To Cover Religion's Role in Schools,
Explain Issues -- Don't Sensationalize
by Richard Lee Colvin
Laura Kennedy, a high school social studies and geography teacher in Fayetteville, Ga., had an un fortunate experience with her local newspaper recently. She was teaching a unit on the Middle East and had invited a speaker from a local mosque to talk about the role of religion in the region. She woke up one morning to a front-page story in which she was attacked for insensitivity because the session was to be held on Veteran's Day. The reporter hadn't even bothered to call Kennedy.
"You can't teach about geography or history without teaching about religion," Kennedy told 35 journalists attending a Hechinger Institute seminar last October in Atlanta. But, she said, to avoid controversy, many school officials would prefer that religion never be discussed in classrooms. Some parents, unaware that religion is already part of state social studies standards, seemingly would prefer it that way as well. "When I introduce a monotheistic unit of study, I hear about it from parents. 'Why are you doing that? Who said you could do that?' "
The role of religion and religious instruction in public schools has touched off impassioned debates and intemperate rhetoric ever since education entered the public realm in the United States. Until the U.S. Supreme Court banned the practice in the 1960s, teachers or visiting clergy led prayers and lessons on Christianity in the public schools. A century earlier, anti-Catholic, antiimmigrant and Protestant teachings stoked the anger that led to the creation of separate Catholic school systems across the country. Controversy continues today as immigrants of various faiths and creeds become Americans. Sometimes, however, journalists foment controversy rather than explain it.
Kennedy was one of four panelists at a session titled "Religion and Public Education: What Happens When the Two Meet." The session was part of a three-day seminar that the Hechinger Institute offered Oct. 6-8 in collaboration with the Education Writers Association. The seminar was aimed at journalists working for newspapers in smaller media markets across the South.
Charles Haynes, a senior scholar at the First Amendment Center and another panelist, urged journalists to resist those who contend that "God has been kicked out of schools" as well as those who argue that "God should be kicked out of schools." In fact, he said, there is consensus among many religious and education groups that religion should be part of the curriculum. But fair and accurate reporting of conflicts that arise over religion is crucial: "If we don't get this right, then we don't have a hope of having a nation that's 'one out of many,' " he said.
Haynes urged the journalists to look at state education standards, find out how they handle religion and familiarize themselves with state laws that guarantee a right to individual religious expression in the schools. He predicted an increase in stories about religious accommodations that schools must make under such laws.
Another panelist, Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission since 1988, complained about what he called the "yin and yang theory of journalism, which gets the most extreme voices on the left and the right and lets them go at one another." He suggested that journalists find out how religion is treated in the curriculum and then "find innovative teachers who are teaching it."
"People are interested in where the rubber hits the road," Land said. "Teachers are on the front line of this and have a lot more responsibility than they do authority."
Land disagreed, however, with Haynes about whether the Bible should be used as a text in schools. He has written that school districts, administrators and their attorneys will be tempted to treat the Bible as a historical document rather than a sacred one, and that "realistic" explanations would be offered for supernatural events. "Such a model," Land has written, "is neither 'objective' or 'neutral.' "
However religion is handled in schools, Kennedy said, journalists should know that teachers receive little or no training in how to handle these issues. Yet, they're expected to teach about religion in ways that offend no one and that also satisfy state standards. "I had world history and had diversity training on how to respect different cultures, but nothing on religion," she said.
The session was moderated by Diane Connolly, a former religion editor at the Dallas Morning News who founded ReligionLink (www.religionlink.org), a resource for journalists in writing about religion.
She offered the journalists several tips:
- There are more than two sides to most religion stories.
- When a religion issue surfaces at a school board meeting, seek the views of religious leaders and parents who didn't show up to protest.
- Fairness does not require equal space. "The Wiccans are not the same as Christians."
Finally, she said, journalists should "let people talk about religion. If someone says they prayed about something, ask them, 'What did you pray for?' and how their prayers were answered."
Two other good sources for journalists are:
- The First Amendment Center http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.asp?documentID=12815 or http://tinyurl.com/2ldmex
- The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. http://erlc.com/