Sightings 1/30/06
- From: His_child2005yourhat@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Russ T. Nale)
- Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 16:36:10 GMT
Sightings 1/30/06
Textbook Cases
-- Martin E. Marty
Historians, to whose company I belong, are often taught to feel
irrelevant. Survey after survey shows that most citizens know appallingly
little about the past, including "their" past, the past on the basis of
which they make decisions. Whether the fault is with us historians for
doing our job badly or with publics for failing to pay attention is hard
to discern. One point ought to be clear, however, in these days when our
sub-cultures fight our sub-cultures and our "multi-" groups fight other
"multi-" groups: Much of that fighting is about religion. In such
encounters, historical accounts are often misrepresented, becoming
inflaming sources of issues.
This week, a Wall Street Journal story by Daniel Golden showed just how
tense debates are over how religious history is taught in public school
textbooks (January 25). He described Hindu, Islamic, and Jewish groups
complaining about and fighting over the way these texts treat their pasts.
It is obvious that textbook writers, school boards, administrators, and
teachers are "damned if they do and damned if they don't" touch religion,
and are pretty much damned however they do do religion. (For good
background on the complexity of all this, read Kent Greenawalt's Does God
Belong in Public Schools? Greenawalt shows how hard it is to make judicial
and judicious decisions on this subject).
A reminder: Those who criticize the United States Supreme Court for having
been secular and a secularizer fail to note that the famed "school prayer
decisions" of 1962-1963 -- which ruled against using classrooms and school
instrumentalities for devotional exercises, prayer, and the like --
strongly urged that religion as such should be taught. Without knowledge
of the religious past and religious peoples' ways of doing things, how can
we understand the present? we were asked. There are agencies that try to
supply texts, but their books have not been adopted as widely as one might
expect. Here's one reason for this: In the end, most agitators for
religion in the schools want their religion to be favored, privileged, and
taught.
Golden points to interest groups in the various faiths, each of which has
a point, and most of which overstate their cases. Hindus do not like
reference to polytheism, the caste system, the inferior status of Indian
women, and "sati" (the burning of widows on their husbands' pyres). Some
of the self-appointed agitators play rough, attacking scholars of Hinduism
who do not satisfy them. We do not have space here to detail what Jews and
Muslims have not liked, but it takes little imagination. And while Golden
does not concentrate on them, some Christians have tried hardest to
dictate how Christians get covered. Golden also portrays fair-minded
scholars who do their best to tell the truth, but are caught in
crossfires.
All this is fateful, since the decisions of boards in giant California and
Texas markets come under every kind of pressure. If California and/or
Texas votes "no" on a book, it stands little chance. A "yes" assures a
market -- but not a free ride, because someone will protest something in
each book, and there'll soon be another expensive revision. We are
learning from this that you can't satisfy everyone and that religion is
not a "private affair" but always a hot topic in a republic where we
cannot settle things, but have to live with messiness.
Occasional Reference Note:
We do regular sightings of religious events from Wall Street Journal news
coverage. Readers who see quite accurately that paper's editorial page as
being conservative sometimes confuse the distinction between news and
editorial bias there. This week I learned that Tim Groseclose, a political
scientist, and Jeffrey Milyo, an economist, along with twenty-one research
assistants, combed through ten years of U.S. media coverage and found "a
systematic liberal bias" (see
http://www.polisci.ucla.edu/faculty/groseclose/Media.Bias.pdf). But hold
on: Using their scales and measurements, they announced that "one surprise
is that the Wall Street Journal ... we find as the most liberal of all
twenty news outlets," and cited a 2002 survey which found it the second
most liberal. So we cannot gain points with conservatives when we quote
the Journal, just as we should not lose points with liberals who are
suspicious of it. So there ....
Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, upcoming events,
publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com.
----------
Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago
Divinity School.
Submissions policy
Sightings welcomes submissions of 500 to 750 words in length that seek to
illuminate and interpret the forces of faith in a pluralist society.
Previous columns give a good indication of the topical range and tone for
acceptable essays. The editor also encourages new approaches to issues
related to religion and public life.
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Columns may be quoted or republished in full, with attribution to the
author of the column, Sightings, and the Martin Marty Center at the
University of Chicago Divinity School.
Contact information
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--
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