Faith Ed: Teaching About Religion in an Age of Intolerance
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Faith Ed: Teaching About Religion in an Age of Intolerance Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Linda K. Wertheimer (Author), Tara Sands (Narrator), Beacon Press Audio (Publisher)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 44 ratings
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An intimate cross-country look at the new debate over religion in the public schools

A suburban Boston school unwittingly started a firestorm of controversy over a sixth-grade field trip. The class was visiting a mosque to learn about world religions when a handful of boys, unnoticed by their teachers, joined the line of worshippers and acted out the motions of the Muslim call to prayer. A video of the prayer went viral with the title "Wellesley, Massachusetts Public School Students Learn to Pray to Allah". Charges flew that the school exposed the children to Muslims who intended to convert American schoolchildren. Wellesley school officials defended the course but also acknowledged the delicate dance teachers must perform when dealing with religion in the classroom.

Courts long ago banned public school teachers from preaching of any kind. But the question remains: How much should schools teach about the world's religions? Answering that question in recent decades has pitted schools against their communities.

Veteran education journalist Linda K. Wertheimer spent months with that class and traveled to other communities around the nation, listening to voices on all sides of the controversy, including those of clergy, teachers, children, and parents who are Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Sikh, or atheist. In Lumberton, Texas, nearly a hundred people filled a school-board meeting to protest a teacher's dress-up exercise that allowed freshman girls to try on a burka as part of a lesson on Islam. In Wichita, Kansas, a Messianic Jewish family's opposition to a bulletin-board display about Islam in an elementary school led to such upheaval that the school had to hire extra security. Across the country, parents have requested that their children be excused from lessons on Hinduism and Judaism out of fear they will shy away from their own faiths.

But in Modesto, a city in the heart of California's Bible Belt, teachers have avoided problems since 2000, when the school system began requiring all high school freshmen to take a world religions course. Students receive comprehensive lessons on the three major world religions, as well as on Sikhism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and often Shintoism, Taoism, and Confucianism. One Pentecostal Christian girl, terrified by "idols", including a six-inch gold Buddha, learned to be comfortable with other students' beliefs.

Wertheimer's fascinating investigation, which includes a return to her rural Ohio school, which once ran weekly Christian Bible classes, reveals a public education system struggling to find the right path forward and offers a promising road map for raising a new generation of religiously literate Americans.

Previous page
  1. Listening Length
    8 hours and 1 minute
  2. Author
    Linda K. Wertheimer
  3. Narrator
    Tara Sands
  4. Audible release date
    February 20, 2018
  5. Language
    English
  6. Publisher
    Beacon Press Audio
  7. ASIN
    B079C4QCRF
  8. Version
    Unabridged
  9. Program Type
    Audiobook
  10. See all details
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Product details

Listening Length 8 hours and 1 minute
Author Linda K. Wertheimer
Narrator Tara Sands
Audible.com Release Date February 20, 2018
Publisher Beacon Press Audio
Program Type Audiobook
Version Unabridged
Language English
ASIN B079C4QCRF
Best Sellers Rank #419,787 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals)
#45 in Religious Education
#1,895 in Religious Studies Education
#4,714 in Philosophy & Social Aspects of Education

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
44 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Phil Oakley
5.0 out of 5 stars Enlightening, Poignant Stories in an Emotionally, Captivating Work that Reads Like a Fine Novel
Reviewed in the United States on September 8, 2015
Verified Purchase
Linda K. Wertheimer is the star of American journalists writing about contemporary education issues. She always focuses on the stories of people intwined in these important elements of our daily lives. "Faith Ed" stands out because the stories of the students, parents, teachers and politicians hit home throughout this outstanding book. Often the experiences hurt and the emotions come through in each story in "Faith Ed." Just as poignant are the outstanding talents and responses of of the current students at ground zero of America's culture wars. Our country will be in great hands as these exceptional young people move up to responsibility. Nothing in the book is more moving or inspiring than the personal story of one particular child, Linda Wertheimer at age 9 in rural Ohio, when she ran smack into the intense pain of ethnic and religious intolerance. You will learn a lot about the status of how Americans feel about religious issues in a compelling experience produced by this captivating and highly exceptional book. (Linda would probably appreciate my making clear that she and I worked together at the Dallas Morning News and that we have remained friends and correspondents after she moved on to New England.)
3 people found this helpful
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helen j. mcintire
4.0 out of 5 stars I did learn some things and we discussed the book ...
Reviewed in the United States on January 5, 2017
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I did learn some things and we discussed the book at our book club.
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TCHall625
5.0 out of 5 stars How to Teach about Religion in an Age of Intolerance
Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2021
Verified Purchase
How can an educator successfully incorporate a deep understanding of multiple religious traditions in the classroom or school? This vital question for an increasingly global and diverse America is the subject of Faith Ed. Teaching about religion in an Age of Intolerance written by noted journalist and award-winning education writer Linda K. Wertheimer. Typically, as an educator begins to tackle this challenge in the classroom, school, or district, they would turn to several foundational texts and documents, including:

American Academy of Religion: Guidelines for Teaching about Religion in K-12 Schools
First Amendment Center: Finding Common Ground
National Council for the Social Studies: Position Statement on the Study about Religions in the Social Studies Curriculum
National Council for the Social Studies: Religious Studies Companion Document to the C3 Framework

Although these texts provide rigorous guidelines and frameworks to teach about religion, they do not humanize the project, highlighting the more profound complexities of teaching religious literacy, including possible pitfalls. This is the reason that I highly recommend Linda Wertheimer's book. In this fascinating and readable text, Linda tackles the critical questions that every teacher or administrator should understand as they seek to bring religious literacy into the classroom, school, or district. Linda highlights these questions with case studies of recent controversies and hours of in-depth interviews representing the diverse perspectives involved.

In "Chapter One: Burkagate," Linda tackles the question of teaching about religion through experiential learning by thoroughly detailing the Burkagate controversy of 2014. Building on the first, the next chapter, entitled "Did a Field Trip Put Student's in the Lion's Den?" examines the controversy surrounding a field trip to an Islamic mosque at Wellesley Middle School in 2010, asking whether students should take field trips to houses of worship. In "Chapter 3: Whose Truth Should They Hear?" Linda details the controversy surrounding the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) guest speaker who visited Steinbrenner High School in 2014, addressing whether teachers or schools should allow guest speakers to speak for religious traditions. Following this chapter, the author describes the debate in late 2013 surrounding the Minneha Core Knowledge Elementary School in Wichita, Kansas. This dispute focused on the grade level appropriateness of learning about religious traditions, whether in elementary, middle, or high school. In Chapter 5, Linda provides perspectives from her own childhood experience of religious instruction in the public schools in Ohio. During the 1970s, the author, who is Jewish, was pulled from Christian religious instruction classes provided on a public school campus during the school day. Not only was this practice unconstitutional (McCollum v Board of Education), it is very exclusionary and deeply hurtful. Linda's perspective humanizes and highlights the importance of religious literacy in preventing bullying, discrimination, and exclusion. 

In the final two chapters, the reader gets to witness "religion done right," which details a successful religious literacy class in Modesto, California. Linda concludes the text by describing the positive impact of religious literacy on the lives of various students from the Modesto program while also preparing educators for the "long game" of progress and setbacks before witnessing any results from a sustained project of this type.

Throughout the text, Linda is meticulous in providing the many reactions and perspectives of students, teachers, administrators, and parents to the different approaches used in teaching religious literacy. These details give an essential humanized understanding of the challenge of teaching about religion in public schools. It is this perspective that makes the text so valuable. The other texts and documents on the subject provide frameworks and guidelines to teach religious literacy, while Linda gives us a human perspective of this educational endeavor. The questions asked in the text and responses from the school communities involved in these case studies are invaluable as teachers and/or administrators consider implementing a more rigorous approach to religious literacy in the classroom or school.
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Kristen E. Johnson
5.0 out of 5 stars A Must-Read for Every American
Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2017
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Faith Ed, Teaching About Religion in an Age of Intolerance, is one of those amazing lifechanging books that I think every American should read. It was written by Linda Wertheimer, a follower of the Jewish Faith, and it shines a light on American public schools and their view of teaching religions in schools, and frankly, a lack thereof.

What is particularly compelling about this book is that it is written by a practicing Jew, and her perspectives from childhood not only broke my heart, but made me realize what children who belong to minority religions must face daily.

The author of the book discusses the fact that as a child, and practicing Jew, she was often uncomfortable during classtime because, incredibly, they actually had Christians come in and talk about Jesus during class time. As a resident of a “liberal” state I was, quite frankly, completely shocked to hear about it. But, what was really shocking was the fact that this kind of thing still goes on in schools across the nation! And, local pastors are actually permitted to roam around talking to students about religion during lunch times and so forth. As a Christian, I was completely shocked and appalled by these practices. I am a Christian by choice now, but it’s not like children have a choice. You are raised how you are raised. We don’t get to “pick” our religion until we are adults and subjecting children to outright proselytizing is appalling and insulting. I can’t imagine if this sort of thing happened on the opposite side. In other words, imagine the outrage communities would experience if the local Imam showed up during lunchtime at your local school.

I highly recommend this book, particularly because it will open your eyes to faith discussions in the public. Just as an example, I had absolutely no idea that a Jew would be uncomfortable with the fact that Christians view them as “chosen” people and almost revere them. I was raised on this kind of rhetoric, and I was stunned that a Jew would find that view offensive and irritating.
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