquainted with the Court's distinction in Abington
School District v. Schempp (1963) between the school-sponsored
practice of religion on the one hand, and the academic
study of religion on the other hand. They learn about the principle
of government neutrality toward religion set forth in Lemon
v. Kurtzman (1971), about the principles of non-discrimination
and the protection of students' religious speech as legislated by
The Equal Access Act (1984), and so on. Through discussion
and case studies , participants learn how to use constitutional
principles to negotiate conflicts and to work toward consensus on
issues of religious and ethnic diversity confronting schools and
local communities. The RPERC Director has served on the statewide
Steering Committee of the California 3 Rs Project since 1997 and
is the Project coordinator for the northeastern region of California.