# data[].attributes.headline
15. We Must Teach about Religions in High Schools- Laycock

# data[].attributes.subject
15. We Must Teach about Religions in High Schools- Laycock

# data[].attributes.body
¨However, a democratic society must also educate students to hace moral agency and to think for themselves about big questions. Any right of parents to guide their children´s values cannot justify preventing students from receiving accurate and useful information about other religions. Furthermore, these fears are often unwarranted. Having taught world religion courses numerous times, I have never once seen a student abandon his or her current religion and adopt a new one as a result of the course. If anything, I have found that the study of world religion often deepens students´ appreciation for their own tradition because they are able to understand its uniqueness.¨

# data[].attributes.headline
14. We Must Teach about Religions in High Schools- Laycock

# data[].attributes.subject
14. We Must Teach about Religions in High Schools- Laycock

# data[].attributes.body
¨It might well be said that one´s education is not complete without a study of comparative religion or the history of religion and its advancement of civilization.¨

# data[].attributes.headline
13. We Must Teach about Religions in High Schools- Laycock

# data[].attributes.subject
13. We Must Teach about Religions in High Schools- Laycock

# data[].attributes.body
¨In a 2005 study conducted for the Bible Literacy Project, only 10 percent of American teenagers could even name the five world religions covered in the Hendersonville world religious unit. This does not bode well. Religious literacy is necessary to the health of a democratic, pluralistic society.¨

# data[].attributes.headline
12. We Must Teach about Religion in High Schools- Laycock

# data[].attributes.subject
12. We Must Teach about Religion in High Schools- Laycock

# data[].attributes.body
¨Despite being such a religiously diverse nation, America has levels of religious literacy that are abysmal. In a 2010 survey, the Pew Forum asked more than 3,000 Americans some simple questions about the world´s religions. Most respondents could answer only half of them correctly.

# data[].attributes.headline
11. We Must Teach about Religion in High Schools- Laycock

# data[].attributes.subject
11. We Must Teach about Religion in High Schools- Laycock

# data[].attributes.body
¨This is a frustrating case that demonstrates ongoing confusion about the nature and purpose of public education as well as jurisprudence about religion in public schools- -all at a time when young Americans need religious literacy more than ever.¨

# data[].attributes.body
¨I believe that if I wanted intellectual and academic freedom in my teaching, that I had to teach at a private school. There are themes of Christianity in the text that I want to teach that I could not teach English literature in a complete sense at a public school.¨

# data[].attributes.body
¨My life would most definitely be different if I had decided to teach at a public school. Every single day that I get to teach about some of the greatest authors in the world and the greatest reads and teach about all the miraculous things in life, I would not have been able to succeed it fully without an aspect of religion. Each day that I teach at this school, I feel that not only do I help these students grow in their faith, but I personally grow closer and closer to God, which is my ultimate life goal.¨

# data[].attributes.body
¨Our society suffers because we are a technocratic, narrow-minded, shallow, materialistic society, and I do not think that that is debatable. We study great art, great music, the great accomplishments of human history, might as well study great religion which has contributed so profoundly to the development of human culture and human life.¨

# data[].attributes.body
¨ Religion offers a person at the very least a deeper perspective of reality. It offers someone the opportunity to go outside of a myopic, narrow, confined, world view and to actually try to discover the essence of things. True religion will open your soul up to whatever is most profound and most real.¨

# data[].attributes.body
¨A teacher´s job is more than just t test students on material for colleges and careers, or have them memorize facts and information, but it is t help them grow into the people they will become, to show them that there is so much in the world for them to learn and what is what life is about: to continue to grow and learn everyday of your life. However, pushing a religion is overstepping boundaries, and if a teacher does that, then he or she should not be a teacher. ¨

# data[].attributes.body
¨So, if in school, where these children spend all of their hours and all of their days at for years and years, and they have trusted adults preaching to them a certain religion that they may or may not believe in, that is infuriating to a parent. ¨

# data[].attributes.body
¨The religion that we teach our children and want for them to study and beleive in and feel emotionally about, whether Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Atheism, Islam, Christianity- Baptist, Catholic, Protestant, Methodist, Lutheran, etc., we believe that this is the best religion for them and for their lives. ¨

# data[].attributes.body
¨Accusation fly that school officials are establishing religion by plays, music, holiday displays, or discussions in class. Equally fervent accusations fly that school districts are squelching the free exercise of religion by not permitting certain observances in class during school hours.¨

# data[].attributes.body
¨School districts may not endorse (or appear to be endorsing) religious activities in school sponsored activities. What that means in practice is that schools may not give special treatment to believers nor special prominence to activities that highlight religion. ¨

# data[].attributes.body
¨The following examples show what that tightrope looks like on a day-to-day basis. OK: Teaching about the Bible, the Torah, or other sacred texts and their influence on human behavior. No one denies that religion has strongly motivated behavior in the United States and around the world. Acknowledging that fact in the curriculum does not raises First Amendment concerns.¨