Christian Privilege in U.S. Education: Legacies and Current Issues 1138649945, 9781138649941

Table of contents :
Cover
Title
Copyright
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Christianity and American Education: Historical Connections
2 Religious Sediments in Educational Discourses and Practices
3 The Bible: A Blueprint for Contemporary Educational Practices
4 The Inherent Religiosity of the Standards Movement
5 To Teach as Jesus (Would)
6 PedaGod: God as Teacher
7 Teaching as Revelation
Conclusion
Index

Citation preview

Christian Privilege in U.S. Education

Using critical curriculum theory as its lens, this book explores the relationship between religion—specifically, Christianity and the Judeo-Christian ethos underlying it—and secular public education in the United States. Despite various 20th-century court decisions separating religion and education, the authors challenge that religion is in fact absent from public education, suggesting instead that it is in fact very much embedded in current public educational practices and discourses and in a variety of assumptions and perspectives underlying understandings of teaching, learning, and teacher preparation. The book reframes the discussion about religion and schooling, arguing that it remains in the language and metaphors of education, in the practices and routines of schooling, in conceptions of the “child” and the “teacher” (and what happens between them in the spaces we call “learning,” the “classroom,” and “curriculum”) as well as in assumptions about the role of schools emanating from such conceptions and in the current movement toward accountability, standardization, and testing. Christian Privilege in U.S. Education examines not whether Christianity has a place in public education but, rather, the very ways in which it is pervasive in a legally secular system of education, even when religion is not a topic taught in school. Kevin J. Burke is an assistant professor of English education, University of Georgia, United States. Avner Segall is a professor of teacher education, Department of Teacher Education, Michigan State University, United States.

Studies in Curriculum Theory William F. Pinar, Series Editor For additional information on titles in the Studies in Curriculum Theory series visit www.routledge.com/education

Schooling, The Puritan Imperative, and the Molding of an American National Identity Education’s “Errand Into the Wilderness” Pinar (Ed.) International Handbook of Curriculum Research Morris Curriculum and the Holocaust Competing Sites of Memory and Representation Doll Like Letters In Running Water A Mythopoetics of Curriculum Westbury/Hopmann/Riquarts (Eds.) Teaching as a Reflective Practice The German Didaktic Tradition Reid Curriculum as Institution and Practice Essays in the Deliberative Tradition Pinar (Ed.) Queer Theory in Education Huebner The Lure of the Transcendent Collected Essays by Dwayne E.Huebner. Edited by Vikki Hillis. Collected and Introduced by William F. Pinar Reconceptualizing Plato’s Socrates at the Limit of Education A Socratic Curriculum Grounded in Finite Human Transcendence Magrini Christian Privilege in U.S. Education Legacies and Current Issues Burke/Segall

Christian Privilege in U.S. Education Legacies and Current Issues Kevin J. Burke Avner Segall

First published 2017 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Taylor & Francis The right of Kevin J. Burke and Avner Segall to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-64994-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-62559-1 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

Prefacevi Acknowledgmentsx Introduction

1

1 Christianity and American Education: Historical Connections20 2 Religious Sediments in Educational Discourses and Practices32 3 The Bible: A Blueprint for Contemporary Educational Practices49 4 The Inherent Religiosity of the Standards Movement

69

5 To Teach as Jesus (Would)

82

6 PedaGod: God as Teacher

101

COAUTHORED W/SCOTT JARVIE

7 Teaching as Revelation

124

Conclusion

139

Index145

Preface

This book has been long in the making. It began as a research collaboration in East Lansing in 2009, where we were, as doctoral advisor (Avner) and graduate student (Kevin) discussing ideas about education and issues of difference, a particular combination we have each been engaging for quite some time, both in our teaching and scholarship. As our conversation evolved, we landed on the topic of religion and education.While we had not discussed this in any of our prior meetings as advisor and advisee over the course of Kevin’s doctoral course work, we soon realized that we both had much to say about the topic from our own, previously embodied, yet never fully articulated, experiences in education—as a Jew (Avner) and a Catholic (Kevin)—with what is often referred to as “public” or “secular” education but that is, as we describe at length in this book, still mostly a Christian (and Christianizing) endeavor. As we talked, Avner recalled an experience he had just before Christmas about a decade prior, while conducting his dissertation research in Western Canada, whereby a group of education students, led by a university faculty member, barged, mid-lesson, into the social studies methods course he was studying and, without even asking permission, aligned themselves in the front of the room and began singing “Silent Night,” the first in a medley of three Christmas carols they shared with us, their captive audience. Then, as quickly as they entered, and to the sound of a healthy round of applause from the 37 class members, they left the room to conduct their festive duties in yet another of the teacher education classrooms nearby. No examination of what just took place followed in this mainly white, predominantly Christian methods course in a program that so enthusiastically promoted (and promoted itself as subscribing to the ideas of) multiculturalism. Indeed, the caroling event, much like the three ornately decorated Christmas trees erected in the entrance to the Education Library, in the Teacher Education Office, and outside the dean’s office—the three most representative locations of knowledge, power, and authority—required, it seemed, no critical analysis for the dominance of Christianity in this otherwise “secular” teacher preparation program and for the ways in which it, to borrow from Nakayama and Krizek “makes itself visible and invisible, eluding analysis yet exerting influence over everyday life” (as cited in Giroux, 1994, p. 292).

Preface vii

The point in recounting this event during our conversation many years later in East Lansing was not as much to criticize that which did (and did not) happen in that teacher preparation classroom as it was to highlight both the prevalence of Christianity in the everyday life of “public” schools and universities as well as that those living in the system—those who breathe it—most often have neither the desire to problematize such occurrences nor the tools with which to do so. The very “naturalness” of the situation, its taken-for-grantedness, helps—much like whiteness, patriarchy, and other forms of privilege—obscure its hegemonic mechanisms and their various consequences. Indeed, it was this very blindness to the system that precluded Avner from seeing similar—albeit Jewish—symbols parading themselves unquestioned within his own schooling in Israel. As a Jewish student in Israeli schools and universities, he was oblivious to the operations of Judaism in the same way that the students in the Canadian (or American) context were oblivious to theirs. Avner’s ability to “see” the ways in which Christianity operated as a “nothingness” that nonetheless exuded its power on a regular basis, much before and long after Christmas, came from his Otherness as a Jewish person in the predominantly Christian North American educational context. It is this sense of Otherness that allowed—indeed, invited—him to ask questions about taken-for-granted practices and the privileges they afford—ones those fully embedded in a culture, rooted in its discourses and taking its underpinnings as given, as natural and neutral, might not, not because they can’t but because, from their particular position, they often don’t see the need to do so. Kevin’s educated history is, of course, different though similar. He recalled, in conversation with Avner, being in kindergarten at a public school in Chicago, when the Challenger shuttle exploded. This was, some readers will remember, a significant mission for National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and for public education particularly because Christa McAuliffe was, as a part of the NASA Teacher in Space Project, to become the first active K–12 teacher to take a shuttle into orbit. When the shuttle broke apart, killing all of the astronauts on board, the American public was uniquely taken by the tragedy. Immediately following the explosion, the principal of Kevin’s school came over the public address system and led everyone in the building (teachers and students alike) in a prayer for the repose of the souls of the deceased. Rather, everyone was exposed to prayer; the degree to which anyone participated is obscured by time. The prayer was to god in the abstract (of any number of faiths, presumably), but given the area in which Kevin grew up, the structure, rhythm, and language of the thing certainly made it Catholic (if not catholic) in nature. No one, to his recollection, skipped a beat in this supposedly secular space to be praying. One way of reading the situation is to suggest that this irruption of the sacred into a secular space was temporary and tied to a particular event, meant to aid in the easing of communal suffering; a more interesting proposition, and one we take up throughout the book, is that this prayer was just a manifestation

viii  Preface

of larger Christian structures always already present in the school—indeed in the very idea of what school should be for—made memorable only because it was set off as a moment of prayer. Our work isn’t to recreate tragedy to point out the ways that prayer is used to calm nerves and placate souls; rather, it is to find the kinds of buried wires of religion and the hegemonic nature of Christianity that continue to power the project of public schooling in America. We will, then, dig carefully as with any situation that can be electric, aiming to exhume that which is mostly unconsidered until, as it were, the breaker is engaged, and the power flickers in easily recognizable ways as on that January day in 1986. We’re focused on the wires, not the tripping of them. It’s important to note, as well, that a great deal of Kevin’s further schooling, teaching, and research occurred in the context of Catholic education: he attended an all-boys Catholic high school and a Jesuit university (twice) and received his MEd from a program specifically targeted at training teachers for understaffed American Catholic schools. In some measure, it was this history that he sought to escape when enrolling at Michigan State to study narrative writing, not, initially, under the guidance of Avner. He was primed, then, to think of schooling in America as very neatly divided between parochial (primarily religious) schooling and secular public schooling. We went to Catholic school, after all, to get a religious education. It wasn’t that his parents thought public schools ought to be more religious but that they considered the realm of religion relegated to Sunday church and Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD) class, where all the public school kids got their Catholic lite every other week in the empty classrooms of St. Barnabas school. Avner’s narrative about his experiences in Israel as well as Canada suggested something very different, and it was in conversation that in addition to the Challenger memory, Kevin came to approach his public schooling as secular primarily in quotation marks. It probably mattered, in other words, that he went to the same parish as his kindergarten and sixth-grade teachers or that he wore the Brown Scapular of Mt. Carmel in all places, and it certainly altered his affect with authority figures, even in public spaces, to have had religious brothers with military backgrounds enforcing the rules in his formative years. And on further reflection, after he’d abandoned (at least for the time) narrative writing in favor of a dissertation that tried to make sense of the confluence of masculinities, sexuality, and religion in an all-boys Catholic school (Burke, 2011), Kevin came to see that it was, in fact, because his parents were Catholic that they sent him to public elementary school as a lesson in the value of community engagement and as a rebuttal to the segregated environment present in many of the religious schools around his home.That religious and public were such permeable membranes in Kevin’s life suggested that research on and into religion and schooling had mostly focused on the Challenger prayers of the world—the obvious and still valuable critiques of easily observable religion—to the exclusion of the often much more intriguing web of remaining entanglements of Christianity,

Preface ix

belief, restriction, discipline, language, and structure present in American public schooling. All this is to suggest that, as authors, we come to this project through (and in light of) our own histories—those of our own education, academic careers, and naturally, religion as multiple, porous, and often diffused as the latter may be. Those are the very lenses that allow us to see what we are about to discuss in the pages to follow. So while this book, like any other academic project, is situated within a scholarly community and, hopefully, contributes to a larger discussion, its origins are located in the body—our own two bodies and their experiences of and in education. As academics, we research, teach, and engage (and try to push) ideas with colleagues and students, yet what motivates us to do all that, indeed what drives us to such pursuits, are, most often, our own histories of learning and the lenses they have afforded us to explore the world in particular ways. As we complete this book, a project we started nine years ago, we are constantly reminded—through irresponsible talk of banning Muslims from the United States to invocations of religion in state legislators’ wishing to enshrine discrimination against gay, lesbian, and transgendered people to ongoing arguments about just what religious freedom means in a pluralistic society—of the role religion has played, and continues to play, in particular communities in the United States and, more often than not, in damaging ways—both to the fabric of the nation and, at least in our view, to the spirit in which religion, either that which is upheld or demeaned, was intended. Such discourse, of course, is not only relegated to the political arena; it has equally manifested itself with regard to education and often with the same agendas—again, in attempts to suppress equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) students, to advance the teaching of creationism, to ban particular books from school libraries, and to reinsert religion (that is, Christianity) back into schools. As troubling as those attempts are (and they are), these discussions, as we argue throughout this book, neglect to address the fact that religion (and here, again, we mean Christianity) is already very much in schools, in public schools, that are supposedly secular. While the media and academics have insistently engaged the issues noted here, whereby religion is an overt element of the conversation, much less attention, if any, has been paid to the already existing religious aspects underlying secular education.

References Burke, K. J. (2011). Masculinity and other hopeless causes at an all-boys Catholic school. New York: Peter Lang. Giroux, H. A. (1994). Doing cultural studies: Youth and the challenge of pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review, 64(3), 278–303.

Acknowledgments

We are immensely grateful to Bill Pinar for the opportunity to explore, in expanded form here, these issues. As well, we would be remiss were we not to thank Naomi Silverman with Routledge, who have been heroically helpful throughout the process of putting this book together.Thank you for your work and particularly for your patience. We also want to thank Scott Jarvie for his coauthorship of Chapter 6.

Introduction

It is often posited, following the various 20th-century court decisions separating Church and State—and, more specifically, religion and education— that the relationship between religion and education in the United States has long been settled and that religion is in fact absent from the halls of public education and its discourses. The more facile and histrionic strand of assertion here runs along the lines of former governor (erstwhile political pundit and perpetual presidential candidate) Mike Huckabee’s assertion, in the wake of the school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012, that one of the reasons for the massacre was God’s absence in public schools. That’s a lot to unpack in terms of justification and the contradictions of belief in an allpowerful but apparently easily hamstrung God—as in, if your God is transcendent, why is civil law so effective in adjudicating Him out of spaces—but for our purposes this sentiment and its attendant assumptions stand nicely as a metonym for one side of an often passionate, and we might say largely under-considered, debate. The contrasting viewpoint, in this regard, generally focuses on persistent cases of prayer in schools or on athletic fields skirting the grayer areas of decisions like Lee v. Weisman or Doe v. Santa Fe.1 And while we find it interesting (and perhaps troubling) that establishment and exercise issues persist in the hallways of American education—vouchers applied to religious schools that teach Young Earth creationism in Louisiana, say, provide fodder for further analysis elsewhere—we aim to move to the side of such debates. That is, while we find the legal and cultural battles around prayer in and around schools, for instance, interesting and important, we tend to think they miss much of the point. This is because, as we discuss in this book, it might just be that the very structure of education in America—its language, its sense of student possibility, the demands it makes on teachers, its vestigial administrative and disciplinary practices writ large—is already inherently religious. Approached in this way, the problem of religion in American education becomes something other than rooting out prayer or forcing Bibles back into the hands of students; instead the work of scholarship (and practice) becomes accounting for the always already that is religious in our schooling such that different kinds of conversations can happen for the sake of re/considering education.

2  Introduction

In this book we provide an accounting that is by its very nature, inexhaustive— more on that in a bit. Our hope, at any rate, is to shift the conversation from who has greater standing vis-à-vis First Amendment protections and toward the kind of ethical dialog that Kunzman (2006) slots under both reasonableness and civic respect. Because “public school classrooms are part of the civic realm, as well as vital preparation for it” (p. 89), we’d likely do well to move away and to the side of (valued and valuable) legal discourses and toward a more honest and rudimentary accounting of that which is already religious in and about our public schooling and, by extension, civic realm.We suggest, then, that while de jure religion is indeed (mostly) separated from education, it is very much embedded, de facto, in current public educational practices and discourses and in a variety of assumptions and perspectives underlying our understanding of teaching, learning, and teacher preparation. We intend to illustrate that, despite the fact that religion is not explicitly, other than in a particular social studies unit on world religions, taught in public school classrooms (at least not legally so2), religious understandings, in content and pedagogy, still underlie much of what is done in the name of public education (and public colleges of education) in the United States. In this sense, we are very much in agreement with Blumenfeld (2006) when he suggests that hegemony, as a concept, can be useful in understanding the ways in which Christian understandings “disseminate dominant social realities and social visions in a manner accepted as common sense . . . and as representing part of the natural order” (p. 196), particularly as regards what is im/possible in American public education. Our hope is not only to trace the contours of some pieces of that hegemony here but also to build a literature that works to draw out the religious from our so-called secular schooling so that we might have a fuller debate about its value as pedagogical practice, theoretical underpinning, and historical remnant. While the historical roots in and ties of American education to Christianity— and Judeo-Christian belief more broadly—are well documented (Blumhofer, 2002; DelFattore, 2004; Michaelsen, 1970; Sears & Carper, 1998), its contemporary manifestations have, by and large, been absent from the educational literature. By this we do not mean that religion and education have not been a topic of (often heated) scholarly debate—quite the opposite. A large body of literature has long existed on character, moral, and virtue education, much of which discusses (in some cases, advocates a return to) the religious—read Christian—roots of such education (e.g. Bennett, 2001; Jackson et al., 1993; Kunzman, 2006; Marty, 2000; Nash, 1997; Palmer, 1998; Purpel, 1989; Smagorinsky & Taxel, 2005; Warren & Patrick, 2006). A smaller, but growing, number of studies in both religious and public schools have examined individual teachers’ religious beliefs and their impact on those teachers’ sense of educational mission or purpose and on curriculum and instruction in their classrooms (e.g., Hartwick, 2015; James et al., 2015, Peshkin, 1986, Schweber, 2006a). Indeed White (2009) suggests that multiculturalism in particular provides an opportunity to critically interrogate the ways in which teachers

Introduction 3

“use their own religious beliefs to navigate” their conceptualization of how they might choose to “impact students’ education” (p. 859).That is, with few exceptions, “religion exists in multiculturalism, but it is often omitted from multicultural education” (p. 859). And while this text is not an argument, per say, for multicultural education generally, it is an acknowledgment that the pervasive character of such work, particularly in the preparation of teachers, suggests opportunities to think anew about the influence of religion on the American (especially, but any given) classroom. Another substantive literature, originating from the political right, advocates the reinsertion of religion into public education (e.g., Bracher & Barr, 1982; Nielson, 1966; Webb, 2000) or calls for enlarging the voucher system to help fund parochial schools (e.g., Brinig & Garnett, 2014; Connell, 2000; Miner, 1999). It is often difficult to extricate religion from much of the scholarly and public debate ensuing, on both sides of the political divide, regarding school teaching of ‘hot-button’ issues such as abortion, creationism, sexual education, censorship of school library books, and the treatment of gay and lesbian issues and students. Much of the public discussion outside of academe regarding religion and schooling in the United States has been limited to ideological clashes surrounding the role of the courts and, ostensibly, the much-litigated issue of prayer in schools. As substantive and informative as these bodies of literature and public discussions about the relationship between religion and education are, none focus on the role religion already plays in the broader, daily, often implicit practices of public education (for an exception, see Jackson et al., 1993, and more recent work by Juzwik, 2014, Rackley, 2014, and Skerrett, 2014), whether one teaches hot-button issues or not and regardless of the specific religious beliefs of a particular classroom teacher. In other words, while these bodies of literature do point to the difficulty of separating the theological from the cultural or the personal when discussing religion and education, as well as pointing to the importance of schooling as an arena for the playing out of the intersection among religion, culture, identity, and education, they do not explore the role of religion in the existing mundanities of daily practices and discourses of schooling that structure and give meaning to that which does and does not happen in most any public school classrooms and universities, regardless of what is taught or who teaches it. This absence of engagement with the impact of religion in/on the discursive and curricular practices in current-day education might be surprising in light of the robust existing scholarly engagement with the impact of other identity categories on schooling. Indeed, as much of the educational literature over the last several decades has indicated, it is difficult to speak meaningfully about education without examining the role and impact of a variety of categories of difference—for example, gender, race, and class—in how schools are organized, in what is (and is not) taught, in how things are taught and to whom, and who gets dis/advantaged by those practices. Yet, while numerous scholars have already explored the role of gender in education

4  Introduction

and/or the always already gendered nature of educational practices (e.g., Diller et al., 1996; Esptein & Johnson, 1998; Fry, 2007; Mac & Ghaill, 1994; Martin, 1994; Noddings, 1992; Pascoe, 2007; Sadker & Sadker, 2001) and others have done the same with regard to race (e.g., Delpit, 2006, 2012; Ferguson, 2001; Ladson-Billings 2003; McCarthy and Crichlow 1993) and class (Apple, 1979, 1982, 1986; Giroux, 1981; Willis, 1981), there has been very little critical examination of these issues as they pertain to religion.That is, how religion—in our case, Christianity as the dominant religion in the United States—pervades educational practices and the lived curriculum of schools even when religion is not a topic taught in school. Much like whiteness prior to the mid-1990s, we argue, the impact of religion on educational practices has, by and large, been a neglected topic in educational literature, allowing it, to borrow from Kincheloe and Steinberg (1997), to remain a “nothingness, this taken for granted entity” yet, at the same time, assuming a shadow that becomes part of a “transcendental consciousness” (p. 30). It is unclear whether this lack of engagement with religion has to do with the mistaken assumption that following court decisions, the issue has been resolved and thus requires no further analysis or whether it has to do with the ability of religion and its practices to present themselves as invisible in education to those working in—and writing on—the field. Regardless, and considering that if one perceives of the various categories of difference— race, gender, class, and religion, to name a few—applying equally, and in conjunction, to produce a particular educational experience in schools, then one ought to believe that an examination of religion and its impact on what does and does not take place in the name of education is both necessary and timely. Our aim in this book, then, and following the footsteps of critical examinations of schooling with regard to gender, race, and class, and using literature from post-structuralism (e.g., Biesta, 2014; Britzman, 2003; Foucault, 1977), childhood studies (e.g., Aries, 1962; Jenks, 1996, 2001) and curriculum theory (e.g., Pinar, 2006, 2009, 2013) to do so, is to highlight the relationship between broader, routine educational practices and thought and trace their possible relation to their religious—Christian—roots. We use the combination ‘possible relation’ to emphasize the fact that what we are attempting here is not to illustrate direct causality between existing educational practices and Christianity. There is little evidence to directly and conclusively support such claims and too many layers of history to obscure the direct relationship between current practices in one field (education) and past practices in another (religion). Rather, we wish to explore instances in which existing secular educational practices and beliefs may be layered upon Christian practices and beliefs. We do work, as well, on troubling the assumed dichotomy between the secular and the religious As such, this book seeks to reframe the discussion of religion and schooling, arguing that to suggest that the removal of explicit prayerfulness equates to the cleansing of U.S. public education of its religious character is facile and ahistorical. We suggest, instead, that religion remains in the language,

Introduction 5

practices, and routines of schooling but also in conceptions of the “child” and the “teacher” (and what happens between them in the spaces we call variously “learning,” the “classroom,” and “curriculum”) as well as in assumptions about the role of schools emanating from such conceptions. Evoking the metaphor of pentimento, we wish to explore instances in which educational practices and beliefs may be layered upon Christian practices and beliefs. Pentimento (from Italian pentirsi: “to repent”) refers to “a sign or trace of an alteration in a literary or artistic work; (spec. in Painting) a visible trace of a mistake or an earlier composition seen through later layers of paint on a canvas.”3 It is the reappearance or persistence of underlying Christian elements or vestiges in current conceptions (images) and practices of education that we wish here to explore.The book attempts to elucidate the JudeoChristian character of schooling in the United States as a way of reimagining discussions regarding the relationship between religion and/as a curriculum and its impact on public schooling as well as on the preparation of teachers for public school classrooms. It is important to note that our intent in this book as a whole is not necessarily alarmist—a call to expunge education of its religious roots. Rather, we believe that discussions about religion and its role in societal—political, cultural, social, and yes, educational—issues ought to hold a more prominent place in discussions in and about public education. By that we do not mean that public schools ought to teach students to follow a particular religion but, rather, that schools ought to focus more intently on teaching students about religion(s) and religious beliefs and the roles they have played and still continue to play in both the private and public arenas. To understand why the majority of U.S. society acts in particular ways and why certain policies are adopted and accepted as “reasonable” by the public or to examine the roots of world conflicts, one cannot avoid exploring issues of values, morals, and ethics, many of which find their origin in religious traditions and beliefs. Or rather, one can avoid discussing such origins but very much to the peril of us all. The same, we believe, applies to the realm of education.

Deep Structure and Resacralization In his work, Mystical Sociology: Toward Cosmic Social Theory, Wexler (2013) argues that the social sciences broadly, and education in our case particularly, must move to a position that no longer assumes that secularization (of society in general and in research specifically) is a given. That is, to his mind, and in the work of other prominent scholars, we have emerged into an era of post secularization where a new “religious turn” demands a “re-sacralization” of research (p. 5). Some of that work, he notes, requires returning to classic sociological texts (and their prominent authors: Weber, Durkheim, Eliade, etc.) not only for their uses but for the ways in which they have, for the sake of ongoing analysis, “run out of steam” (p. 4). Thus, “resacralization is not simply a return to religion; it is a reconstitution of social life” (p. 20),

6  Introduction

taking into account the ways in which religion still matters and perhaps even through religious lenses (again). In this way, then, Wexler moves beyond the structuralism of his predecessors where it was possible to assert, per Eliade, that “it must not be forgotten that all . . . cultures have a religious structure” (p. 76) to focus on the ways in which we might differently consider social practice beyond (as inherited through and filigreed upon in a performative, post-structural world) religion as rooted in, for Durkheim for instance, “primordial forms” (p. 76). We take resacralization then as both method and theory in this book. That is, we see this text as a contribution to a growing literature in the social sciences that takes religion seriously (e.g., Asad, 2003; Blumenfeld, Joshi, & Fairchild, 2008; Connolly, 2008; Nord, 2002; Kunzman, 2006), but further we suggest that failing to engage the ways in which religion continues to constitute life in American educational spaces would be to practice exactly the problem of leaving “unexamined our deepest religious ideas” causing them to “stand in the way of our understanding each other” (Schweber, 2015, p. 59). By laying bare, in as many ways as is plausible here, the religious sediment still present in the ongoing stream of American education (some settled to the bottom; some very much carried in the current), we hope to suggest a method for examining the hidden curriculum that is deeply rooted in religious ideas, such that a greater understanding of what the debate ought to be around religion and American schooling can be engaged, beyond (while still including) the legal question of prayer, vouchers, and/or the teaching of creationism as science, for instance. Wexler notes that “the preeminence of religion in social theory . . . is evidenced by the fact that core concepts . . . represent secularized versions of religious terms and theories” (p. 145). In that vein, then, we draw upon theology as theory for our work but remain fully rooted in traditions in cultural and curriculum studies, suggesting that the conversation of/between these various traditions is what elucidates a resacralized possibility for understanding contemporary public education. And because we believe that “like a compelling conversation, curriculum can have a life of its own” (Pinar, 2015, xi), we seek to foster a conversation about how a post-secular understanding of education might differently shape discussions around religion in schooling broadly. We take as instructive Asad’s (2003) assertion that the sacred/profane divide was one created by anthropology and taken up by theologians as a mistaken understanding of medieval theology. The mistake lay in failing to notice that “the overriding antinomy was between ‘the divine’ and ‘the satanic’ (both of them transcendent powers) or ‘the spiritual’ and ‘the temporal’ (both of them worldly institutions), not between a supernatural sacred and a natural profane” (p. 32). In other words “a rigid division between the sacred and the secular is to impoverish both” (p. 9). Still, Asad is circumspect in that he does “not claim that if one stripped appearances one would see that some apparently secular institutions were really religious” (p. 25). We

Introduction 7

very likely disagree with this notion, though it might be argued that the mistaken view is that schooling in America was ever secularized as much of our work here is attending very particularly to the assumption that historically religious understandings, processes, and language have been readily stripped of their sacralized meanings. Our task is to work at stripping layers; the reader’s work is, one supposes, deciding if they are in accordance with our stance or Asad’s. Regardless, the work of resacralizing in educational research, as regards the processes and discourses of schooling can take, and has taken, a number of forms. Pinar (2015) reconnects study, as a practice, with Alan Block’s assertion that “engagement in study” is “engagement in prayer” (p. 14) such that “the classroom must be considered a sacred place” (p. 15). Similarly, Biesta (2014) turns to weak theology to suggest that it’s possible for education, conceived as an act of creation, to draw lessons from the notion that Elohim doesn’t create the world in Genesis; rather, he “brings being into life” (p. 13). Or, “Elohim ‘is not responsible for the fact that the elements are there but for the fact that they are fashioned and called good” (p. 14). Such an orientation to education, then, makes it more possible for teachers to engage students in the “possibility of subjectivity” because it opens one up to the risk that students will make choices where “anything can arrive.” Still, in contrast to Yahweh, who brings forth “perpetual children” (p. 15) hedged against particular rules for existence (which are then broken), “Elohim . . . shows us an educator who knows that creation is a risky business” such that “without risk nothing will happen” (p. 24). In another context, Connolly (2008) suggests that in the social sciences we: Need analyses that attend to the sometimes volatile relations between the state, nature, capital, science, and Christianity, to currents of uncertainty opened up by the historically specific shape of these assemblages as they encounter new forces, and to the periodic dangers and possibilities that these dissonant conjunctions create. (p. 22) And so it is that we need to attend to the kinds of relations that are buried in and imbricated through, Connolly would say, public education in America. In another way, Brass (2011) re-narrates the creation of English as a field of study in education as an outgrowth of Ian Hunter’s research on the Sunday school movement, which saw “the teaching of ‘English’ ” as “supplement[ing], if not supplant[ing] Christianity as an instrument to save individual souls and a nation in perceived decline” (p. 342).This post-secular moment seems open to new investigations into the overlapping influences of religion on public life; it is our hope that the work here adds to a growing corpus (and certainly not an exhaustive one here but suggestive of possibility nonetheless) of resacralizing research (and taking resacralization as theory for research) in the next epoch.

8  Introduction

Of Intent It is important to state, again, that the intent of this book is not necessarily aposematic. We heed not the eschatological from either side of the debate; Bibles in and out of classrooms will not, to our minds, bring about the end of education as we know it. Instead, we suggest that discussions about religion and its role in a variety of domains—political, social, cultural and yes, educational—ought to play a more prominent role in conversations both in and about education. This is not meant to imply that schools ought to teach students to follow a particular religion but, rather, that schools and colleges of education ought to focus more intently on teaching students about the role religion(s) have played and continue to play in both the public and private arenas. To denaturalize or resacralize the Christian sediments in public education, we might ask the same questions of religion that we, as educators, have come to ask of gender, race, sexuality, and socioeconomic class—among many other identities that come to matter in and affect classrooms—in educational scholarship. This denaturalization seeks to challenge Christianity’s perceived invisibility in education. To suggest that schools are secular, we argue, is to ignore the underlying ethos that millennia of religious thought and practice have embossed on and imbedded in the process of school(ed) learning. Because the very character of education is about the transmission of valued knowledge, values, and yes, character, we suggest that religion matters to how schools come to function and to the education and character they help produce. As scholars in the fields of curriculum, pedagogy, and teacher education, we feel that there is both room and a need for more substantive conversations about the ways religion might be critically engaged most particularly in discussions about curriculum, pedagogy, and the preparation of future teachers, the very audience for which an analysis of how religion plays in both the macro and micro levels is imperative if teachers are to understand education and its practices in more meaningful ways. One avenue for such an exploration, as noted, is to recognize religion more deliberately as one of the categories—like race, gender, class, or sexuality—that play an important role in the construction of education and its practices. Indeed diversity has become a widely acknowledged portion of most all teacher preparation programs. Yet the tendency in courses and standards is to avoid recognizing or addressing the impact and implications that religion and religious diversity carry in ways that we have come to believe that gender or race or class or sexuality do. Part of this might be due to an overdetermined assumption that although race and gender might be socially constructed, we are still ‘born’ into such (always shifting) categories. Religion, on the other hand, is considered a familial or personal institution conveyed less organically through practice rather than biology or one’s parents’ economic status. Regardless, we believe, the impact and role of religion as a category of difference acts

Introduction 9

similarly in educational contexts and should, thus, be ripe for similar analysis and consideration. As studies by Hartwick (2015), James et al. (2015), Schweber (2006b), and White (2009) have demonstrated, there is a strong connection between individual teachers’ religious identifications and their teaching. All four studies highlight the fact that what and how teachers teach is closely related to their religious beliefs. While these studies illustrate that religion does matter at the level of the individual teacher’s practice, it is important to emphasize that an exploration of the role of religion in education cannot stop at the door of the individual teacher’s classroom. As much of the literature pertaining to race, gender, and class has demonstrated, and as this book will highlight with regard to religion, a critical analysis of the role and impact of categories of difference in education cannot escape an examination of how those play at the institutional level of schooling—through the policies enacted, through the discourses employed, through the daily routines and rituals used, and through the implicit curricula underlying all of these. For many of the lessons students (and teachers) take away from school are drawn not from the school’s explicit curriculum but from its implicit curriculum and from its organizational, institutional, and discursive regimes of truth. For teacher education to seriously explore how and when any of the categories of difference influence education and its culture and are influenced by it, such categories must be addressed at both the level of the individual teacher and at the level of the institution as a whole. To ignore the value of such an investigation— in the case of this book, with regard to religion—we suggest, is to do a great disservice to both our teacher candidates and their future students while undermining the possibility of a fruitful conversation of how religion might best be employed and investigated in an educational world still run through with both overt and underlying religious influences.

Organization of the Book Chapter 1 briefly explores the long-standing, historical relationship between Christianity and schooling, beginning with medieval Europe, with a particular focus on the role of monasteries as the origins of current secular institutions of education. We then move to examine the role religion played in British schools as moralizing institutions meant either to discipline children and save them from their inherent evil or, alternatively, protect innocent children from the evils of the world. Both, and often in conjunction, were, it seemed, best done through the teaching of Christian virtue. This same approach very much underlay Puritan schools in early America, where the Bible served as the main curriculum intended to keep students in check. Even the common school movement, initiated by Horace Mann in the mid19th century, was still primarily focused on preparing Americans to participate in a Christian—that is, Protestant—civilization. With the advent of the Progressive era in late 19th century and early 20th century, the assumption,

10  Introduction

commonly held, was that schooling in America became not only more sophisticated and widespread but that it also became secular, moving away from teaching religion in schools. What we point out in this chapter is the notion that Progressivism, and what has followed since, has not in any way eradicated the long-standing presence of religion in schooling, despite decades of presumptive secularization of schools. This continued presence of religion in education is probably best evidenced by the need for the various Supreme Court decisions (e.g., Everson v. Board of Education, 1947; Engel v. Vitale, 1962; Abington v. Schempp, 1963; and Lee v. Weisman, 1988), all requiring educational institutions to excise manifestations of Christianity from public education. Despite these court decisions, however (and as we illustrate in the remainder of the book), the echoes and imprints of Christianity remain in the hallways, rhythms, and routines of our public schools, even if in less overt ways.These manifestations of Christianity, we suggest, while not part of the explicit curriculum, are nonetheless still quite powerful in conveying a variety of messages to students. In that regard, we argue, religious understandings—whether intended or not—still very much pervade what is done in the name of education today. Chapter 2 explores the ways in which sediments of Christianity still impact the organization and structure of schools as well as the discursive practices underlying them. We explore the role a Christian calendar that governs the school year not only privileges the Christian student and Christian sensibilities but, through its implementation, renders all other students as Others. The chapter then moves to explore ways in which language used in education (e.g., terms such as “mission,” “dean,” “rector,” “discipline,” “convocation,” and “detention”), while appearing natural, neutral, and secular, in fact has Christian roots. Whether or how these Christian roots matter to those working in educational settings might vary; the idea that we continuously convey religious sediments in our daily use of these terms, and the ideological and pedagogical positions those invite, ought to require some pause in institutions that tend to define themselves as secular and which have otherwise made various efforts to ensure the separation of religion and education. The second, and closely related, part of the chapter examines pervading religious conceptions about the “child” and, consequently, how to organize her/his mind and body for and through instruction. In this regard, and using Foucault (1977) and Jenks (1996, 2001), among others, we explore the two, and often intertwined, notions of the child in Christianity: either as the Apollonian child (named after Apollo)—innocent, wondrous, and good— who is born without sin but needs to be protected from the (sinful) world or the Dionysian child (named after Dionysus)—embedded with original sin and thus, evil, headstrong, and stubborn—who must, for his/her own good, be broken, purified, and “fixed.” We explore the manifestations of these two competing conceptions of children in American education, starting from the Puritan era and ending in current practices. Part of this exploration

Introduction 11

also entails highlighting ways in which the body of the child, regardless of whether he/she is Apollonian or Dionysian, has been managed and disciplined in classrooms organized like churches, where students sit in rows, listening quietly and obediently to a teacher who, like clergy, stands behind a podium to deliver the sermon (or lesson) of the day, where students, mostly made docile, religiously copy notes in a monastic fashion. This process of civilizing the student body through a series of rituals, as Foucault and others have noted, much resembles a Christian tradition of learning, even if religion is not the topic of instruction. While we tend to think of the Bible as primarily a religious text, its relationship to education is profound. In many ways, in Chapter 3, we suggest it could be considered an educational text just as much as a religious text. This is because the main purpose of the Bible is educational—teaching first the Israelites and then Christians (and, as a precursor to the Koran, also Muslims) to appreciate and follow the mandates of its God. It is thus appropriate that the word “Torah,” the Hebrew word for the first five books of the Old Testament, stems from the same root at “moreh,” the Hebrew word for teacher. Nor should we be surprised that the words “teach,” “teacher,” or “teaching” appear 261 times in the Bible. Words such as “learn” and “learning” appear 244 times. And God’s interactions with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses, or for that matter with the various judges, kings, and prophets thereafter, are all inherently educational—constantly teaching and guiding them as individuals and, in many ways, acting as a teacher educator, preparing them to do God’s work or teaching of others.While we address this latter issue more specifically and directly in Chapter 5, the focus of this chapter is to explore some foundations the Bible has provided education, ones we see manifesting in the ways we still think about, and do, education today. Here we highlight three issues in particular: the idea of testing, of teaching as testament, and of regarding texts as authoritative and the forms of readings such an approach makes im/possible. With regard to the first issue, we examine the religious roots of testing, beginning with the multiple ways in which testing is inherently embedded in God’s work in the story of creation as well as in the story of Adam and Eve. As such, our initial encounter with testing as a Judeo-Christian is of one that is godly. As we demonstrate in the remainder of the chapter, testing does not only appear in the first chapters of Genesis; it plays a significant role throughout the Bible. Indeed, testing, in its various configurations, appears 244 times in the Bible, including in statements such as: “I will test you with pleasure” (Ecclesiastics 2:1), and such testing will “do you good in the end” (Deuteronomy 8:16). Testing is inherent to the story of Abraham (testing his will to leave his homeland, testing his confidence and that of Sarah with the conception of Isaac, and the ultimate test of Abraham in the sacrificing of Isaac), to multiple incidents within the story of Moses, to the stories of the Tower of Babel, Noah, Sodom and Gomorrah, the golden calf, and most other encounters with the people of Israel as their obedience and compliance is tested and retested over and over again throughout the Old

12  Introduction

Testament. In what ways might this pervasive legacy of testing in the Book of Books, we ask, have influenced the current zeal within educational circles for the pervasive testing in education as manifested in No Child Left Behind (NCLB), Race to the Top, and other more local formats of state testing underlying current educational practice? What legitimacy, we ask, have these tenets provided current practices and in what forms has this early legacy remained with us, albeit in different form? The second aspect of the legacy of the Bible discussed in this chapter is the form of reading—obedient, unquestioning—that traditional forms of Bible reading has generated and transferred into school reading, where textbooks are often treated as authoritative, as godly, as if they fell down from heaven, and thus are regarded as heavenly generated truth whose authority, much like the Bible, ought to be simply accepted as unquestioned truth. What we also attempt in this chapter, however, is to highlight the fact that the Bible in fact, by its very structure and apparent contradictions within the text, might actually suggest that we read it quite differently—that is, that we read it as the postmodern text it is, one that does not hide its contradictions and, quite probably, at least from the Midrashic tradition, asks readers to deconstruct the text, inviting forms of reading that are creative, nonconformist, and even subversive. This, we argue, is probably a reading that is more in line with the biblical text than the kind of reading tradition that has been demanded of readers in schools in particular. We move, then, in Chapter 4 to enact a form of writerly reading to a text often taken as authoritative in the educational milieu: standards. Chapter 4 attends closely to the recent and ongoing push toward standardization in education as a move not necessarily motivated by religious intention but underwritten by its language and understanding of possibility and especially obedience. In particular we draw upon Wexler’s (2013) work in mystical sociology, not only to trouble the notion of a sacred-secular divide but also to suggest that one cannot understand the way in which standards are used to shape schooling and educational policy without first attending to the links in language and structure between biblical notions about ‘morally correct behavior’ and the current reform regime’s intended usage of standards to produce certain kinds of (mostly docile) students and teachers. We begin with the ongoing kerfuffle around the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), while reconnecting its language and understanding of possibility to a particular Christian reading of schooling. From there we address curricular programs proliferating under the auspices of Pearson Education to suggest that standardization creates the choice, among teachers, to become infidels or to remain in fealty to a specific educational-religious mode of teaching. The overall work of the chapter is to make the point that our very understanding of a standard measure for acceptable passage through education hangs on long branches attached to deep historical Judeo-Christian roots. This is not our suggesting that this reality is necessarily problematic, but its elision in research certainly is.

Introduction 13

The next two chapters focus particularly on teacher education. Chapter 5 looks at the pressures built into the profession of teaching in the United States that uniquely position teachers to mirror if not the pedagogy of Jesus then certainly his career path. The ideas of teaching as salvation and teacher as martyr are not new concepts. Prior research, however, has largely failed to explore the historical and cultural religious roots that continue to inform the ways in which teachers are constructed. That is, though prior work has engaged with thinking about religion and thinking about teachers as saviors, little work has been done to uncover the hidden curriculum of teaching that positions teachers as versions of Christ in the public school classroom. To get there we trace the history of teaching and teachers in the United States through their origins as specific vehicles for proselytizing and then move to consider the ways in which, as established in prior chapters, the supposed secularization of schooling and the aims of the profession failed to wipe clean the religious assumptions that surround the teaching profession. Part of this work, then, requires attending closely to the current career possibilities for teachers where alternative certification programs play upon the notion of saving children and teacher burnout (martyrdom) as inherently attractive options for teacher candidates. Contrast this with veteran and unionized teachers who have become scapegoats and sacrificial lambs for the reform industry—the avatar upon which all the sins of society must be heaped to atone for a failure to meet Annual Yearly Progress. The point being that the image of Jesus is malleable enough to describe various career paths but also is so closely tied to the profession of teaching (he was a rabbi after all) as to become a reason for entering the profession itself. Here we engage the common language of entering and ongoing teachers who take up the profession for a love of children and forego wages in other jobs for the ‘calling’ that is teaching. This notion of a born teacher who loves children pervades and is perhaps best illustrated in the Hollywoodization of teacher saviors who are, inevitably, sacrificed at the hands of cruel administrators or restrictive union work rules. Ultimately this chapter is fundamentally about acknowledging, in the field of teacher education, the ways in which a failure to account for the religious framework that has long influenced what we can even think is possible in and through teaching has created a situation where the profession is constantly placed in the missionary position by policy makers, teacher candidates, and even teacher educators. This work of rethinking teacher education involves an incorporation into teacher education of an acknowledgment of the religious identities of teacher candidates (and professors), which will then require a constituting of just what this category of experience and difference might mean for and do to practice and experience. Rather than seek, as most teacher preparation programs now do, to expunge the religious and its underpinnings from education and ignore its influence, we suggest that teacher education take on this topic more seriously, for whether we choose to ignore or bury its ramifications on teachers and teaching, its influence persists. We thus call for

14  Introduction

a more deliberate engagement in teacher preparation of the existence and relative importance of religion in the formation of schooling and society— an engagement that will explore different sets of questions about the necessity of certain affects, attitudes, and disciplinary regimes on practice. Chapter 6 explores two main issues: first, we look into the God of the Old Testament as a teacher, that is, into the methods and means God uses as well as how those combine to teach the particular lessons and knowledge he wishes to teach his students, looking specifically at his encounters with Adam and Eve in the two stories of creation, with Abraham (particular attention is paid to Abraham’s journey from his homeland to the land God shows him and to the sacrificing of Isaac), Moses, and others. In all, we examine what godly teaching entails, and how it is enacted, and compare those to the pedagogies currently enacted in education, emphasizing the role of the Bible in helping provide a teacherly imagination as to what constitutes good (and in some cases, not-so-good) teaching. To use the example of Adam and Eve, we look into the ways in which God, much like teachers today, asks Adam questions for which he (God) already has the answers (and most of which tend to have a short, “correct” answer); how he poses particular questions to Adam and engages the student (Adam) when the latter responds incorrectly, or simply refuses to respond; and how he proceeds to admonish his students (Adam, Eve, and the snake) following their failure—of conduct, of complying with established rules as to what can and cannot be eaten, and finally, of failing the “test” questions administered by God. Not surprisingly, as noted, such teacherly maneuvers are not uncommon in today’s classroom, even if their ramifications, luckily, do not impact all generations to follow with such harsh results. The chapter also attempts to mirror the ways in which God initially teaches directly (in person), as is in the case of him speaking directly to Adam and Eve, Abraham, or Moses, yet distancing himself later on by creating proxies—in the form of judges and prophets—to do his speaking for him. In that regard, we connect God’s disillusionment with the Israelites with similar notions exhibited by teachers who are initially enthusiastic with direct teaching and, following several years in the profession, often either take on student teachers to “assist” in their teaching and/or move on to administrative positions that remove them from direct contact with students in classrooms while still ensuring their pedagogical and curricular messages are conveyed to students by others. Chapter 7 looks at two current trends tied to revelation and Revelation. The first examines the long-standing role of teaches as bringers of knowledge, as focused through the idea of teachable moments. The rhetoric and literature around object lessons and planning processes in teaching and teacher education suggests that there are moments of revelation that occur in the classroom, if it is properly structured, through which students learn . . . something. This focus on the revelatory—the a-ha moment—has a long tradition in Christian preaching and the preaching that became teaching.

Introduction 15

Our analysis tarries briefly with the etymological (revelation and its religious linguistic roots) but then shifts to the larger argument that through school (as it is, of course, compulsory) alone in society must come revelatory moments. They are in essence, mediated by attendance in the church of knowledge and brought forth by pedagogues with an ability to read the signs (standards, curricula, test-data, individualized education programs [IEPs], etc.) at the heart of the prophesy. Beyond this, however, we work to understand the use of apocalyptic language in recent and ongoing reform rhetoric around schooling. It is the case that eschatological language has become a part of the language of education more recently, across the political aisle, as it were (public schooling as we know it is being destroyed; we are losing generations, etc.). Some of this use of crisis language (Klein, 2007) has been analyzed as applied to various policy documents (A Nation at Risk, Johnny Can’t Read, No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top) but never for its religious undercurrents. We find this particularly odd given the uniquely Christian cant of most of the proponents of the policies that led up to and came out of such documents; in particular very specific understandings of Evangelical end-times language (and its uses) produce certain movements to engage with educational policy prerogatives. This chapter seeks to reconnect the revelations of ‘failing’ schools to the work that Revelation does for certain members of Christian coalitions who see the destruction of government schools as necessary for the production of the right kind of citizen through schooling. Chapter 8, the final chapter, constitutes a discussion of the relevancy and potential impact of the issues addressed in the previous chapters on and for thinking about K–12 education and the preparation of teachers to work in public education and what that would mean and entail if we did, in fact, consider the role religion already plays in classrooms. While we begin this chapter with a broader exploration of religion in education in light of contemporary events around the world that have highlighted religion as an important force that educators have tended to neglect, our main focus here is on thinking about what a reconsideration of the role religion—mostly Christianity—already plays in education. We explore possibilities for a more complex view of religion in teaching and learning as a category of difference in university courses that focus on diversity as well as in courses on curriculum and pedagogy. Mostly, however, we draw connections to the themes outlined throughout the book and examine what those could and should mean in teaching today’s diverse student body in public schools as well as in the preparation of our mostly white—and, yes, Christian—teachers who still, by and large, tend to see Christianity as absent from the halls of public schools.

16  Introduction

Notes 1 Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577 (1992) centered on the constitutionality of prayer at a graduation ceremony.The Rehnquist court ruled that public schools, largely because participation in the graduation ceremony is only nominally voluntary for students, could not sponsor religious invocations by clerics. In Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, 530 U.S. 290 (2000), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that student-led prayer held at a high school football game violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. 2 For an exception see Bindewald’s (2015) work on current issues regarding release time as well as Gordon’s (2007) historical account of captive religious “public” schools. 3 From the Oxford English Dictionary.

References Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203 (1963). Apple, M. (1979). Ideology and curriculum. London: Routledge & Kegan Pauly. Apple, M. (1982). Cultural and economic reproduction in education: Essays on class ideology and the state. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Apple, M. (1986). Teachers and texts: A political economy of class and gender relations in education. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Aries, P. (1962). Centuries of childhood: A social history of family life (R. Baldick,Trans.). New York:Vintage. Asad, T. (2003). Formations of the secular: Christianity, Islam, modernity. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Bennett,W. J. (2001). A broken hearth: Reversing the moral collapse of the American family. New York: Doubleday. Biesta, G. J. J. (2014). The beautiful risk of education. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Bindewald, B. J. (2015). In the world, but not of the world: Understanding conservative Christianity and its relationship with American public schools. Educational Studies, 51(2), 93–111. Blumenfeld, W. J. (2006). Christian privilege and the promotion of “secular” and not-so “secular” mainline Christianity in public schooling and in the larger society. Equity & Excellence in Education, 39(3), 195–210. Blumenfeld, W. J., Joshi, K.Y., & Fairchild, E. E. (Eds.). (2008). Investigating Christian privilege and religious oppression in the United States. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Blumhofer, E. L. (2002). Religion, education, and the American experience. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press. Bracher, P., & Barr, D. (1982). The Bible is worthy of secular study: The Bible in public education today. In D. Barr and N. Piediscalzi (eds), The Bible in American education: From sourcebook to textbook. (pp. 165–199). Philadelphia: Fortress Press. Brass, J. (2011). Sunday schools and English teaching: Re-reading Ian Hunter and the emergence of “English” in the United States. Changing English: Studies in Culture and Education, 18(4), 337–349. Brinig, M. F., & Garnett, N. S. (2014). Lost classroom, lost community: Catholic schools’ importance in urban America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Britzman, D. P. (2003). Practice makes practice: A critical study of learning to teach. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Connell, C. (2000). Parochial education and public aid: Today’s Catholic schools. Washington DC: Fordham Foundation.

Introduction 17 Connolly, W. (2008). Capitalism and Christianity, American style. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. DelFattore, J. (2004). The fourth r: Conflicts over religion in America's public schools. New Haven, CT:Yale University Press. Delpit, L. D. (2006). Other people's children: Cultural conflict in the classroom (2nd ed.). New York: The New Press. Delpit, L. D. (2012). ‘Multiplication is for white people’: Raising expectations for other people's children. New York: The New Press. Diller, A., Houston, B., Morgan, K. P., & Ayim, M. (1996). The gender question in education: Theory, pedagogy, and politics. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Engel v.Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962). Epstein, D., & Johnson, R. (1998) Schooling sexualities. New York: Open University Press. Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947). Ferguson, A. A. (2001). Bad boys: Public schools in the making of black masculinity. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish:The birth of the prison. New York:Vintage. Fry, R. (2007). The changing racial and ethnic composition of U.S. public schools, Pew Hispanic Centre. ERIC ED 498 125. Ghaill, M. M. A. (1994). The making of men: Masculinities, sexualities and schooling. Buckingham: Open University Press. Giroux, H. A. (1981). Ideology, culture & the process of schooling. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Gordon, S. B. (2007). “Free” religion and “captive” schools: Protestants, Catholics, and education, 1945–1965. DePaul Law Review, 56(4), 1177–1220. Hartwick, J. (2015). Teacher prayerfulness: Identifying public school teachers who connect their spiritual and religious lives with their professional lives. Religion & Education, 42(1), 54–80. Jackson, P., Boostrum, R., & Hansen, D. (1993) The moral life of schools. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. James, J. H., Schweber, S., Kunzman, R., Barton, K. C., & Logan, K. (2015). Religion in the classroom: Dilemmas for democratic education. New York: Routledge. Jenks, C. (1996). Childhood. New York: Routledge. Jenks, C. (2001).The pacing and timing of children's bodies. In K. Hultqvist & G. Dahlberg (Eds.), Governing the child in the new millennium. (pp. 68–84). London: RoutledgeFalmer. Juzwik, M. M. (2014). American evangelical Biblicism as literate practice: A critical review. Reading Research Quarterly, 49(3), 335–349. Kincheloe, J. L. and Steinberg, S. R. (1997). Changing multiculturalism. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Klein, N. (2007). The shock doctrine:The rise of disaster capitalism. New York: Picador. Kunzman, R. (2006). Grappling with the good: Talking about religion and morality in public schools. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Ladson-Billings, G. (2003). Racialized discourses and ethnic epistemologies. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The landscape of qualitative research: Theories and issues. (pp. 257–273). New York: Sage. Lee v.Weisman, 505 U.S. 577 (1992). McCarthy, C. and Crichlow, W. (1993). Race, identity, and representation in education. New York: Routledge. Martin, J. R. (1994). Changing the educational landscape: Philosophy, women, and curriculum. New York & London: Routledge.

18  Introduction Marty, M. E. (2000). Education and the common good: Advancing a distinctly American conversation about religion’s role in our shared life. New York: Jossey-Bass. Michaelsen, R. (1970). Piety in the public school: Trends and issues in the relationship between religion and the public school in the United States. New York: Macmillan. Miner, B. (1999). The right attacks public schools. Southern Changes, 21(1), 15–18. Nash, R. J. (1997). Answering the "virtuecrats": A moral conversation on character education. New York: Teachers College Press. Nielson, N. (1966). God in education: A new opportunity for American schools. New York: Sheed and Ward. Noddings, N. (1992). The challenge to care in schools: An alternative approach to education. New York: Teachers College Press. Nord, W. A. (1995). Religion and American education: Rethinking a national dilemma. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Nord,W. A. (2002). Liberal education and religious studies. In E. L. Blumhofer (Ed.), Religion, education, and the American experience. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press. Pascoe, C. J. (2007). Dude, you're a fag: Masculinity and sexuality in high school. Berkeley: University of California Press. Palmer, P. (1998). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher's life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Peshkin, A. (1986). God’s choice:The total world of a fundamentalist Christian school. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pinar,W. F. (2006). Race, religion, and a curriculum of reparation:Teacher education for a multicultural society. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Pinar, W. F. (2009). The worldliness of a cosmopolitan education: Passionate lives in public service. New York: Routledge. Pinar, W. F. (2013). Curriculum studies in the United States: Present circumstances, intellectual histories. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Pinar,W. F. (2015). Educational experience as lived: Knowledge, history, alterity:The selected works of William F. Pinar. New York: Routledge. Purpel, D. E. (1989). The moral and spiritual crisis in education: A curriculum for justice & compassion in education. New York: Bergin & Garvey. Rackley, E. D. (2014). Scripture-based discourses of Latter-Day Saints and Methodist youths. Reading Research Quarterly, 49(4), 417–435. Sadker, D. and Sadker, M. (2001). Gender bias: From colonial America to today’s classrooms. In J. Banks and C. Banks (eds), Multicultural Education. (pp. 125–151). New York: John Wiley & Sons. Schweber, S. (2006a). Breaking down barriers or building strong Christians: Two treatments of Holocaust history. Theory & Research in Social Education, 34(1), 99–133. Schweber, S. (2006b). Breaking down barriers or building strong Christians: Reflexive affirmation and the abnegation of history. Theory and Research in Social Education, 34(1), 9–33. Schweber, S. (2015). Fishing below the surface: Undrestanding the role of religion in student leraning. In J. H. James, S. Schweber, R. Kunsman, K. C. Barton, & K. Logan (Eds.), Religion in the classroom: Dilemmas for democratic education. (pp. 53–60). New York: Routledge. Sears, J. T., & Carper, J. C. (1998). Curriculum, religion, and public education: Conversations for an enlarging public square. New York: Teachers College Press. Skerrett, A. (2014). Religious literacies in a secular literacy classroom. Reading Research Quarterly, 49(2), 233–250.

Introduction 19 Smagorinsky, P., & Taxel, J. (2005). The discourse of character education: Culture wars in the classroom. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Warren, D., & Patrick, J. J. (Eds.) (2006). Civic and Moral Learning in America. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Webb, S. H. (2000). Taking religion to school: Christian theology and secular education. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press. Wexler, P. (2013). Mystical sociology:Toward a cosmic social theory. New York: Peter Lang. White, K. R. (2009). Connecting religion and teacher identity: The unexplored relationship between teachers and religion in public schools. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(7), 857–866. Willis, P. (1981). Learning to labor: How working class kids get working class jobs. Columbia University Press.

1 Christianity and American Education Historical Connections

We Americans are . . . taught to think of American society as a secular one in which religion does not count for much, and our educational system is organized in such a way that religious concerns often receive little attention. But if you think for a moment, you may realize that a better question is, where does religion not come into all this? You will not get very far into any educational issues without somehow bumping into religious themes. (Marty, 2000, p. 23)

Education and Its Christian Roots: A (Brief) History What, one could ask, especially if one believes that the various Supreme Court decisions have separated religion and education, does religion have to do with public education? Our answer, as we have already begun to explore in the introduction, and will continue to do so throughout the book, is this: quite a lot and for a very, very long time.We often hear this question and are surprised by it, not simply because those Supreme Court decisions are taken at face value and considered a full resolution to the issue but mostly because the very premise of the need for those court decisions, and the need for having multiple, consecutive court decisions on the issue of religion and schooling, already indicates several things. First, that religion was indeed embedded in public education. Otherwise, why would there be a need for court decisions to extricate (extirpate?) one from the other? Second, the very fact that multiple court decisions were necessary to address the persistent presence of religion in education might indicate that court decisions—and particularly Supreme Court decisions—as powerful and important as they are, don’t necessarily resolve an issue once and for all. While the remainder of the book explores the idea that religion—primarily Christianity—still pervades education today, our focus in this chapter is on the long history that entwined Christianity and education such that the need for these Supreme Court decisions arose in the first (and second and third, etc.) place. In doing so our purpose is not necessarily to break new ground as regards the historical ties between (the) church(es) and public schooling but rather to set the stage for and trace the wellspring of inherently evangelizing concerns still intertwined with the language and practice of current educational

Christianity and American Education 21

policy, discourse, and pedagogy. As such, it is vital to note that the history of American schools as proselytizing institutions extends across oceans of time and water both. In addressing Christianity, this account will of necessity be an intertwining of both Catholic and Protestant historical strands. Though we wish to acknowledge—and honor—the differences in approaches to Christianity manifest in these often divergent traditions (those great debates about the emphasis on the good word over/or good works come to mind), it is our conceit here that when it comes to educational practice, the Green (Catholics) and the Orange (Protestants) have been very much of a piece in their curricular and pedagogical approaches. This begins, one might argue, with a common anchor in something akin to St. Augustine’s contemptus mundi tradition, which “The monk Peter echoed” in noting “ ‘our sordid and hideous origins’ ” (Delumeau, 1990, p. 16) with regard to our fallen, sinful state as human ancestors of Adam and Eve. Spong (2005) examines the link between the two traditions as rooted in a creation of the fallen that the salvific might become possible; for him, “Christianity, in both its Catholic and Protestant forms, was constructed around its presumed unique ability to deliver forgiveness and thus to rescue hopeless, lost sinners” (p. 165). Further: In both Catholic and Protestant Christianity the picture was clear. Human beings were fallen sinners standing in need of punishment. . . . We were all adult children standing before our heavenly parent, who was also prepared to punish us.We raised our children with a style modeled after our understanding of how God was relating to us. That is also how violence and unconscious sadomasochism entered the Christian story. (p. 166–167) It is upon just such commonalities of approach that we wish to focus, acknowledging that to complexify the picture of religion and education today—our ultimate purpose—we may need to gloss technical divergences in modes of worship and traditional dogmatic splits in search of a shared and troubling history. We will also need to expand our geography because the history of U.S. schooling does not begin in America. Rather it has deep roots in England and other European traditions out of which the American system emerged and continues to emerge. And so, we begin by turning to medieval Europe, where the written word began taking precedence over the immateriality of spoken text and the path to knowledge and enlightenment ran by the twin checkpoints of religion (specifically monastic life) and entextualization. To be rational, further, was to be educated, and to be educated was to be a monk or at the least to be among monks.1 As various religious orders began to dot the medieval landscape, however, they became more influential, less disconnected from local concerns, and

22  Christianity and American Education

increasingly political. What had been a singularly insular and contemplative tradition aimed at escaping the bonds of earthly temptations became, slowly, outward facing. The monks, it seems, deigned to get their hands dirty in the ink of town and gown relations. With the rise of the first medieval universities, it was all but natural for various sects to begin to look outward; taking the project of education into the wicked world came to make some sense, it seems. After all, to the extent that libraries existed at the time, they existed predominantly (in Europe) within the walls of Cluny and Clonmacnois, Lindisfarne and Luxeuil, which is how both secular and religious institutions of account and import were officially registered with the Holy Roman Empire—the earliest educational accrediting agency (Haskins, 1941). And so the vestiges of a twinned system of secular and religious become loosely moored by explicitly denominational concerns. Fletcher (1997) illuminates the earliest character (and mission) of widespread schooling in English society as largely two pronged.These were Christian, moralizing institutions, first and foremost, meant to save children from their own inherent bodily evil through the spread of good, well-controlled Christian virtue. Reformation-era Protestants utilized the socializing institution of the common school—as well as the growing desire of the bourgeoisie for educated—male—children to justify the promulgation of catechetical institutions that taught (the) discipline(s) through explicit religious instruction. With its fervent emphasis on control over the body and mind “the school became more than anything else an instrument of discipline, based on coercion and intended to check youthful high spirits with soled and monotonous learning” (p. 337). The moral clarion call to education and enlightenment soon drew Elizabethan and Stuart patrons who sought to endow religious institutions meant to combat the perceived moral rot of younger generations. These were no avuncular donors, however; no repentant Havishams. They were guardians of an old morality writ through physical, spiritual, and by association, educational intimidation.2 Call it a turning back to the good old days of holy warring or a renewed crusade sent forth toward a more localized terra incognita played out on the body of the, well, student body—literally. For as one preacher cum curricular wit noted, “[T]he buttocks . . . were created by God to receive just correction in childhood without serious bodily injury” (p. 330). We point to these details less as a commentary on the question of corporal punishment in 1600s England3 and more as a way of turning our gaze upon the origins of modern educational institutions as well as highlighting their role as moralizing structures. Certainly one might argue for the existence of the monastic tradition of early second-millennium Europe as initial tread marks upon the path of formal religious instruction, but we’re concerned here less with the ethereal, unconnected cloister and prefer to focus our gaze upon the fact that these schools, at least in their later iterations, were very much planted in the structures of society, looking to shape it rather than escape from it.

Christianity and American Education 23

But the shift from monastic schools—ones that attempted to seclude children from society—to the more modern schools of the Enlightenment, which were very much planted in the structures of society, attempting to shape it through its emphasis on ‘secularism,’ individualism, rationality, and science and their underlying desire to break with religious dogma pervading earlier times, was not (and, as we will argue in the second section of this chapter, is still not easily) achieved. This is not because, as the following example illustrates, of the inability to separate the religious and the secular in institutional terms but, rather, because the very nature of the “secular” was still very much religious, despite the new understandings ushered in by the Enlightenment and other movements that followed. Entwistle (1997), examining English Sunday schools in the 19th century, saw “consciously or subconsciously, schools appear[ing] to promote qualities and values in their pupils as an antidote to inappropriate models” (p. 411) extant in secular culture. One way to do so, certainly, was to supplement a common school education with weekend education (and literature of specific “religious” qualities); quite another involved the physical coercion already mentioned. For his part, Carper (1998) viewed later models of the public school “[as] becom[ing] the vehicle for transmitting the common faith—evangelical Christianity—while the Sunday school taught ‘sectarian’ specifics” (p. 17). Both approaches, however, ran hand-in-hand with a Puritanical mandate that education must save the—inherently—fallen children. For Puritanism, Archard (1993) suggests “conceived of children as essentially prone to a badness which only rigid disciplinary upbringing could correct” (p. 38); the blushed and naked whelp it seems, required structure, for its innocence was not earned and “the innocence of the child [was] an empty one” (p. 37). Bringing us across the Atlantic, Fletcher (1997) notes that “John Robinson, pastor of the Mayflower, claimed that the ‘natural pride’ of children had to be ‘broken and beaten down’. [Additionally] citing Proverbs 20, 22, and 23, William Gouge described beating children” to purge them of evil; further [citing] Proverbs: “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child” as justification for corporal punishment (p. 326). The idea that the child was and is fallen and in need of saving both within the family and through the auspices of schooling was one that early Puritan settlers brought with them to American shores. But what might that mean, and how might it translate into practice? One way to combat the original sin of ignorance seems to have been to beat it out of pupils—but probably through the mists of time being so glib is reductive if not dangerously short-sighted— and quite another was to enlighten the child through the implied divinity of knowledge. The point is that for a great, long time both went hand in hand. However, what once had been the province of cloistered abbeys was, in a Christian context, becoming very much more egalitarian—if you were white, male, a Christ follower, and of reasonable means that is. And so, how to save them, these wild children set adrift on the new land—New

24  Christianity and American Education

Amsterdam, New York, New England; indeed these were to be Winthrop’s Cit(ies) Upon a Hill, new models of Christian purity—and all rolled up with the folly of their hearts? In the end, it mattered very little whether a child were innocent or experienced; both beginnings led, it was feared, to wicked ends, and so parents and more specifically schools were cautioned against pampering children who might only survive hellfire if “accustomed to strict discipline early in life” (Aries, 1962, p. 115).4 That Jesus, in the Christian Scriptures, was often referred to by the Apostles as “rabbi”,5 gave early common school pedagogues reason enough to weave religion into the moral-curricular fabric of what were essentially frontier seminary schools in colonial America. Indeed Catholic theological history is rife with images of teacher-student relationships.Though the Puritans who accompanied Pastor Robinson those months a-ship from England would have been suspicious of Papist claims on anything but their specific circle of hell, one might hear the echoes of St. Ignatius, who wrote that he felt “God led him like a schoolchild” (Kolvenbach, 1986) through his work establishing the Jesuit order in his Protestant brethren schoolmasters reading from The New England Primer. The most commonly used educational text in the American colonies, the Primer (a likely precursor to the McGuffey Readers of 19th-century westward expansion fame) at its peak boasted “perhaps 3 million copies [printed] . . . Its great theme was God and our relationship to Him” (Nord, 1995, p. 65). Its simple claim was to prime the children to have a relationship to the Christian God as all knowledge came from him (this exclusively male, white deity). But this is meant, or was begun, as a discussion of religion and public education. These schools—excepting, perhaps, those efforts of the Jesuits and other evangelizing orders like them—in the Puritanical context of the earliest settlements of a nascent America would not yet have considered the dichotomy between public and private that we see as so stark (though increasingly muddied in the most recent wave of educational reform that mixes public money with private schools so widely) some 400 years later. Indeed, in the colonial period when white, Protestant families were largely charged with the education of their children within the home, a common schools movement on par with anything seen in contemporary England wouldn’t quite get underway in the United States until Horace Mann took his case on horseback up and down the Northeast in the mid-1830s. A shift in the mid-19th century that led to the common schools movement in America was meant to “create a moral, disciplined, and unified population prepared to participate in American politics” (Carper, 1998, p. 16). This population (still) was, of course, white and Protestant and mostly affluent, and schooling outside of the home was meant to prepare Americans for participation in a Christian civilization. While, from today’s standpoint, we might consider the “common” and religious schools as separate entities, this was in no way the case at the time.6 The fact is not only that such a separation was inconceivable then, but Protestants, the largest “common” religious

Christianity and American Education 25

affiliation at the time, could not imagine a “common” that was not inherently Protestant in nature. As Carper notes: With few exceptions, notably several Lutheran and Reformed bodies, which opted for schools designed to preserve cultural and/or confessional purity, Protestants were generally supportive of common schooling. Indeed, many were in the vanguard of the reform movement. They approved of early public schooling because it reflected Protestant beliefs [and] was viewed as an integral part of a crusade to fashion a Christian— which, to the dismay of Roman Catholics, meant Protestant—America. According to church historian Robert T. Handy (1971), elementary schools hardly had to be under the control of particular denominations because ‘their role was to prepare young Americans for participating in the broadly Christian civilization toward which all evangelicals were working. (pp. 11–12) While the idea that the common school ought to serve as a vehicle of and for Protestantism was one accepted as natural and commonsensical to the Protestant majority in the United States, it was not seen as such by the waves of immigrants, some of whom, and in growing numbers, were not Protestant. In other words, the commonality of Protestantism as the basis for the common school was put into question. Perhaps one can credit the Catholics.Well, probably, too, the anti-Catholic Know-Nothing party, whose violence against the Catholics in and around New York City and Philadelphia, along with an objection toward a perceived (and very real in many cases) Protestant bias inbred within the curriculum of municipal public schools, led to the establishment under the auspices of Bishop John Hughes of the first Catholic school system in the United States just after the 1840s (Nord, 1995). Coupled with state injunctions that sought to protect the rights (often repealed and reinstated almost on a rolling basis as control slipped in and out of the hands of Know-Nothing/Nativist legislatures in subsequent years)7 of the now burgeoning ethnic Catholic immigrant population, this alternate model of schooling created the flashpoint by which public schools were free to move from a Christian denominational spirit to the new doctrine of late 19th-century Americanism. This, by 1890, meant that textbooks (recall the prevalence of the old New England Primer) at the high school level had eliminated explicit religious content almost universally. Even McGuffey Readers were being shunted to use in private schooling, now for the first time significantly outnumbered by public institutions. As Marty (2000) suggests: Near the end of the eighteenth century,religious freedom gradually increased, and the educated developed a new awareness of how others believed and worshiped. . . . In the early nineteenth century the citizens of the new

26  Christianity and American Education

United States created what some have called a ‘second establishment’ in place of the old and abolished legal one.This version simply privileged the religion of the majority, which was a kind of generalized Protestantism. . . . This majoritarian faith mingled with a genial pattern of democratic ‘secular’ thought associated with the Enlightenment, and that fusion inspired and predominated in nineteenth century American schoolbooks. (pp. 36–37) This was closely akin to the role that Mann saw for religion in schools. For Mann—who believed that Bible reading was vital to the common schools movement: Two divine ideas fill . . . great hearts: their duty to God and to posterity. For the one they built the church; for the other they opened the school. Religion and knowledge, two attributes of the same and glorious truth, and that truth, the only one which immortal happiness can be securely founded. (as cited in Lynn, 1964, p. 20) And though “This Enlightenment faith” of which Marty (2000) wrote “was dedicated to morality. . . this Enlightenment religion was designed to be generic, universal” (p. 37). It became thus possible to replace Mann’s Bible with the Scripture of nationalism in schools embroiled in sectarian disputes as a move toward the universalism of citizenship. This project of Americanization from the late 19th century onward led to the Progressive era (or rather a movement of progressivism) that put an emphasis on advancing American society, putting faith in expert (scientific) knowledge that could modernize (and industrialize) a burgeoning economy and nation. And so we have a movement to comprehensive high schools that educate for what Labaree (1997) might call social efficiency. From here the assumption generally follows that as schooling in America became more sophisticated and widespread, we progressed, as it were, away from teaching religion in schools.Yet the notion that Americanization or progressivism did not eradicate the long-lasting intrusion of religion into schooling—indeed, that religion continued to play a role in education regardless of decades of attempts to secularize and “modernize” schools—is best evidenced by a series of court decisions beginning in the 1940s regarding the relationship between religion and schooling in the United States.8 The foundation of which was established—pun intended—with Everson v. Board of Election (1947), in which, determining that the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause applies to states and, therefore, to local school districts, Justice Hugo Black asserted that: The ‘establishment of religion’ clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a

Christianity and American Education 27

church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. (Nord, 1995, p. 115) In terms of legal ramifications, Black’s interpretation held (and still holds) great weight and served as the foundation for various court decisions to follow. In 1948, debating the case of the People of Illinois v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court banned the use of public school buildings for religious instruction (Jurinski, 1998). In Engel v.Vitale (1962), one of the most significant and far-reaching cases heard by the Supreme Court, the court examined the constitutionality of the New York State Regents tract, which read,9 “ ‘Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our Country,” and determined that school prayer—whether denominational or not—might be construed as a religious activity and thus declared unconstitutional (Nord, 1995, p. 115). A year later, in Abington School District v. Schempp, the Court reiterated its ruling. School-organized prayer including the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer as well as required devotional Bible reading—even without comment or explication from teachers or students—were now illegal in the classroom. In Stone v. Graham, the Supreme Court banned the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools, ruling that their purpose is religious and thus prohibited by the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause as interpreted by Justice Black. In 1985, the Court invalidated an Alabama law that allowed for a one-minute period of silence at the beginning of each school day ‘for meditation or voluntary prayer,’ ruling that this mandated moment of silence amounted to “the State’s endorsement of prayer activity.” This, the Court believed, “transgressed the proper wall of separation between church and state. Merely allowing students to be excused [was] held insufficient” (   Jurinski, 1998, p.  49). And in 1988, in Lee v. Weisman, the Court banned religious invocations at public school graduation ceremonies. These court rulings were followed in 1995 by guidelines by the U.S. Department of Education regarding religious activity in schools. These guidelines state that student (individually or in groups) prayer and Bible reading is allowed as long as it is not disruptive, as is the wearing of religious clothing and symbols as well as limited proselytizing and distribution of religious literature. Banned, according to these guidelines, are teacher- and or school-endorsed prayer. Teachers, according to these guidelines, may teach about religion but cannot advocate a particular religion. Nor may they encourage either religious or antireligious activity (Jurinski, 1998). The underlying assumption being, of course, that neutrality is possible. We remain dubious of such a claim, implicit or otherwise.

28  Christianity and American Education

That these Court decisions or the guidelines by the U.S. Department of Education have not fully settled the issue of religion and schooling is evidenced by the ongoing debates about the teaching of evolution versus creationism, the censorship of literature in school libraries, LGBT rights in schools, vouchers and funding for religion-based schools, or the display of religious artifacts (e.g., a Christmas tree) during religious holidays as well as by the multitude of literature and campaigns from the right, trying to find ways to “reinsert” religion more prominently into public schooling. These debates, ingrained in the very fabric of American society—probably the most religiously self-defined among Western nations (Pew, 2011)10—will surely not go away, regardless of any court decisions or guidelines we might see in the future. Our point here, however, is not about the larger public debate as to these issues or, for that matter, about the role religion plays (or should play) in the content students learn. Rather, our focus here is on the role of religion in the day-to-day operations of schooling and in the pedagogies employed in them. Despite the various court decisions, we suggest, the echoes, the imprints of religion remain in the hallways—the rhythms, the routines, and the claims to knowledge—of our public schools, in some cases perhaps in more muted forms but present nonetheless. Courts can regulate application of the law; they cannot regulate, however, culture—that of schooling or that of the larger society that gives rise and meaning to what takes place within schools. In other words, while the courts can take theology out of the curriculum, expunge religious manifestations explicitly identified as such in schools, they cannot take religiosity out of people or decouple culture from its religious roots. With an eye to the religion-culture aspect, then, our interest in the following chapter and the remainder of the book is less concerned with teaching about religion or teaching religion itself but rather with whether or not we choose to attend to the religion that is already always taught in our public schools, not through content per se but through the culture of discourses and pedagogical practices of everyday life in American schools. In many ways, we suggest, this teaching, while not a part of the explicit curriculum, is as powerful in conveying messages to students as those intended by the schools’ explicit curriculum. Our sense, reinforced as we researched this work, is that this gray area—what Eisner (1985) refers to as the “implicit curriculum”—that bespeaks a certain religious character in public schooling is still very much present in schools. It is with this in mind that we turn our gaze toward the ways that religion has become culture, and culture religion, under the auspices of American public education.

Notes 1 An illustrative example of this move from paganism to Christianity, from the oral tradition to the sacrosanctity of the written, is manifest in the mythical tale Sweeney Astray. Sweeney—the mad king of Celtic mythology dated to early 12th-century

Christianity and American Education 29 Ireland—was led astray after attacking the evangelizing St. Rónán and throwing the erstwhile monk’s psalter (psalm book) into a nearby lake. In Heaney’s (1984) translation of the epic tale, it is after this destruction of not only text, but sacred text, that Sweeney is cursed—by St. Rónán himself—and, having quit his castle in a naked rage, he is reduced to feral madness. More to the point, he becomes a bird. The implication is twofold: the written word is powerful and to be honored, and the ways of the Christian God carry precedence over earthly sovereignty and paganism. It was the bells—ringing some version of compline and vespers through the bogs of early Ireland—from Rónán’s monastery that led Sweeney to rush from his home nude and accost the abbot. Of import, for the seeds of early education in Europe, is that Sweeney regains his senses (and his humanity) decades later at the monastery of St. Moling, where the monks, recognizing something strange in their frequent avian visitor, convince him to tell the story of his fall from grace that they might write his tale for future generations. It is a cautionary tome. Again, the lesson is quite bare: the written word begs heed over the immateriality of spoken text and the path to knowledge and enlightenment ran by the twin checkpoints of religion (specifically monastic life) and entextualization. 2 We see such lamentations of the failing character of subsequent generations of youth throughout the history of American education as well. Recent eras have endured inflammatory policy documents like “A Nation at Risk” (1983) bemoaning the collapse of a mythical golden age of education the moral compass of which (i.e., the loss of it) is made much more explicit (and exclusive) in screeds such as Bennett’s (2001) A Broken Hearth, which ties the “fall” of family values in the face of liberal progressive ideals to, among other things, the death of quality schooling. 3 For our purposes here it is useful to note the origins of biblical witticisms and cautions such as “Spare the rod, spoil the child” (Proverbs 13:24) found literal grounding in schools for the first time in about this era, a legacy very much carried through to American educational contexts until late in the 20th century. And a long-standing Christian tradition of distrust of things corporeal, returning to Augustine’s Confessions on through the self-flagellant religious orders practicing mortification to escape, or at best curb the unclean body, continues. Along these lines we can turn for support to the good Reverend Benjamin Wadsworth, whose Puritan(ical) leanings led him to conclude that “babies [were] ‘filthy, guilty, odious, [and] abominable . . . both by nature and practice” (Stearns, 2006, p. 11). School was, and is, we would argue, meant to cleanse children of such things; it’s as if they have a mission. 4 And somewhere kindergartners are being formed into straight lines, remonstrated for touching (the unclean bodies of their) classmates, and becoming Nespor’s passive (disciplined) “schooled bodies” (1997, p. 131). 5 Webb (2000) notes that Christianity left behind the title of rabbi for Jesus, which not only denigrated Christianity’s dependence upon Judaism but also devalued pedagogy in general. In Christian history James Carroll (2001) discusses the worrisome split created through Christian revisionist historical work, which stresses Christ as Christian rather than as a Jewish man who—perhaps unintentionally even—most likely saw himself as a leader of a new kind of Judaism. And so, often enough, we see Jesus addressed as “teacher” instead of rabbi to accentuate a troubling and all-too-often violent split between a supersessionist Christianity and the “old” religion of the Jews. Carroll calls this history as remembered and illustrates it through analysis of the four Gospels for their increasingly political rhetorical construction. 6 Though Kennedy (1966) does argue, “In significant ways . . . the Sunday school movement served as ‘precursor and pioneer’ to public schools in the United States” (p. 25) . . . “in serving as a valuable preparatory agency during the early decades of American national history, the Sunday school was precursor and pioneer to the common school” (p. 25). More evangelical leaders at the beginning of Mann’s movement,

30  Christianity and American Education however, saw the Unitarian-universalist bent of the public schools as rival to the distinct Protestantism of the Sunday school movement under the American Sunday School Union (ASSU). 7 Indeed it was around this time, Carper (1998) reminds us, that Illinois and Wisconsin made it mandatory for children between seven and 14 to attend 16 weeks of public schooling a year. The Bennett and Edwards laws, respectively, were meant to undermine sectarian religious education as Catholic and Lutheran schools were seen as corrupting the ideal of evangelical Christianity espoused through public schooling. Too, the Americanization project of public schooling was seen as vital to “alter” the inherently weak moral and spiritual constitutions of Irish and German immigrants while grafting their loyalties to the federal project of patriotism. 8 For an exhaustive and nuanced accounting of the role (and rule) of law in the United States vis-á-vis education, see Joan DelFattore’s The Fourth R: Conflicts of Religion in America’s Public Schools (2004). 9 Recited daily and statewide until challenged. 10 See http://www.pewglobal.org/2011/11/17/the-american-western-europeanvalues-gap/.

References The American-Western European values gap: American exceptionalism subsides. (2011). Retrieved from http://www.pewglobal.org/2011/11/17/the-american-western-european-values-gap/ Archard, D. (1993). Children, rights, and childhood. London: Routledge. Aries, P. (1962). Centuries of childhood: A social history of family life (R. Baldick,Trans.). New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Bennett, W. (2001). A broken hearth: Reversing the moral collapse of the American family. New York: Doubleday. Carper, J. C. (1998). History, religion, and schooling: A context for conversation. In J. T. Sears & J. C. Carper (Eds.), Curriculum, religion, and public education: Conversations for an enlarging public square. (pp. 11–24). New York: Teachers College Press. Carroll, J. (2001). Constantine’s sword:The church and the Jews. New York: Mariner Books. DelFattore, J. (2004). The fourth R: Conflicts over religion in America’s public schools. New Haven, CT:Yale University Press. Delumeau, J. (1990). Sin and fear:The emergence of Western guilt culture (E. Nicholson,Trans.). New York: St. Martin’s Press. Eisner, E. (1985). The educational imagination: On the design and evaluation of school programs. New York: Macmillan. Entwistle, D. (1997). Sunday-school book prizes for children: Rewards and socialization. In D.Wood (Ed.), The church and childhood (pp. 405–416). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Fletcher, A. (1997). Prescription and practice: Protestantism and the upbringing of children, 1560–1700. In D. Wood (Ed.), The church and childhood (pp. 325–346). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Haskins, G. L. (1941). The University of Oxford and the lus ubique docendi. The English Historical Review, 281–292. Heaney, S. (1984). Sweeney Astray: A version from the Irish. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Jurinski, J. (1998). Religion on trial: A handbook with cases, laws, and documents. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. Kennedy, W. B. (1966). The shaping of protestant education: An interpretation of the Sunday school and the development of protestant educational strategy in the United States, 1789–1860. New York: Association Press.

Christianity and American Education 31 Kolvenbach, P.-H. (1986). No small task. Toronto: Regis College Press. Labaree, D. F. (1997). Public goods, private goods: The American struggle over educational goals. American Educational Research Journal, 34(1), 39–81. Lynn, R. (1964). Protestant strategies in education. New York: Association Press. Marty, M. E. (2000). Education and the common good: Advancing a distinctly American conversation about religion’s role in our shared life. New York: Jossey-Bass. McCarthy, C., and Crichlow, W. (1993). Race, identity, and representation in education. New York: Routledge. A nation at risk: The imperative for educational reform. (1983). Retrieved from http://www. ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/index.html Nespor, J. (1997). Tangled up in school: Politics, space, bodies, and signs in the educational process (J. Spring, Ed., 1st ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Nord, W. A. (1995). Religion and American education: Rethinking a national dilemma. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Spong, J. S. (2005). The sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible’s texts of hate to reveal the God of love. New York: Harpercollins. Stearns, P. (2006). Childhood in world history. New York: Routledge. Webb, S. (2000). Taking religion to school: Christian theology and secular education. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press.

2 Religious Sediments in Educational Discourses and Practices

The work of this chapter is to move from history (through history, often enough) to think about the ongoing discursive presence of religion in American public schooling. This work, considering the implicit curriculum, in particular of Christian influence in education, is meant to set the tone for the kinds of analyses, inexhaustive and necessarily suggestive, that fill out the remainder of this book. There are, admittedly, numerous levels upon which to engage in a discussion of what we’re to take away from the selective historical argument as presented in the previous chapter.We will suggest two. Both address the fundamental (no pun intended) assumptions about religion’s role in contemporary American public schooling; one centers more on the structures and trappings of the typical makeup of a school (its organization, processes, and language), and the other attempts to explore the role of disciplining students’ bodies and conceptions of the ‘child’ that we see as inherently tied to the religious ancestry of today’s institutions that inform and, in doing so, also form, our students’ minds and bodies to be disciplined, to yield to authority, to comply, to suffer guilt for actions, and to absorb ideology—scientific, religious, or otherwise—without complaint. It is tempting, of course, to explicate solely that which is most apparent: that we remain on a school calendar that blatantly privileges Christian holidays (Blumenfeld, 2006); that our public schools are often guided by mission statements; and that we still speak of recitation very much rooted in oral religious traditions. These things matter, and certainly they are worthy of our attention. But if we’re to discuss religion’s role in education, we must also explore the core values and assumptions that underlie those practices. We address these and other issues next.

Calendar We all, as a matter of fact, commonly use the qualifiers BC and AD (or their modern equivalents of BCE and CE) to determine the chronology of events. To most of us, Feeney (2008) notes, These numerical dates seem to be written in nature, but they are based on a Christian era of year counting whose contingency and ideological

Religious Sediments in Educational 33

significance are almost always invisible to virtually every European or American, except when we hesitate over whether to say B.C. or B.C.E. (p. 7) But while the notations BC (before Christ) and AD (anno Domini—in the year of the Lord) have now been replaced with BCE (before the Common Era) and CE (Common Era), this division, while attempting to dis-intricate its religious—Christian—referent, in fact entrenches it even further. Abandoning the explicit referent to Christ, the division based on his (very much contested) date of birth still remains implicit. Implied is not only the marking of his birth as the dividing line between ‘before’ and ‘after’ but also the idea that such a division is, and thus should now also be regarded, as ‘common,’ taken for granted and applied to all. That notion of subsuming a Christian sensibility as common sense, one that having been laundered of its explicit religious connotation, should now apply to all—Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists—underlies not only our, by now ‘common,’ division of time but also its organization into what we have come to call a calendar. Or perhaps we ought to say the calendar since the calendar currently most used around the world is the Gregorian calendar, otherwise referred to as the Western calendar or Christian calendar or, in short, the common or civil calendar. This calendar was introduced in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII, after whom it was named. Though Christian by design and religious by a papal decree, this calendar is now considered ‘common’ or ‘civil,’ occluding its Christian theological origins in the mantle of the civic, an instrument to be appropriated by and serve the common and the civil, regardless of religious or civic persuasion. Christianity, it seems, has been able, among other things, to appropriate the very essence of time enumeration and its management while allowing that appropriation to become invisible and seem natural and apolitical to most of those using it. But the enumeration of time through calendars—Gregorian or any other—is never neutral; it is ideological and political in nature, organizing time and activities in particular ways as they advance some at the expense of others. As such, calendars are inherently curricular, charting a course (a curriculum) to regulate bodies in time and space. An academic calendar is no exception. As a case in point, Ramadan began in 2011 on July 31 and ran until August 30. This was, for the students at the majority of American schools on a semester system, concurrent with the first month of the school year. The daylight fasting called for among devout Muslims means adapting the cycle of the body to a schedule that requires that consumptive and circadian rhythms run counter to the traditional work and school routines of daily life. Hanukkah, in 2015, began on December 6, and ended on December 14, a time when universities and schools are mired in the semester’s requisite final exams period. And though, as with Islamic students, those sons and daughters of Israel are within their rights as university students to miss classes in the service of religious observation, it is the very fact that they must actively excuse themselves from classes (and be responsible for making

34  Religious Sediments in Educational

up for the lost curriculum) amid periods deemed significant both in their religious traditions and their academic preparation that bears noting here. This phenomenon, of course, is not unique to the U.S. academic calendar. Public schools disadvantage religious minority students everywhere. In Israel, which schedules its calendar around the Jewish holidays, students of the Muslim and Christian faiths endure similar difficulties, as do Christian students in countries of Muslim faith. The difference, however, is that none of those countries purport to have separated church—or, in their case, synagogue or mosque—from state. Though the United States has, the fact that Christian holidays are the ones accommodated by the academic calendar in the United States ought to be explored (see also Ahmadi & Cole, 2015). Other than the rather archaic link to our agrarian past, which still demands a long summer vacation to allow students to help during the harvesting season, our two other major breaks, though they are now often referred to as winter break rather than Christmas break and spring break rather than Easter break, nevertheless center around Christmas and Easter. Our point here is not to challenge this particular configuration—which is probably more reflective now of cultural rather than religious sensibilities—but to point to the fact that it is taken for granted as a form of curriculum and, as such, requires further considerations as to the degree to which it both advances particular religious and cultural practices and disadvantages others. Our argument, fundamentally, is that the American school year is oriented toward, and indeed pivots around, the rhythms of the Christian (and, in the case of weekends, a Judeo-Christian) ecclesiastical calendar. Certainly those most faithful to tradition among us will note that there are more important— by weight of theological significance—holidays within the traditions discussed: Easter, Rosh Hashanah, Mawlid al-Nabi. And yet it is Christmas that remains the fulcrum upon which our school year turns. We would do well to ask why. Probably one could make an argument for the linkage between Christmas as religious observation and Christmas as a cultural and civil observation, but that is beyond the purview of our work here. Rather we seek to note the important fact that when students wish to worship outside of public schools, as mandated by our Supreme Court, only those who are of Christian faith might do so without making their own special accommodations for the time and space required.The calendar of the public schools in the United States remains very much in service of the subtle and not-so-subtle Christian religiosity of the educational project. It is thus easy to remain invisibly Christian in our schools because the holidays come to you; one must, at the inconvenience of employer, teacher, and student all, become overtly Jewish, blatantly Muslim, to maintain many rituals of faith. That schools (K–12 or universities) schedule themselves around what could basically be considered a Christian or Judeo-Christian calendar is one thing. That such a calendar is taken as self-evident, natural, and above questioning by those of us in education is quite another. For beyond the disadvantage such a calendar poses to some (many?) students and teachers, taking

Religious Sediments in Educational 35

this (or any) calendar for granted highlights not simply the dominance of one religion in our educational arena but also the naturalness in which it manifests itself. Like the cases of gender and race, that which is not considered problematic by those being advantaged by the system indicates both the degree to which benefits are easily accessible to some at the expense of others as well as the blindness that results from those benefits for those most privileged. Recognizing that calendars based on the Jewish or Muslim religion, as noted earlier, disprivilege those from other religions, we are not suggesting abandoning the existing school calendar. Our point is not to simply replace one calendar with another. Rather, it is to raise awareness to the religious aspects underlying calendars and the degree to which, despite current policies that accommodate religious difference in some ways, the very nature of a calendar—in the case of the United States a Christian-based one—always already creates Others.

Language as Curriculum and the Curriculum of Language Curriculum expresses itself through language but is also formed by it. That is, while every curriculum uses language to orient people within it, suggesting a course for thought, action, and desire, the very language used in that process becomes a curriculum of sorts, directing those it engages toward particular understandings, assumptions, perspectives, and identifications. In that regard, language and the broader discourses informing it matter both in curriculum and as a curriculum. Operating in and as a curriculum, discourses make particular versions and visions of the world meaningful and intelligible. Providing a “conceptual order to our perceptions, points of view, investments, and desires” (Britzman, 1991, p. 57), discourses are the organizing structures that make the world intelligible and possible. Discourses and the discursive practices that go along with them, Foucault (1981) notes, define “a legitimate perspective for the agent of knowledge, and the fixing of norms for the elaboration of concepts and theories.” As such, Foucault adds, discursive practices are not simply “ways of producing discourse.They are embodied in technical processes, in institutions, in patterns of general behavior, in forms for transmission and diffusion, and in pedagogical forms which, at once, impose and maintain them” (pp. 199–200). Any system of education, Foucault (1981) proposes, is a way of maintaining or modifying the appropriation of discourses, along with the power and knowledge they carry. Indeed, discourses, Luke and Gore (1992) suggest, define the classroom and “are key to the production of subjectivity, identity and knowledge in pedagogical encounters” (p. 2). Decisions made regarding language use—choosing this term rather than another, this imagery instead of another—transmit certain values and, thus, to borrow from Popkewitz (1987), “impose ways of giving shape and organization to consciousness” (p. 340).

36  Religious Sediments in Educational

If language matters and it permeates and colors social systems, then the idea that elements of language used in education have their roots in religion, we believe, ought to matter too if, as the literature here suggests, language, both explicitly and implicitly, orients us to think and be in the world in particular ways. Many of the examples we provide relating educational discourse to its Christian roots may seem so innocent, matter-of-fact—indeed, regarded as secular inventions—that any reference to their Christian roots may appear odd or insignificant to anyone rooted in current-day educational practices. Yet tracing their origins, we suggest, allows us to see the residues coloring current educational practices and the possible meanings, affiliations, and positions they invite. And so, we turn to some examples of terms—“dean,” “rector,” “mission,” “colloquy,” “discipline,” among others—currently apolitically circulating in educational discourse, ones most of us tend to take for granted as neutral, secular, and unaffected by ideology and history—Christian ideology and history. While universities and some schools have ‘deans’ and many universities have ‘rectors’—both considered secular administrative positions—their roots are well established in church organizational structures. A dean, now a head of a college, is also defined as the head of a ‘chapter of a cathedral at a collegiate church’ and a rector as ‘a priest in charge of a church or a religious institution.’ Assuming that schools and universities are no longer overtly religious institutions and have no connection to cathedrals, the fact that those administering education within secular institution still carry the legacy of religious affiliations ought to matter—indeed, invite some pause— when we consider the assumed separation of religion and education. Similarly, though the term ‘convocation’ is currently used to portray a graduation ceremony (usually smaller than commencement) and, in other cases, the body of alumni (or a representative committee of it), its original use is based in church clerical procedures of assembly. Objects used in such ceremonies are equally related. Academic gowns, hoods, and caps, once the attire of clergy, are now used by faculty in a venue adorned with gonfalons, long flags or banners suspended from a crosspiece. Gonfalons, now commonplace in secular educational institutions, were originally used by religious groups gathered for devotional purposes to gain divine favor from God, Jesus, Mary, and the saints portrayed on these gonfalons. Admittedly, the use of such terms and objects by current-day secular institutions has probably more to do with these institutions’ cultural affiliations to their ancestry in medieval, church-based universities than to any explicit religious proselytizing.Yet such connections—and their display in current practice nevertheless—convey implicit ideological messages to both students and faculty. Whether or how the Christian roots of these terms and objects matters to those working within educational settings might vary, but the idea that we continuously convey religious sediments in our daily use of these terms and the ideological and pedagogical positions they invite for ourselves and our students, including those who are not Christian, ought to require some

Religious Sediments in Educational 37

pause in institutions that tend to define themselves as secular and that have made various efforts to otherwise ensure the separation of religion and education and regularly insist, based on established court decisions, on refraining from promoting religion. What the use of such terms demonstrates is that while overt promotion of religious belief might indeed be avoided, implicit messages read critically regarding religion—and Christianity in particular— seem ever present regardless of the efforts mentioned here. The legacy of Christianity, however, goes beyond administrative and ceremonial aspects of contemporary educational institutions. Take, for example, a mundane term such as the ‘office,’ the hub of the school and the symbol of its power and authority to which students are often sent to report and repent their sins. As the Oxford English Dictionary suggests, the term could be considered, as most of us now do, merely a room “used for non-manual work.” But what happens when one considers the dictionary’s other definition of the word as “the services of prayers and psalms said daily by Catholic priests or other clergy” and the possible relationship between the two definitions? One of the first practices of institutions facing accreditation is to elucidate a simultaneously specific and vague mission—“a series of special religious services for increasing religious devotion and converting unbelievers”(!)— statement for a school.1 To do so, a dean might impress upon the faculty the need for a colloquy—“a church court composed of the pastors and representative elders of the churches of a district, with judicial and legislative functions over these churches”—whereby the congregation—“a general assembly of the members of a University, or of such of them as possess certain specified qualifications” but also “a body of persons assembled for religious worship or to hear a preacher”—of teachers or professors—“one[s] who [have] taken the vows of a religious order”—might better elucidate for outside observers (and themselves perhaps, too) just what it is they do all day. This gathering will most certainly, at the tertiary level, divide along the lines of colleges (within a given university) and will divide further by discipline—which is drawn from the term ‘disciple’—and of course certain colleagues—“a body of clergy living together on a foundation for religious service or similar activity”—will sit nearer each other as personal relationships fracture the (now tense) room. The notion that the language used in education has its roots in religion is, considering the historical connection of schooling (and universities) to the church, unavoidable. It nonetheless, we argue, deserves more careful attention. Such attention, of course, cannot rest simply with the origins and contours of individual words; it must also explore the idea that our educational discourse, that which for Bakhtin (1994) is authoritative by its very official nature, will color (ever so subtly, even, but still the faintest shading matters) our possible perceptions. That the linguistic markers of education are so replete with buried fourth- and fifth-century meanings rooted in (Christian) church proceedings and ideology suggests a need to examine just what this does to the practices of schooling in the United States. We propose

38  Religious Sediments in Educational

that it very much leads to, as does the formal allowance for Christian holidays in scheduling, a normalized and not-so-silent, authoritative religious discourse. How else to explain the profusion of (Christian, after all) sports teams named Knights, Crusaders, and variously hued Devils representing our public schools in caricatured effigy, symbolizing, by definition, to the world that which schools value and what they stand for? While we leave an examination of the often troubling culture of school sports to others, we wish to suggest that naming is significant and, in these cases, sends powerful messages about the religious values underlying the chosen names, ones that might be especially problematic for, say, a Jewish or Muslim student or teacher whose ancestors were often (too often) subject to persecution by, for example, knights during the various Crusades.

The Apple as Metaphor The apple, an image so present in religion as symbol of that which was possible and lost is, too, synonymous with education. Think, if you will, of all those shining red apples taking up space on teachers’ desks (and holiday trees) or the image of an apple adorning the covers of so many books in education, educational websites, and other school-related paraphernalia. It is best to admit here that very little has been conceptualized regarding such religious connections. Often the gift of the literal apple is tied to modes of payment offered for services rendered by poor, farming families to teachers in lieu of monetary remuneration—perhaps and probably. But why, despite certainly other modes of payment in foodstuffs, does the apple survive as our most insistent symbol of teaching? Why are (were) students perceived as seeking favor called ‘apple-polishers’ and not ‘grain proffers’? ‘Potato pushers’? We argue that this has to do with an underlying theological assumption of what teachers do: they bring knowledge. To get there, we will need to revisit Genesis—apt, one supposes, as it was to have been the beginning anyway. The apple, in that great patriarchal tale of woman as downfall of man,2 is actually a geographical anachronism. If we are to believe that the Fertile Crescent at some point contained the garden from which man and woman were expelled, then it’s more likely they would have supped at the base of a tamarind (Enoch 32:4) or perhaps a fig tree if we’re to take their hasty choice of clothing against a newfound nakedness as a guide (Genesis 3:7). The truth is that we just don’t know exactly what fruit it was that tore a rent in paradise because it’s never specified. Textually, all that is said is that those first forebears ate of the tree of knowledge—later becoming, in some traditions, the tree of knowledge of good and evil3—the rest is open for interpretation. Or at least it was until Renaissance art fixed the apple in the collective Western consciousness. One theory as to the link comes from the etymology of the Latinate for ‘apple’ (malus) and ‘evil’ (malum), which both become ‘mala’ in the plural. Perhaps our imaginations have been limited by

Religious Sediments in Educational 39

a long lost misinterpretation. It matters little, though, as the greater point is that the apple has been—for centuries now—linked with knowledge, the Fall, and thus, in the process, with teaching. What is being said, then when one gives a teacher an apple or some representation of the fruit? What messages are conveyed? One might hope that one is not paying homage to our being led into a fall from grace. Chevalier (1994) suggests that the symbol is “that of knowledge and of being placed under the obligation to make a choice” (p. 37). So it seems that perhaps we polishers out there are attending to the gift of the potential of knowing everything (from good all the way to evil). Always, though, these assertions are couched in a religious context, referencing the first encounter—a tragic one—of humans and God and of disobedience and its consequences for knowledge and knowing. But this is also a tale of seduction of the forbidden and, above all, of the trickery of unclear instructions and of parties unaware of them but still expected to act in particular ways. Regardless of what has changed in schooling as we have moved from biblical to civil religion, the apple remains, still informing the way we conceive of the gift of knowledge that ought be and come from school. Remaining, too, are the couplings of religion and schooling, knowledge and obedience, virtue and sin, fallen and saved.This interplay between and among these various couplings, as evinced in the body of the fruit of knowledge, mirrors conflicted notions of education and of the student encountering it. We thus turn now to the ways in which education has dealt and still struggles with the issue of the child as fallen or saved. History and religion, as the next section illustrates, continue to undergird our current educational conceptualizations of and processes for dealing with these conflicted images of the child and how those ought to be addressed in the process of education.

The Child as Innocent and Deviant Mintz (2006) might well be writing of current pedagogues when he notes that our Puritan forebears “were convinced that molding children through proper childrearing and education was the most effective way to shape an orderly and godly society” (p. 10). But what does such a molding entail? In which direction does it desire? Answers, naturally, depend on the conception of childhood one holds—that is, on our understandings of what and who children are and, thus, what process is necessary to equip them for the kind of adulthood we envision for them. The very idea of childhood, as Aries (1962) has illustrated, is a modern concept. Aries points to early medieval artistic representations of children as small adults in both musculature and facial features as indication that the notion of the child simply didn’t exist as we might understand it from our post-Dr. Spock perches in time. He continues, asserting that “childhood was,” in pre-1400s Europe, “simply an unimportant phase of which there was no need to keep any record” (p. 38) as too many of these miniature

40  Religious Sediments in Educational

adults died too young to be considered ‘whole’ or feasible.4 More useful, for our purposes, in Aries’s analysis, is his notation of an evolution of focus in paintings of (what we’re calling here) children around the 16th and 17th centuries, when cherubic babies, flush with matriarchal love and nuzzling these same virginal mothers, evoked both an image of Christian piety-cumpurity but also “childhood” as “graceful or picturesque” (p. 38). Here we see, to our knowledge, the earliest versions of Blake’s tiny and lisping waif, “weep, weeping” into his mother’s bosom: Romanticism’s muse on canvas. This is what Jenks (1996) termed the “Apollonian child.” Named after Apollo, the Greek god of light and the sun, truth and prophecy, music, poetry, and the arts, this creative, handsome—the perfect conception of man—ideal is seen as “wondrous innocent, full of love and deserving to be loved in turn” (p. 60). This “Apollonian child” was “humankind before either Eve [and Adam] or the apple” (p. 73). It is an image of the child later cultivated by philosophers and educators such as Rousseau, A. S. Neil, and Pestalozzi as well as the one taken up by much of Progressive education, both past and present. The Apollonian’s Other—what Jenks defines as the “Dionysian child”—is named after Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, of ritual madness, pleasure, and ecstasy and the one associated with drunkenness, madness, and unrestrained sexuality. For Jenks, “the Dionysian child” is seen as rife with “an initial evil or corruption [from] within,” an image “buttress[ed]” by “the doctrine of Adamic original sin” (p. 70). “A severe view of the child,” Jenks adds, “is a sustained one that saw socialization as almost a battle but certainly a form of combat where the headstrong and stubborn subject had to be ‘broken’ but all for their own good” (p. 71). This second, darker half of the child, which comes sooted and soiled later as religious concerns begin to impugn the afore-assumed squeaky soul of the child, is in need of cleansing, purification, and fixing. It is a devilish child requiring discipline and obedience, the one found more readily in Dickensian depictions of childhood and, regrettably, in many neoliberal notions of education (for the poor, mostly) today that are replete with memorization and recitation, high-stakes testing, tracking, and the death of the arts, the humanities, as well as creativity and independent thought. Puritanism, Archard (1993) suggests “conceived of children as essentially prone to a badness which only rigid disciplinary upbringing could correct” (p. 38); the blushed and naked whelp it seems, required structure, for its innocence was not earned and “the innocence of the child [was] an empty one” (p. 37). The sin of experience lay like a Tyger set to pounce from the inside, the unkempt, undisciplined soul, kept only (barely) at bay by the habitual piety that came to be associated with school and schooling. If, as the Reverend Benjamin Wadsworth put it, “babies [were] ‘filthy, guilty, odious, abominable . . . both by nature and practice’ ” (Mintz, 2006, p. 11), then the duty of society was to civilize, moralize, and in the process save the babe, mired in sin though it may have been. Schools were expected,

Religious Sediments in Educational 41

according to Reverend John Wesley, to “break the will of [the] child” and “bring his will into subjection that it may afterward be subject to the will of God” (Hendrick, 1992, p. 36). And the work of breaking the young “required upon pain of punishment, usually physical, a form of behavior, accompanied by a set of related attitudes, which reinforced the child’s dependence and vulnerability” and deference (p. 46) as well as submission and subjugation. New here is the sense that school—and only that kind that transmitted specific religious moral codes—might bring some hope and that lost innocence of the great Fall back to the child—but only if the child became dependent and vulnerable, silent and unquestioning under threat of the pain of the switch and also, though, the pain of eternal hellfire. Here, note, the teacher became proxy for both parent and minister, imbued with both the power to save and damn in the same breath. While there are certainly some elements of the innocent, Apollonian child in contemporary educational thought, substantial elements of the religiously inspired, inherently evil, Dionysian child remain in our schools today (Jenks, 1996, 2001). While we must now spare the physical rod, the religiously inspired goad of shame and compulsory discipline still reigns, even if in different forms, in the hallways of even our most celebrated schools. No longer do we hang the albatross of a literal lake of fire over the heads of our most unwilling students; no we’re—we think—perhaps more subtle. Our saved students have their names on honor rolls in hallways for the shamed to walk beneath, look at, and know they are fallen. And those sinners of the modern era, what to do with them? We send them to detention or suspend them. Here they have penance to pay so that they might emerge cleansed, having confessed through the weight of time in that great purgative state. The idea is that though we’ve let loose the rhetoric and formal proclamations of the odious and un-Christian barbaric child behind, the processes of schooling still trace a clear lineage to a religious past that brings to bear the necessary moral guidance through which a(ll) wicked child(ren) might be made clean. That requires, as already described, submission and subjugation. For “education involves trust, hope, and faith, and it is guided by a search for wisdom that entails values that can only be called religious” (Webb, 2000, p. 101). Trust, hope, and faith all require ‘leaps’ and often can be preceded by the word ‘blind.’ We are still seeking, as John Wesley asserted, it seems, bent and broken wills, silently accepting the very notion that education (   just as God before it) knows best. Students who do best by the measures that are said to matter—grades, test scores, attendance—are those whose wills are most deferent to the formal workings of a school. The task of schools, it’s implied, is to figure how to deal with the mirthgorged Dionysus and the timorous but noble Apollo—both of whom seem to reside, simultaneously, within the same child. At the crossroads between diametrically opposed visions of childhood, schooling has had to mediate for methods of control. When schooling in America was an explicitly religious endeavor, no solution was needed as the innocent child simply did not exist,

42  Religious Sediments in Educational

for original sin told us so. As the grip of church on school loosened, progressive educational theories mushroomed, proffering ideals of unstructured and self-guided, free-play ‘learning,’ for better and worse, some would argue (see Montessori, Reggio Emilia, and whole language). Having swung to both extremes, the needle of influence seems to have settled somewhere in the middle in a debate about, say, a structured or unstructured school day. What we’ll note, though, is this: that the fading influence of something so extreme as bodily corporal punishment (linked in our work with Puritanical asceticism) does not mean the assumptions underlying such a practice have disappeared from the halls of our schools; though the welts and bruises fade, recall, their (un)remembered effects remain. It’s not so important, then, how we punish our students; it’s that we do so at all because this assumes that school is, regardless of the Grecian archetype of the child, still ever about control, punishment, discipline and the possibility of redemption. If this is true, and we take it to be, then the very anchors upon which schooling is based are, and perhaps always will be, explicitly theological regardless of whether a Bible ever finds its way onto a teacher’s desk.

Organizing the Body While schools are considered first and foremost places of learning, they are, at the same time, organizing systems that regulate students. And nothing is more regulated in schools than the student’s body. It is informed what it can and cannot adorn. It is required to move from room to room through narrow corridors, made to sit behind desks, and required, regardless of weather, to exit the building during recess. Its bodily functions are regulated—one needs a teacher’s permission to go to the bathroom. It is regulated as to when to learn and when to play (and a confusion of the two is often reason for punishment), when to move around and when to sit still. It is made to line up and follow, to be silent, compliant, and most of all, obedient.5 It’s made to be a transient body with no roots (other than the student’s locker) as it gets shuffled every 50 minutes from one location to another, rendering it a body in exile in its own (supposed) home—the school.6 We point here to the idea of the body because, as Lewis (1993) points out, the body of knowledge that comprises the curriculum and the bodily experience of being schooled “are not separable from each other” (p. 186). What we learn through our mind impacts our understanding of the body—how we perceive it, how and when we do or don’t activate it, how we learn to live with and in it—and that which is learned through the body has long-lasting implications for what is possible and imaginable intellectually. The two work hand in hand, both opening and closing possibilities for the other. So while we tend to think of schools as places designed primarily for the learning of the mind, it is important to also consider what the body learns in that process and, in the context of this chapter, the degree to which and how the regulation of the student body and its implications might be rooted in religious thought and practice.

Religious Sediments in Educational 43

After all, whether Dionysian or Apollonian, the child, it has been decided, must be schooled. It must be civilized. As Nespor (1997) points out, “the civilized body” in public education “is a schooled body, one that stays silent, walks in line, keeps its hands to itself, and doesn’t get out of its chair and walk around the room” (p. 131). This vision of singular, orderly, mortified bodies (no physical contact, recall) is, of course, value laden and historically bound. Foucault (1977) argues that the practice of education is imbued with a cellularization of students’ lives rooted deeply in the disciplinary traditions of monastic Europe. “The classroom,” he argues, is “a fundamental stage and script for childhood,” one filled with various technologies of organization meant always to surveil (as cited in Jenks, 1996, p. 98). These technologies of surveillance, for Foucault, render control of the body as paramount. And this control is most often organized around timeworn ideas linked to church, clergy, and morality. Why else ought we have organized students in rows, so many pews facing toward the great altar of the teacher’s desk? There are ties to Lancasterian monitoring, certainly, but in what guiding ethos is this ultimately rooted? The underlying assumption is that students are fallen and prone to unseemly distraction (tempted even) and in need of the discipline of a pr/t/eacher who might set them straight. And they are to submit to the order of it, just as in church, silent, again in rows, and listening to someone else hold forth. Step out of line (that which one might just be toeing), and the student faces recrimination—discipline. Of this, Jenks (2001) hones in on the Foucaultian analysis of the timetable defined as “the device . . . of monastic origin,” which “relates to the regular division” (p. 73) of the day. This division, both argue, becomes the systemic extension of control through the creation of a rhythm around which tasks, duty, and life become organized.The timetable, Jenks notes, is an inheritance: The strict model was no doubt suggested by the monastic communities. It soon spread. Its three great methods—establish rhythms, impose particular occupations, regulate the cycle of repetition—were soon to be found in schools, workshops, and hospitals. The new disciplines had no difficulty in taking up their place in the old forms; the schools and poorhouses extended the life and the regularity of the monastic communities to which they were often attached. (p. 73) A break in routine, a disruption in the cycle caused by a student is what leads, ultimately, to explicit discipline at the hands of the teacher. This is, recall, about the regulation of behavior.The ritual of the repetition of school mirrors quite easily that ritual that drives religious ceremony. In this light, it is a small leap to think of the teacher taking on the role of clergy, particularly in terms of punishment and absolution, themes Foucault locates in the history and practice of confession.

44  Religious Sediments in Educational

“At their best,” Webb (2000) suggests, “confessors are educators, teaching people how to reform their lives” (p. 124). As for Foucault (1990), confession becomes a trope for truth, indeed, a trope for human nature itself: “Western man has become a confessional animal” (p. 59). It is thus possible to see the role of clergy into which teachers have so easily stepped, that is, all that remains of monasticism characterized in schooling today: the need to discipline bodies along a timetable, the desire for submission to a single entity of power at the head of a cellular building, and ultimately the requirement that students confess to be saved. All this probably further influences the lives of our students than mandatory prayer ever could. For the overall implication is that they are ever in the practice of what used to be prayer, these latter-day unknowing oblates and novices. And school itself, as constructed, requires very much of them that is inherently, historically, and disciplinarily religious, even though the content learned might be altogether secular. In that light, the Oxford English Dictionary’s second definition of the office (as in the principal’s office) as not only a room but also as “the services of prayers and psalms said daily by Catholic priests or other clergy” will hopefully seem less odd here than when earlier introduced. After all, and despite a continuous effort to eradicate religion from education, the two seem connected at so many levels that simply taking out prayer or religious symbols might prove insufficient for the task. Schooling, as the work on the implicit (or ‘hidden’) curriculum (Apple, 1982; Eisner, 1985; Giroux, 1981; Jackson, 1968) has demonstrated, is not simply about what is taught but also about how things are taught and the relationship between the two. In that regard, while the explicit curriculum in schools may have been successfully laundered of its religious content, the curriculum of schools—the explicit and implicit language and practices through which curriculum is lived as well as the assumptions and routines structuring daily life in schools—have not. These latter aspects, as we have shown, are still very much rooted in religious—Christian—understandings and practices, all of which help inscribe particular ideological notions both on and through the student mind and body. In that regard, while you can take education out of the hands of religion through the establishment of a secular, public school system, it is much more difficult, considering the historical roots of education in the church, to take religion out of education.

Surfacing Influences Understanding, as we do, that the United States is predominantly Christian— whether through religious persuasion or cultural affiliation—and not wishing to assume the role of the ‘political correctness police,’ our intent here is not to suggest that the language and artifacts of Christian roots used in current educational practices be replaced. Simply replacing them, in the fashion of calling Easter break spring break, will achieve little (though symbolism does result in something). Rather, and assuming these practices, which have

Religious Sediments in Educational 45

been with us for centuries and will probably outlast all of us, what we are calling for, indeed what we do through the remainder of this volume, is their critical examination in light of the assumed separation between religion and education and the degree to which those Christian sediments convey particular messages to those we attempt to educate. With that in mind, the fact that we divide our school days into small chunks marked by distinct movement through various disciplinary approaches (math, then social studies, then English, etc.) in a school further divided into classrooms along corridors, reminiscent of monastic cellular organizational patterns isn’t, of itself, problematic. Left unexamined, however, its inherent religious character—around which we organize how education happens— remains a low humming below the rhetoric of schools purportedly made unreligious. Unless we acknowledge that all of education is at least partly theological in character (if only by dint of its own organization, language, and practices and in how it organizes student bodies), then talk of religion in (or out of) school is limited to surface and perhaps, by comparison, unimportant discussions about prayer in school, which in turn severely hamstrings the possibility of fruitful discussions of what role religion ought to (or does already) play in the schooling of and for children. At our most ambitious, we aim to reposition, to rotate, the debate that allows Nord (1995) to ask, “What hearing should live religious voices receive in public schools and universities?” (p. 5). The point is not to convert the reader to a position but rather to elucidate from different and perhaps un(der)examined angles, the character of religion in education. To suggest that the impacts of religion on education have been merely ephemeral in nature and thus so easily weeded out by the perceived secularization of the curricula of public schools as well as through the litigious work of the courts is to take both an ahistorical view of education as well as one that focuses on the explicit curricular aspects of schooling while ignoring the implicit curriculum lurking below. It is to forget that though silt settles at the bottom of a river, it is still there coloring the water flowing above and through it. Thus we wish to highlight the ways that Christianity “makes itself visible and invisible” so that we might better see how the supposed commonsensical “nothingness” that gets “taken for granted” (Segall, 2002, p. 135) as normal (and thus normalizing) might be better used (or repudiated) in the national project that is education. To this end, Peskowitz (1997) suggests that “Christianity’s others cannot feel welcome, despite additions and changes to the curriculum, if the ethos does not change” (p. 711). This is a sentiment we would mirror. We add, however, that Christianity’s ‘self ’—the majority of those in education who identify as Christians—is as much implicated in this ‘Othering’ as those being ‘Othered.’ Indeed, we would suggest that such an exploration is probably more necessary not for the ‘Other’ who is continuously made aware, through his/her ‘Otherness,’ of the degree to which, and how, Christianity pervades education but to those whose Christian cultural or religious

46  Religious Sediments in Educational

affiliations prevent them from seeing that which underlies what they perceive as natural and thus neutral in education. To embark on this journey of denaturalizing the Christian sediments in public education, we should ask the same questions of religion that we, as educators, have come to ask of gender, race, sexuality, and socioeconomic class—among many other political identities that come to matter in and affect classrooms—in educational scholarship. This denaturalization seeks to challenge Christianity’s perceived invisibility in education. To suggest that schools are secular, we argue, is to ignore the underlying ethos that a millennia of religion has embossed on and imbedded in the process of school(ed) learning. Because the very character of education is about the transmission of valued knowledge, values, and yes, character, we suggest that religion matters to how schools come to function and to the education and character they help produce. And because knowledge is so often valued through the texts of education, we turn next to the foundational text of Western civilization and schooling: the Bible.

Notes 1 Beyond the immediate linguistic relation of mission to Christianity, there are, of course, the historical reminders of what was done to Native Americans in the name of (and by the hands of) the multiple missions dotting the land to convert the unbelievers. That this ubiquitous term, rather than, say ‘goals’ has been laundered of its religious and historical meanings might give some cause for pause, if not concern. 2 A troubled concept to which Chernin (1994)—along with many others—has applied a feminist critique in her work, Reinventing Eve. 3 Gordon and Rensburg (1997) suggest that the phrase ‘Tov Vera,’ good and evil, pairs opposites to create the meaning of all or everything, as in the English phrase, ‘they came, great and small,’ meaning just that they all came. So the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil they take to mean the Tree of All Knowledge. 4 Critiques of this manner of morally tinged argument abound. Most prominently Archard (1993) reminds that “previous society did not fail to think of children as different from adults; it merely thought about the difference in different ways” (p. 19). This is a ready caution against historical anachronism (or browbeating) to which we willingly defer, agreeing with the idea that “we can say of previous societies only that they have treated their children in ways of which we disapprove” (p. 20). 5 The important issue for Christianity, according to Foucault (1979/1999), and we would argue to current manifestations of schooling as well, is the notion “that one does not obey to reach a certain result; one does not obey, for example, to acquire a habit, an aptitude, or even an honor. In Christianity [and in school], the absolute honor is precisely to be obedient. Obedience must lead to a state of obedience. To remain obedient is the fundamental condition for all other virtues” (p. 124). 6 Clearly we’re generalizing both in terms of daily schedules and relative restrictions on bodies. There are real and troubling differences in the orientations toward black and brown bodies in no-excuses charter schools, for instance, in contrast to the more august boarding schools of the Eastern seaboard. The vast majority of students in American schools, however, face a regime of truth that works to control their bodies in some manner related to timing and physical function. Here we mean to evoke without prescribing; certainly the specifics matter, and scholars who do work

Religious Sediments in Educational 47 elucidating the particulars are well worth attending to (e.g., Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2009; Ferguson, 2001).

References Ahmadi, S., & Cole D. (2015). Engaging religious minority students. In S. J. Quaye & S. R. Harper (Eds.), Student engagement in higher education:Theoretical perspectives and practical approaches for diverse populations (pp. 170–185). New York: Routledge. Apple, M. (1982). Cultural and economic reproduction in education: Essays on class, ideology, and the state. London & Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Archard, D. (1993). Children, rights, and childhood. London: Routledge. Aries, P. (1962). Centuries of childhood: A social history of family life (R. Baldick,Trans.). New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Bakhtin, M. (1994). Social heteroglossia. In P. Morris (Ed.), The bakhtinian reader: Selected writings of bakhtin, medvedev, voloshinov. (pp. 15–17; 73–87). London: Edward Arnold. Blumenfeld, W. J. (2006). Christian privilege and the promotion of “secular” and not-so “secular” mainline Christianity in public schooling and in the larger society. Equity & Excellence in Education, 39(3), 195–210. Britzman, D. (1991). Practice makes practice: A critical study of learning to teach. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Chernin, K. (1994). Reinventing eve: Modern woman in search of herself. New York: Harper Perennial. Eisner, E. (1985). The educational imagination: On the design and evaluation of school programs. New York: Macmillan. Feeney, D. (2008). Caesar's Calendar: Ancient time and the beginnings of history. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ferguson, A. A. (2001). Bad boys: Public schools in the making of black masculinity. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Foucault, M. (1977). Language, counter-memory, practice (D. Bouchard & S. Simon, Trans.). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Foucault, M. (1981). Language, countermemory, practice: Selected essays and interviews by Michel Foucault (D. F. Bouchard, Trans.). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Foucault, M. (1990). The history of sexuality: An introduction (R. Hurley, Trans.Vol. 1). New York:Vintage Books. Foucault, M. (1999). Religion and culture: Michel Foucault (J. R. Carrette, Ed.). New York: Routledge. Gaztambide-Fernandez, R. A. (2009). The best of the best: Becoming elite at an American boarding school. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Giroux, H. (1981). Ideology, culture & the process of schooling. Philadelphia:Temple University Press. Gordon, C. H., & Rendsburg, G. A. (1997). The Bible and the ancient Near East (4th ed.). New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Hendrick, H. (1992). Constructions and reconstructions of british childhood: An interpretive survey, 1800 to present. In A. James & A. Prout (Eds.), Constructing and reconstructing childhood: Contemporary issues in the sociological study of childhood. (pp. 34–62). New York: Falmer. Jackson, P. W. (1968). Life in classrooms. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Jenks, C. (1996). Childhood. New York: Routledge. Jenks, C. (2001).The pacing and timing of children’s bodies. In K. Hultqvist & G. Dahlberg (Eds.), Governing the child in the new millennium. (pp. 68–84). London: RoutledgeFalmer.

48  Religious Sediments in Educational Lewis, M. (1993). Without a word: Teaching beyond women’s silence. New York & London: Routledge. Luke, C., & Gore, J. (Eds.) (1992). Feminisms and critical pedagogy. New York: Routledge. Mintz, S. (2006). Huck’s raft: A history of American childhood. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Nespor, J. (1997). Tangled up in school: Politics, space, bodies, and signs in the educational process (J. Spring, Ed., 1st ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Nord, W. A. (1995). Religion and American education: Rethinking a national dilemma. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Peskowitz, M. (1997). Identification questions. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 65(4), 707–726. Popkewitz, T. S. (1987). The Formation of school subjects: The struggle for creating an American institution. Falmer Press. Segall, A. (2002). Disturbing practice: Reading teacher education as text (Vol. 8). New York: Peter Lang. Webb, S. (2000). Taking religion to school: Christian theology and secular education. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press.

3 The Bible A Blueprint for Contemporary Educational Practices

Introduction Even though Bibles are no longer commonly present in public educational settings, we challenge the idea that they are absent from public school classrooms. By this we don’t mean to imply that Bibles are still used as curricular texts (not pervasively, anyway)—such practices have been banned through various Supreme Court decisions. Rather, we are suggesting that, while Bibles are no longer found on students’ desks, they may still carry much weight, if not in what we teach then in how we teach or in how we conceive of education and assess its results.This is to say that we believe that Bibles are still present, at least in spirit, in public education classrooms even if they are physically absent from such settings. Specifically in this chapter, we look into ways in which the Bible has remained at the core of secular public education in the United States, particularly regarding understandings about testing and teaching as testament, to illustrate particular assumptions about assessment, questioning, and the possibility for interrogating authoritative texts. In the process we outline an historical precedent that twins passive reading of the Bible as always already containing singular truths with a modern educational system underwritten by these same assumptions about knowledge and expertise lying in the teacher and the textbook. We suggest that the Bible is not only our “first” text—authoritative, literal, and fixed—but also our first postmodern text, which explicitly allows for, indeed encourages, creative, even subversive, encounters with knowledge rather than passive submission in a system of transmissive education. Ultimately, and using existing work in Hermeneutics, critical literacy, and constructivist education, we pursue a critical reengagement with the historical and ongoing role of the Bible in modern, public, secular schooling as a way of revisiting fundamental assumptions about reading and evaluation and their curricular implications. Similar to our engagement with issues of religion thus far, our intent is not to delineate a direct, causal relationship between the Bible and current educational thinking. Rather, we hope to demonstrate that religious and biblical understandings still, by the very nature of the history and evolution

50  The Bible

of American schools, carry traces—often unrecognized as such—in what we choose today to call secular, public educational institutions. While many educators might not read the Bible, nor think about it on a daily basis, the Bible serves as a core basis for—and the seminal text of— Western thought and culture. Serving as more than merely a religious text, the Bible has formed the basis of Judeo-Christian thinking, whether in religious or secular life, shaping not only religious thought but also politics, law, culture, and as we hope to highlight, possibly educational theory as well. As the most ubiquitous, all-time best-selling book, the Bible—the “first” book or the “Book of Books”—is offered in 30 different versions in English alone and in more than 100 versions in other languages. It is commonly found in a great many homes as well as in nearly every hotel and hospital room. Presidents and other elected officials swear on it when taking office, as do we when appearing in court. Eighty percent of Americans, according to a 1996 survey by Tyndale House Publishing, named the Bible as the most influential book ever published.1 This may not be surprising in light of the devotional stance of most Americans. A 2008 Washington Post survey found that 92% of Americans believe in God or a universal spirit.2 Another study, by the Pew Research Center in 2002 found that: Religion is much more important to Americans than to people living in other wealthy nations. Six-in-ten (59%) people in the U.S. say religion plays a very important role in their lives. This is roughly twice the percentage of self-avowed religious people in Canada (30%), and an even higher proportion when compared with Japan and Western Europe.3 It is no surprise, then, that the Bible—referred to by Northrop Frye (1964) as “the most complete form of the myth that underlies Western culture” (p. 110)—has, then, as Bracher and Barr (1982) have noted: Shaped American social organizations, institutions, economic practices, and sexual morality. It has provided crucial images for the United States in its times of crisis, from the New Exodus of the New England Puritans to the Civil War with its competing notions of the Kingdom of God. (p. 179) The Bible continues to influence law (Johnson, 1985; Katsh, 1977; Meislin, 1988) and current politics and public policy. All one needs is to follow contemporary presidential debates (mostly on the Republican side) to understand the deep-rooted biblical elements in considerations of public policy issues from gay rights to immigration to the death penalty, to name a few. Indeed, the Bible is as much a book about religion as it is about social thinking and culture.The meaning of either medieval art or many of the works of Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Raphael, Rembrandt, Botticelli, or Caravaggio, among others, cannot be fully grasped without reference to their biblical origins. Nor can

The Bible 51

one avoid the role of the Bible in Western literature (e.g., Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Morison’s The Song of Solomon, Melville’s Moby Dick, or Milton’s Paradise Lost, and throughout Shakespeare’s work), classical music (Handel’s Messiah), or film (e.g., The Ten Commandments, The Passion of the Christ, Pulp Fiction, The Prince of Egypt, The Lord of the Rings, Armageddon, or The Matrix). Equally impacted by the Bible is our daily language, where phrases such as “Blind leading the blind” (Matthew 15:14), “Eat, drink and be merry” (Ecclesiastes 8:15), “Handwriting on the wall” (Daniel 5:5), “My brother’s keeper” (Genesis 4:9), “Put words in thy mouth (Jeremiah 1:9), “Feet of clay” (Daniel 2:33), “Salt of the earth” (Matthew 5:13), “Take root” (Kings 19:30), “No peace for the wicked” (Isaiah 57:21), or “Out of the mouths of babes” (Psalm 8:2) have become common parlance, or where words such as “adoption,” “ambitious,” “beautiful,” ”liberty,” “network, “puberty,” scapegoat,” or “wrinkle,” initially brought into the English language through biblical translations, have now become commonplace.4 And we ought not forget the influence of the Bible in naming—of people and places. As recent as 2010, 12 of the 20 most popular boys’ names were of biblical figures. And the American landscape is littered with towns and villages (often in multiple states) named after biblical places: Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Shiloh, Bethel, Hebron, Eden, Goshen, Mount Nebo, Mount Zion, and Mount Carmel, to name only a few (Kroll, 2012). In light of this, one might wonder what impact the Bible may have had on education and our conceptions of it.Though the Bible never explicitly refers to the word “education,” “Torah,” the Hebrew word for the first five books of the Bible, as we noted earlier, shares the same root as the word “Moreh” (Hebrew for “teacher”) and “Hora’ah” (the Hebrew word for “instruction”). Accordingly, it isn’t surprising to find words such as “teach,” ”teacher,” “teaching,” “learn,” “learning,” or knowledge” appearing regularly throughout the Bible (665 times in all). Yet the educational mandate of the Bible also shines through its overall purpose, which is inherently educational— that is, a text that is intended to educate a nation. One could, as have others (e.g., Kass, 2003) see the stories of the patriarchs, especially those pertaining to Abraham, as tales about education. As Kass suggests, the biblical stories of Abraham are a manifestation of education in which Abraham goes to school and “God is his major teacher.” “Abraham’s adventures,” she adds, “constitute his education, right up to his final exam, the binding of Isaac” (p. 251). To accomplish this, “God himself,” Kass adds, “will take Abraham by the hand, will serve as his tutor, and will educate him” (p. 252). And the same might be said in regard to the remaining patriarchs (Isaac and Jacob), Joseph, Moses, and Aaron, each of the judges and prophets, and Jesus—and, naturally, for the formation of Israel as a nation and for the promulgation of Christianity and later, Islam. We, however, explore the Bible as a possible seminal text for thinking about education not only because it is a text that is intended to educate but also, through its larger purpose, for the images it provides of what education

52  The Bible

ought to be. This, we hope, will help shed light on the possibility that what we currently do in the name of education and how we think about it may not be only the result of contemporary, secular educational theory but, because those theories are rooted in culture, and culture in a Judeo-Christian society5 has its roots in our foundational texts. Our current ways of thinking in education, thus, could be traced to a foundational text such as the Bible by rousing its sediments in contemporary educational thought.

The Bible and Educational Considerations A Selected History

As noted more elaborately in Chapter 1, contemporary Western secular education can be traced back to its roots in European, medieval monasteries perhaps most famous for their elaborate copies of, most often, versions of the Bible. Early schooling in the United States was, as noted, generally exclusively Protestant, and specifically ecclesial, and thus overtly concerned with the teachings and text of the Bible. The notion, generally, was that schooling encounters with the Bible could form a better and moral population. As Carper and Hunt (2007) remind us: The Bible held a cherished place in American society at the time of the Revolution. Its reading in schools was strongly advocated by leaders such as Benjamin Rush who wrote that ‘there is no book of its size in the whole world, that contains half as much useful knowledge for the government of state, or the direction of the affairs of individuals as the Bible.’ (p. 121) It’s no surprise, then, that “[t]he Bible’s use in the nation’s schools received considerable support” (p. 122) as the push for centralized schoolrooms moved the education of (white) children from the home into the public sphere. “For instance,” we should recall “the American Bible Society, founded in 1816, stated its main purpose” as fostering “the Bible as school book” with an aim that “the Scriptures would be read in every classroom in the nation” (p. 122). For his own purposes, Horace Mann, the “father” of common schooling noted that “he never thought to exclude the Bible” from his common schools, “just to keep out the socially destructive presence of sectarianism” for “the Bible, as the ‘exponent of Christianity’ ” was to “make known ‘the truths, which according to the faith of Christians, are able to make men wise unto salvation’ ” (p. 122). As common schools spread down and out from the Eastern seaboard, and amid a mid-19th-century explosion of immigration from western and later eastern Europe the Bible in schools became something of a problem, for different Christian denominations used different Bibles. Catholics were

The Bible 53

impelled to create an entirely separate system of schooling all over a dispute as to which Bible was acceptable for instruction in schools at the time. Taking offense at the King James version used in the supposedly common schools, the Catholics took their Vulgate (Duoay-Rheims) and went their own way.The fracture was a violent one that continues to have ramifications for funding public and private schooling today. These bits of history matter only inasmuch, for our purposes however, as they illustrate the import of the Bible as coming to organize the structure and execution of major educational institutions still present in society today. The main import of this partial history is to suggest that when considering the ongoing influences of theology in schooling, we are wont to attend to the imbedded assumptions of generations past about central texts, student possibility, and forms of teaching. Given the vital role religiosity in general and the Bible very specifically have played in the development of Western and, especially in the U.S. system of schooling, we wish to turn now to an examination of the ways in which testing and teaching as testament, drawn from biblical understandings, can be read as implicating ongoing practices and assumptions about schooling today. Testing

It is difficult to overstate the contemporary zeal for testing, its prominence, or level of occurrence in education. Anyone involved in education, especially in light of new educational reforms vying for “accountability,” can attest to the fundamental role of testing—assessment, evaluation, and grading— in teaching and learning. Students are regularly assessed and tested before instruction, during instruction, and following instruction. Pre-and posttests are administered, almost religiously, on a regular basis.Tests are given to assess learning in the process of instruction, and summative tests are administered at the conclusion of most units of instruction. Tests, in the “age of accountability”—with the mandates of reforms such as NCLB and, more recently, Race to the Top and the reauthorization of Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)6—are administered to students on a routine basis, not only to determine student learning but also to rank teachers and schools as well as funding, prestige, and often, property values. We now have an educational system that relies, in areas of curriculum, accreditation, and policy, on testing. Testing, as many studies have identified (Giroux, 2012; Kozol, 2005; Ravitch, 2010;Watkins, 2012) is not only used to determine learning but has become the driving force for teaching, curriculum, and pedagogy as well as the very construction of students as potential learners and knowers. When looking at these “reforms,” one might consider that the very idea of the word reform (re-form) comes to us from church history, where it is considered, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, an “action or process in a religious order of returning to an original rule.” In this spirit, we wish to return to the original text of Judeo-Christian thought—the Bible—to

54  The Bible

explore the degree to which our focus on testing is not a new phenomenon but, rather, one that is inherent in that original, foundational text and ponder the possible connection between the two. While most would consider the Bible a text about religion and faith, it is also about testing—not only because faith is a test of one’s character in light of abundant temptations but also because the Bible is a text about education. And education and testing, as we will see, have been entangled from the start. Indeed, in what was a surprise to us, the terms “test,” “tested,” and “testing” are invoked 244 times throughout the Bible. For example, and resembling today’s educational culture, there is the biblical imperative to “Test everything” (Thessalonians 5:21) and assertions that “I will test you with pleasure” (Ecclesiastes 2:1) or that testing will “do you good in the end” (Deuteronomy 8:16).7 To explore this coupling of the Bible, education, and testing (and testing as a form of biblical education), we return again to Genesis. “In the beginning,” the book of Genesis tells us, “God created heaven and earth.” But while the familiar story focuses on God’s creation of heaven and earth, the sun, moon, stars, the plants, animals, and Adam and Eve, assessment and evaluation stand at the core of this story. We learn that on day one God created light. Soon after, the Bible informs us, God assessed that creation and deemed it “good.” The idea of God assessing his creation and assigning it value (a grade) continues through much of the first chapter’s story of creation. The formation of land and sea, of the grasses and trees, of the sun and moon, of the animals and living creatures are all followed by God evaluating his work and determining that it was “good.” While on day six, following the creation of Adam and Eve, God chose not to assess the work (perhaps knowing events would prove that this creation was, in fact, not that good), God turns to look back at the entire seven-day creation and, for the first time, self-assigns an A+, determining the complete work of creation to be “very good.” What we wish to point to is not only that the story of creation is inherently also one of and about assessment and evaluation but that the idea of assessment and evaluation is inherently ingrained—from the very beginning— into the operations of a newly created world. They are not, to follow the Bible’s chronology, an afterthought inserted much later in the text, or some actions that are only the province of humans; they are, rather, inseparable from God’s own work; they are part and parcel of his handiwork and of the way it ought to be judged. Assessment and evaluation are godly and, thus, carry the implications of that status.They are important, necessary, and heavenly, part of God’s operation. While the first chapter of Genesis provides the initial evidence of selfassessment (of God assessing his own work), Chapter 3 introduces us to the first testing of others. We recall the way(s) in which Adam and Eve were created and housed in the Garden of Eden, where they were allowed to eat all fruit other than that from the Tree of Knowledge (or Life). But, as we also recall, they transgressed (with some cajoling from the snake). Two

The Bible 55

interrelated tests are incorporated in the famous exchange between God, Adam, and Eve following their act of disobedience: one of character (to which we will soon return) and the other, more traditionally school-like, of knowledge: And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden. And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. And he said,Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said, The woman whom you gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. (Genesis 3:8–13) This is, no doubt, a rich and complex exchange (to which we return in Chapter 6) that raises issues about authority, obedience, responsibility, and conduct, not to mention troubling gender relations. But of particular interest to us here are the pedagogical issues underlying this form of exchange—a rather representative example, though, in much simpler language, of some elements of testing so common in schools today: the voice of authority (God or, in our case, a teacher) poses questions to which the “student” must respond. Rather than straight, correct answers, we see the ones tested mostly avoiding the test question and, instead, responding to questions of their own making. As often happens in contemporary classrooms, Adam and Eve do not stay fully silent, refusing to respond. Rather, they say something, knowing fully well it is not the response desired but hoping that in saying something, they will appear as if they are addressing the question. And as we also notice, God, while apparently dissatisfied by the obtuse responses to his questions and the maneuvers those being tested apply, chooses not to reprimand Adam and Eve for their incorrect, incomplete, evasive responses but, like a skilled teacher, simply moves on to the next question. As Kass (2003) notes, God “does not press further the unanswered question ‘Where are you?’ knowing this is probably the best response he will receive” (p. 92). If we ponder a bit longer on God’s questions to Adam and Eve, we see another persistent element common to school testing, whereby the asker or tester poses questions to which he already knows the answer and to which there is only one true or acceptable answer. This, like some test questions administered to students today, is a legitimate, yet not an authentic (in the educational sense of the word) question requiring thinking and interpretation. It is a question that asks the student (Adam or Eve) to, in a sense, give back to the teacher (God) what he wants and, when the students do not,

56  The Bible

they are punished. Though punishment in this case was banishment and hard labor and pain rather than a low grade, both are reminiscent of what today’s students might feel when the answers provided are not those anticipated by the teacher or test maker. In some ways, one might compare the notion of shame Adam and Eve felt at their nakedness following their eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge to the sense of shame and nakedness a student might feel when confronted with a test to which he/she does not have the answers. A sense of nakedness, after all, is a realization that one’s “cover”—whether actual clothing or pretense of knowing—has been exposed by someone in authority. In this we don’t mean to suggest that God or teachers ought not to ask questions to which they already know a predetermined answer. Rather, we wish to point to the pedagogical ramifications of doing so. As the example in the Garden of Eden also demonstrates, testing is not a private process but one that must be made public. God, one might suggest, did not need to conduct the examination of Adam and Eve to get the answers to his questions. He already knew those in advance of administering the test. He could have, just as easily (though not pedagogically) informed Adam and Eve of the punishment for their disobedience. But, much like school, the ritual of making knowledge, or the lack of it, public, functions to make explicit to the student (though he/she already knows in advance) the relationship between the punishment or grade and the knowledge presented. But what we also see in the exchange in the Garden of Eden is a pedagogical move in which God doesn’t only test Adam (and later Eve) but also invites Adam to test himself in the process of God’s testing. As Kass (2003) notes, “the simple searching question—“Where are you?’—has psychic as well as physical meaning: asking not only about the man’s bodily location, but also about the place of his soul. It calls for self-examination and selfassessment” (p. 92) or a form of a double, multilayered test in which God not only tests Adam but, as in any good test that asks for more than formerly digested answers, also asks Adam to test himself in the process of God’s test of him. Embedded in God’s questions in the Garden of Eden is also a test of character— of Adam and Eve’s ability to follow instruction, to abide, to comply, and to be truthful and forthcoming in their responses. This idea is not only part and parcel of the creation of current-day learners but is also an element of contemporary testing in schools whereby knowledge is tied to character and character is an inherent element of the knower. Schools, despite their proclamations otherwise, seek to produce a mostly abiding, obeying, compliant student who, by and large, follows instruction without question. We note additional biblical examples of this notion (and its accompanying tests) elsewhere in Genesis: when God orders Noah to build the ark; when he told Abraham to leave his homeland and family and travel to a country to which God will guide him; and then again when God tested Abraham, telling him to take his son Isaac and sacrifice him on Mount

The Bible 57

Moriah. We see this also in the story of Isaac, who is told to return to his father’s homeland to find the wife to whom God will lead him; in having Jacob wrestle with the angel and travel to find Leah and Rachel; and in the case of Moses by having him lead a nation for 40 years in the desert to a land he was not allowed to enter. All were tested, asked to put their faith in God’s hands, to trust him as he led them on a course (a curriculum) not only not of their own making but one to which they had no destination of their own, and one in which they were objects rather than subjects of their own making.This might sound eerily familiar when one examines much of what is done in the name of curriculum and pedagogy today. And while most of the noted biblical figures mentioned here passed their tests (or at least all did so to some degree), the Bible is full of examples of the Israelites failing collectively. The story of the golden calf at the handing down of the Ten Commandments immediately comes to mind as do the prophesies of Jeremiah, Isaiah, and others who, as messengers of God, continuously test the Israelites and then recount, in much detail, the punishment— destruction and exile—resulting from their failing those tests. We repeatedly encounter here a nation that is unwilling to learn, to follow the teacher’s rules, and is subsequently punished for those failings. Whether this is a result of a desire to not know or to resist on the part of the Israelites or of a teaching that did not adequately resonate with its students, the consequences are the same: a failing grade and an ensuing punishment. Our preoccupation with testing, both past and present, we propose, is very much related to our practices of teaching and learning as testament. Not only do the words “testing” and “testament” stem from the same words “testa” or “testis” (to witness) in Latin (which also includes testicles, but we will leave the ways in which male-oriented and dominated educational thought has positioned education in particular ways to another time), but both also work in conjunction to produce a specific approach to what it means to know and learn to the kinds of readings that are appropriate and to the student body involved in such endeavors. Testament

While neither the old nor new testaments are currently much taught in public schools, we explore the degree to which their impact as authoritative texts, which initiated a tradition of learning many, many generations ago, is still with us today. For example, even though students are no longer asked to memorize and recite biblical verses, memorization and recitation are still a fundamental element of secular schooling. Indeed, much like the Bible is often treated as the true word of God, “dropped from heaven fully written” (Spong, 2011), so are textbooks most often perceived by students as heavenly transcribed, as simply handed down, as founts of true knowledge to be followed, memorized, and recalled when tested. Underlying this, much like the common approach to the Bible, is a strong belief in the objectivity

58  The Bible

of the word, whereby students treat their textbooks as “divinely inspired” (Berkhofer, 1988, p. 21). Active readings are impeded since textbooks, much like our perception of the Bible, are often written as if they are authorless, as if they are simply transcribing official truths (Schrag, 1967 in Wineburg, 1991, p. 511). Seeing textbooks—or the Bible—as canonical presents a closed sense of the world and of what readings of it might entail. Thinking of them as teleological, authoritative, and authorless invites readings already predetermined by others, prefigured prior to the student ever entering the classroom, limiting and homogenizing the kind of interpretations that could be generated out of them. Canonizing the Bible—or doing so to textbooks in modern-day schooling—has generated, according to Aichele (2008), “an illusion of a self-contained whole, a single, seamless text conveying an unambiguous, immensely valuable . . . message” (p. 146). For more than 15 centuries, to borrow from Aichele, this semiotic mechanism has supported the reading of texts—biblical or not—that tame possible connotations and reinforce the ideology of a unified, comprehendible world through the fixed, unambiguous, straightforward word. All this is to suggest that, while the texts are different (textbooks replacing the Bible), the very approach to “the text” and its reading in K–12 schooling specifically has changed very little over time. Similarly, and whether or not textbooks are used during instruction, teaching is still very much an act of imparting, transmitting knowledge to students (disciples?)—a form of testament rather than of education. As study after study demonstrates, teachers spend much of class time lecturing. Jackson (1990) makes the point that the “teacher’s authority . . . is as much prescriptive as restrictive” (p. 30) in a tacit as well as explicit pursuit of imbuing “habits of obedience and docility” (p. 33). Britzman (2003) critically examines this idea, noting the profusion of a cultural mythology that says that “everything depends upon the teacher” (p. 7) as expert imparting knowledge, even when espousing the values of more constructivist ideologies in education. These assumptions about the inherent knowledge of teachers (and its dearth among students) lead to very specific forms of education that limit the interactivity of what we might call the learning process. This is something resembling Freire’s (1973) banking education that relies on instruments like the lecture for the conveyance of knowledge and bubble tests, as well as worksheets, for the determination of the retention of those ideas passed along, as if handing off so much cultural detritus. These forms of education are, naturally, accompanied by arrangements, mechanisms, and rituals that reinforce them.The idea of curriculum as testament, as sermon, and of students silently listening to the teacher’s words of wisdom, has a long tradition, whether one is looking at religious or secular institutions. Indeed, while the substance of what may be learned in each is different, the form of learning and the pedagogies underlying it are much the same.

The Bible 59

So while religion may no longer be taught in schools (at least not explicitly) and the Bible has been replaced by secular texts, the practices of religion in education, or the religious elements in education remain. And this, we suggest, probably does more to influence the lives of our students than any mandatory prayer ever could. School itself, as constructed, still requires very much of students that is inherently, historically, and disciplinarily religious, even though the content learned might be altogether secular.This, we propose, is not only a testament to the deep-rooted ideology of religion in education; it is also, and equally, an indication of the testament-like nature of schooling and education today.

The Bible as a Postmodern Text? Our earlier focus on testing in the context of the Bible and our exploration of its related religious practices in schooling, and the curricular and pedagogical implications of both, we believe, are interrelated to our reading stances toward the Bible—how we read it and what we choose to read and accept of it—and, as the foundational text of and in a Judeo-Christian culture, for much of the reading positions ensued thereafter. In that regard, we propose, the very essence of standardized testing requires a curriculum based on testament (and vice versa), and both necessitate a form of reading that accepts rather than challenges and that requires students to memorize rather than think, interpret, and question. Indeed, the connections we propose and the suggestions we make to explore the Bible as a postmodern text derive not only due to its prominent position and influence as the text, or the filtering down of such readings to other perceived authoritative texts (e.g., textbooks) across educational contexts but also, as we will discuss, for the pedagogical role it has played in education, even when theology in education has been replaced by civil religion or a culture that is undergirded by religious undertones. Of particular interest to us are other ways of reading that are not only more conducive to the Bible, and better resemble its unruly structure as a text, but also engender different ways of reading and, as a result, approaches to teaching and learning. One of the elements that has helped sustain education’s teleological approach to knowledge has been a persistent understanding about the role of the text/book in learning and the kind of curricular and pedagogical approaches it generates. Recall that the Bible is our “first” book, the “Book of Books” that has impacted our ways of thinking in numerous ways that exceed religion per se. It has, in fact, created a particular “culture of the book” and of reading more generally so prevalent across educational contexts and beyond. This is because, though the Bible is no longer found in classrooms, the legacies—religious, historical, and cultural—of how it has been understood, approached, and read through the millennia still serve as a model, a template for how one is often expected to read the word and the world (Aichele, 2008; Orsoz, 2008).Yet despite common belief, the

60  The Bible

particular canonical, conserving, authoritarian approaches to reading the Bible prevailing in our culture and the legacy those have left for reading—as sense making—in education writ large, we suggest, are not only problematic but also misguided. Rather than the canonical, fixed, coherent, and authoritative text most believe the Bible to be, the Bible is in fact quite the opposite. It is an inherently complicated, inconsistent, fractured, multilayered, and contradictory text, written pastiche-like—by multiple authors and, thus, open to multiple interpretations. As such, one might consider the Bible to be not only the first book but also the first postmodern book, one that does its best to deconstruct itself (and inviting readers to do the same) by making its inconsistencies, contradictions, and ambiguities overt. Understanding the Bible not as the authoritative and authoritarian text we have tended to think it is, one that is closed to challenge, questioning, and alternative interpretations, but rather as a complex text that calls for all three—indeed that invites and even requires them all—might incline us to consider the idea of a text—any text—and its implications for and in education in very different terms. After all, even for those believing that everything in the Bible has a purpose, that all is directed from above, orchestrated by some all-knowing hand: what, one might ask, could that hand have intended by forwarding multiple accounts of similar events? It surely doesn’t seem like a desire to establish authority or to stifle questions, discussion, and interpretation.Yet some of the interactions in classrooms seem as though they do just this. Have we, as educators, gotten the biblical word wrong? Have we misapplied that word in our pedagogical renditions? Have we used a misguided approach to what it means to read texts—starting with the Bible and, using it as the standard bearer, going all the way down to contemporary texts—in the process, neglecting the inherent importance of seeing every reading as a form of rewriting the texts we encounter? If, to follow this train of thought, one already long established in the fields of theology and biblical hermeneutics, the Bible wished to appear authoritative, true, and beyond questioning, one may, for example, ask why the biblical reader is confronted, from the very beginning of Genesis with two different, often contradictory, stories of creation. Indeed, while the two stories, as Kass (2003) points out, overlap in some ways, they are quite different in substance as well as in tone, mood, and orientation. Why, one may question, are there two stories about one act of creation? Is one more truthful a rendition than the other? Could both be true? If not, how do we explain the contradictions or repetitions in this otherwise extremely economical biblical text? Why, if not to challenge the reader and invite questions, might the biblical narrator(s) choose to tell conflicting stories about creation, the formation of Adam and Eve, and the events in the Garden of Eden? Any author (or, if one chooses to believe, God as author) surely knows that providing more than one account would render his/her authority as truth teller questionable. One may similarly question the purpose of the book of Deuteronomy,

The Bible 61

which by and large, retells, differently, the very same stories recounted earlier in the books of Exodus and Numbers. Or, one may ask why the version of the Ten Commandments presented in Exodus is different from the one appearing in Deuteronomy. What might be the intent of providing two different versions of the Ten Commandments if they are the word of God? Did God change his mind? Was the first only a draft? And which of the two is “correct,” the actual version of the tablets we are to follow? Or why, if the life of Jesus was one, are we presented with innumerable accounts of his life and teaching from the Synoptics (Luke, Matthew, and Mark) to the Gospel of John to the missives from Paul and later Pauline writers appropriating his name (Wills, 2006) as well as those ethereal encounters with the risen Christ in the Acts of the Apostles—to say nothing of the apocryphal Gospels (for Catholics at least) of Thomas, Nicodemus, or Judas, among others? All we’d note, as others have (Carroll, 2009; Spong, 2007), provide quite a different story of the life and achievements of Jesus. What might be the intent of all of these multiple versions if what the Bible expects of its readers is that they simply follow, accept, and believe? While we can only speculate as to answers to these questions, it seems that a possible purpose might not include inviting readers to blindly accept one authorized version of events as true but, rather, to induce a generative sense of tentativeness, thought, confusion, and dissonance—all necessary elements for an actual education and an empowered learner. The Bible, however, doesn’t stop at confusing the reader by its multiple retellings. It also, as religious scholars have long established, does so, at least in its oldest extant manuscripts, by its lack of punctuation, by presenting itself as one running sentence from beginning to end, with no real guidance as to where one sentence ends and another begins. The neatly staged text we now know as the Old Testament, one that is divided into discrete books, chapters and verses, is a much later creation, based on arbitrary decisions, by its original editors and later by translators. And as more contemporary scholarship has noted, even the neat text of the Old Testament we now know, was not written by one author (God? Moses?) but is an amalgamation of several texts, written by different authors and at different times.8 Moreover, while in English most words, by and large, mean one thing, Hebrew, the Old Testament’s original language, uses vowels scarcely, inviting readers to possibly ascertain quite different meanings—ones that change and/or challenge the entire meaning of a story. Here is a quick example: the first two sentences of Genesis read in English, “In the beginning God created the heaven and earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” It’s literal, clean, and unambiguous.While in Hebrew those same two sentences could be read in the same manner they are read in English; they could, depending on whether one reads the fifth English word “created” in its vowel-less Hebrew as “bara” [created] or “bro” [began creating], be equally saying “When God began creating heaven and earth,

62  The Bible

the earth was already governed by Tohu and Vohu [two ancient gods] and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” Each reading provides a very different story. In the first, God is the master of all creation—its initiator and the one who completed it through his own handiwork. In the second reading however (one initiated by Rashi, a medieval French rabbi and philosopher and the most renowned Jewish commentator on the Old Testament), while God is still seen as the creator, his creation is a process not of making something from nothing (as in the first reading) but of making something else from something already there—more of a rearranging than creating. We point to this not to highlight different interpretative possibilities offered (or restricted) by the two languages but to note the idea that the lack of vowels in Hebrew provides an invitation to explore biblical meanings as open and contestable, even if they challenge, as this example might, the most fundamental beliefs about the power and role of God in the process of creation. Indeed, what this interpretation provides is not an attempt to diminish God’s power—an inconceivable stance for Rashi—but a deep understanding about the role of the reader in attempting to interpret the Bible—one that inquires into the possible meanings and interpretations the texts allow, not ones that have already been predetermined by others. While much thinking about the Bible and its religious translations into education has promoted a conserving, authoritarian, sermon-like approach that invites closed, canonical, transmissive readings, we wish to build upon the very postmodern structure of the Bible suggested here to invite more transgressive reading positions, not only of the Bible but of how we think about reading in the broader context of education and the teaching and learning that it might generate. In this, we build on the thinking of a variety of scholars in the areas of critical literacy (e.g., Freire, 1998; McLaren, 1999; Gee, 2001; Knoblauch & Brannon, 1993; Luke, 1995; Mahiri, 2006; Shannon, 2011) who have advocated such an approach for quite some time. For while the common approach to Bible reading is devotional—accepting its meaning as given and where one obeys its directives—Zornberg (1995) reminds us that the Hebrew verb “La’asot” (commonly translated into fulfilling or obeying) often used in the Bible, actually indicates “the ‘making,’ the creation of Torah in the mind of the reader.This is not passive receptivity, but expresses a post-Kantian understanding of the active process of perception” (p. xvi.). This is not a reading into the Bible but a reading of it in ways that, at least through its unique construction, it intends for us to read it. Such a reading explores the Bible not as a text to be rehashed over and over again, always ending up with the same interpretations, but as a living document— one perceived as new each time it’s engaged (Zornberg, 1995). At the heart of such an approach is the treatment of texts as writerly rather than readerly (Barthes, 1974). A readerly text, according to Fiske (1989), invites an essentially passive, receptive, disciplined reader who tends to accept the meaning of the text as already made. It is seen as a relatively

The Bible 63

closed text, easy to read and undemanding of its reader.9 Such texts conform to traditional expectations of meaning and are often processed passively and automatically. It is precisely that predictable process, write Sumara and LuceKapler (1993), “that makes the reader feel comfortable, so that once the reading is finished there is a sense that the experience with the [text] has been completed” (pp. 389–390). Opposed to this readerly text is a writerly text, which constantly challenges the reader to rewrite it, to make sense of it. This approach, as we have explained, is already an inherent element of the Bible, one that “foregrounds its own textual constructedness and invites the reader to participate in the construction of meaning” (Fiske, 1989, p. 103). The readerly manner in which texts are approached has “the flattening effect of habit. Habit is seductive; it is soothing, non-productive and anxiety free” (Rudduck, 1984, p. 5; cf. Smyth, 1992, p. 285). The writerly process, on the other hand, challenges rather than affirms. It works to estrange habit by challenging readers and their expectations, inviting students to wonder about meaning, to consider alternatives, question motives, and critically assess values and purposes (Knoblauch & Brannon, 1993, p. 8). Such an approach, currently prevalent in literary analysis and in some circles of English education, is, of course, not new. This stance to reading has been at the center of some biblical interpretation in the last two millennia. Indeed, the kind of postmodern readings we advocate here, and ones promoted by proponents of critical literacy, resemble the “interpretive ruminations to rabbinical midrash, a playful, almost mischievous mode of interpretation that engages the imagination more than the search for dogma” (Adam, 1995, p. 61). In the Jewish Midrash and Talmud, as well as in some Christian hermeneutics and exegesis, scholars have, for generations, often explored the biblical texts critically and imaginatively, at times generating subversive and oppositional meanings that read the text against the grain, posing questions of the text and challenging its previous readings. At the heart of these engagements is a discussion about the text that refuses to maintain it as a fixed, closed document that already contains and readily makes available its meanings to us. As typographical devices in which a small segment of biblical text is surrounded by often oppositional interpretations, texts such as the Talmud and the medieval Christian Glossa illuminate this process explicitly, helping “break down the sense that a single authoritative presence stands behind the monophonic voice” (Adam, 1995, p. 65) and allowing readers to see how interpretations differ, how they contest each other, and how they have evolved over time. Ultimately, these and similar texts demonstrate to readers that a text—even the one we hold holiest—is not fixed, immutable, and unchallengeable. They provide a glimpse into a form of reading that is a conversation with knowledge instead of being converted to it. Rather than accepting the version of meaning, these examples of textual reading make possible “inversions, extraversions, conversions, perversions, contraversions, diversions, transversions, subversions” (Adam, 1995, p. 61).

64  The Bible

If, as we have proposed, our approaches to reading texts in general have been impacted by how we have been taught to read the Bible—the most influential book in Western culture—then challenging the canonical, authoritative readings we have come to accept of the Bible might, we hope, help challenge the very authority of other texts engaged in education as well. If, to follow this thought a bit further, we begin to apply the deconstructive, imaginative, even unruly readings the Bible asks of us, if we break the canonical approach to reading that text, we might, we suggest, be able to more easily and readily (though never easily and fully) apply that kind of reading to all other—“lesser”—texts as well. This is because how we read is culturally preconditioned; there is no innate way to read other than the way to which one has been accustomed. Whether one chooses to comply with the text’s authorial invitations for meaning or whether one chooses to subvert or ignore them and construct one’s own meaning depends not only on how a text positions the reader but also on the reading strategies and dispositions—what Kress (1989) refers to as “reading positions”—the reader brings to his/her reading of the text (see also Luke, 1995). In that regard, a text—biblical or not—becomes the creation of the reader; it is not an already encoded reality waiting to be deciphered. Young (1981) makes that point by describing the difference between two terms— work and text. “Whereas a work is a finished object,” most often “enclosed within the covers of a book,” writes Young, “a text (and here he uses Barthes, 1981, p. 39) ‘is a methodological field . . . experienced only in an activity of production’ ” (p. 31). To continue a moment longer with Barthes (1981), the point is not to discover the already existing meaning of the work. Instead, it is to “impugn the idea of a final signified.” It is thus less a question of deciphering meaning “than of entering into the play of the signifiers” (p. 43). To “read,” then, and, again, in the sense of meaning-making, as Rashi’s example illustrated, is not about destroying or devaluing authorial intent but, to borrow from Britzman (1991a), to attempt “the delicate and discursive work of rearticulating the tensions between and within words and practices, or constraints and possibilities, as it questions the consequences of the takenfor-granted knowledge shaping responses” to words “and the meanings fashioned from them” (p. 13).The purpose of such readings, then, is to engage in a critical conversation with (and thus analysis of) the word, to highlight the politics of knowledge and knowing embedded in any text, to rediscover that which we believe we have already discovered, and to unlearn that which we have already learned to learn further and again. This helps propel a practice that exposes the “tacit ideologies and assumptions in the conventions and everyday practices of education” (Kincheloe, 1993, p. 30) and “call[s] into question the authoritative discourses and the recipe knowledge that work[s] to sustain the obvious” (Britzman, 1991b, p. 62). David Blumenthal’s Facing the Abusing God: A Theology of Protest (1993) serves as something of a ready example for what a writerly approach to biblical elements might look like. Constructed as a way of reclaiming, indeed

The Bible 65

arguing with, God in the face of dual tragedies, Blumenthal seeks a way to understand, through a postmodern exegesis, the possibility of anger toward and reconciliation with a higher power that would allow the Shoah as well as the ongoing and theologically inexplicable sexual abuse of children. In the process, Blumenthal constructs his theology as “a dialogue between texts of life, as I experience them, and the texts of the tradition, as I know them” (p. 4). He uses the notion of living “seriatim . . . one after another, one by one in succession” (p. 47), suggesting that to survive as a religious being, one must constantly tack into the wind of new understandings of Scripture. To do so, Blumenthal engages numerous Psalms in a fourfold construction; conversing with the biblical author; arguing with God; clarifying ancient contextual language; and seeking a mutually agreeable way forward through suffering, asserting in the end that “to write theology is to resist the temptation to make authoritative declarations of doctrine, textual interpretation, and religious practice. Rather to do theology is to preserve the many-sidedness of R/reality” (p. 239). And while we make no arguments about doing theology here, we see this manner of writerly engagement with sacred text as particularly useful for thinking through how we might interrogate the Bible in its slippages and schooling in its confluences with the religious. If, we argue, one begins by destabilizing conventions and practice these readings in the context of the Bible, the book that has taught us how to read itself and other texts that follow, one might (we emphasize “might”) have a better chance at changing our reading habits in educational contexts more broadly, positioning students to engender more unruly, deconstructive, and imaginable readings that challenge the word and the world simultaneously, ones that open up possibilities for critical engagement with the word rather than accepting it as fixed, given, and immutable.

Notes 1 See http://newhopeforliving.com/old/guest03.htm. 2 See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/06/23/ST20 08062300818.html. 3 U.S. stands alone in its embrace of religion among wealthy nations. (2002, December 19). Pew Research Center. Retrieved from http://www.pewglobal.org/2002/12/19/ among-wealthy-nations/ 4 In fact more than 22,000 English words have their root in Hebrew. That’s more than the roots of Greek, Latin, and French. See http://www.whatchristianswanttoknow. com/how-does-the-bible-influence-society/#ixzz40TMBkgPM. 5 By this we don’t mean that we in fact are, demographically, a Judeo-Christian society. Rather, we are referring to the foundational understandings that have guided the United States since, and before, its origins as a country. Indeed one need only attend to current political debates and culture to get a full spectrum of the depth with which American society, as reflected in pandering and pomp, might well come to define itself Judeo but especially Christian. 6 The original material for this chapter was worked through prior to the backlash created by the national opt-out movement in response to over testing in U.S. schools. The public stance in the face of this resistance has been either dismissive (we might

66  The Bible think of former secretary of education dismissing ‘white suburban moms’ for thinking they had some say in the debate over the adoption of the Common Core State Curriculum) or chimerical as in the Obama administration’s call to limit class time devoted to testing, which didn’t actually (a) bear any official policy weight and (b) didn’t actually reduce class time devoted to testing. At any rate, the larger point is that even leaving aside the ebb and flow of standardized test mania, testing as a practice is deeply embedded in the ethos of U.S. education. 7 Here are some other examples: “God has come to test you” (Exodus 20:20); “Please let me test just once more” (Judges 6:39); “Prove me, O LORD, and try me; test my heart and my mind” (Psalm 26:2); “I the LORD search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds” ( Jeremiah 17:10). 8 Scholars adhering to the documentary hypothesis now believe that the Old Testament was not written by a single author but is a compilation, by later editors, of four sources or texts: the Jahwist text (where God is referred to as “Yawhwe”), the Elohist text (which refers to God as Elohim), the Deuteronomist text (written during the Babylonian exile in the sixth century BCE), and the Priestly text (which refers mostly to priestly matters and written in the fifth century BCE, when Judah was a province of the Persian empire). 9 There are, of course, broader political considerations that are perhaps corollary to our analysis here—indeed, that influence the very issues discussed in this chapter. In a broad sense, education—what we describe here and otherwise—is never removed from the broader societal discourses that structure it or the power relations underlying schooling. Nor can one extricate the relationship between the forms of subjectivity and reading positions addressed here from the broader notions that the desirable citizen society—and schools as its agents—have worked so long to produce. And then there are the more immediate political considerations pertaining to sex education, censorship of schoolbooks and bullying gay students, all of which have been situated within a religious discourse from the political right. Recent concerns have also been raised about the funneling of state money to (exclusively) Christian religious schools through expanding state voucher programs in the United States. Revelations about nominal science curricula in state-funded schools that teach ‘Young Earth creationism,’ evolution as a debunked theory, and the Loch Ness monster as proof that humans and dinosaurs coexisted have raised the hackles of any number of church/state separationist groups, scientific watchdogs, and just generally left-leaning politically active citizens.The implication, when we telescope out, of such an uproar is rooted in the fear that because these assertions are made in schools, predominantly through texts, certain forms of truth are becoming fixed as, in effect, gospel for children. We are of course sympathetic to these concerns generally but would point out that this problem of reading passively exists in schools everywhere, even though they often appear different in form.

References Adam, A. K. M. (1995). What is postmodern biblical criticism? Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Aichele, G. (2008). Canon as intertext: Restraint or liberation? In R. B. Hays, S. Alkier, & L.A. Huizenga (Eds.), Reading the Bible intertextually (pp. 139–156). Waco, TX: Baylor University Press. Barr D. L. & Piediscalzi, N. (Eds.) (1982). The Bible in American education: From source book to textbook. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. Barthes, R. (1974). S/Z (R. Miller, trans.). New York: Hill & Wang. Barthes, R. (1981).Theory of the text. In R.Young (Ed.), Untying the text: A post-structuralist reader (pp. 31–47). London and New York: Routledge.

The Bible 67 Berkhofer, R. F. Jr. (1988/1993). Demystifying historical authority: Critical textual analysis in the classroom. In R. Blackey (Ed.), History anew: Innovations in the teaching of history today (pp. 21–28). Long Beach, CA: California State University. Blumenthal, D. (1993). Facing the abusing God: A theology of protest. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. Bracher, P. S., & Barr, D. L. (1982).The Bible is worthy of secular study:The Bible in public education today. In D. L. Barr & N. Piediscalzi (Eds.), The Bible in American education: From source book to textbook (pp. 165–199). Philadelphia: Fortress Press. Britzman, D. P. (1991a). Practice makes practice: A critical study of learning to teach. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Britzman, D. P. (1991b). Decentering discourses in teacher education: Or, the unleashing of unpopular things. Journal of Education, 173(3), 60–80. Britzman, D. P. (2003). Practice makes practice: A critical study of learning to teach. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Carper, J. C., & Hunt, T. C. (2007). The dissenting tradition in American education. New York: Peter Lang. Carroll, J. (2009). Practicing Catholic. New York: Mariner Books. Chevalier, J. (Ed.) (1994). A dictionary of symbols. Oxford: Blackwell Reference. Fiske, J. (1989). Understanding popular culture. London: Routledge. Freire, P. (1973). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury Press. Freire, P. (1998). Education as translation: Students transforming notions of narrative and self. Boulder: Westview Press. Frye, N. (1964). The educated imagination. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Gee, J. P. (2001). Literacy, discourse, and linguistics: Introduction. In E. Cushman, E. Kintgen, B. Kroll & M. Rose (Eds.), Literacy: A critical sourcebook. New York: Bedford/ St. Martin’s Press. Giroux, H. (2012). Education and the crisis of public values: Challenging the assault on teacher, students, and public education. New York: Peter Lang. Jackson, P. W. (1990). Life in classrooms. New York: Teachers College Press. Johnson, J. T. (Ed.). (1985). The Bible in American law, politics, and political rhetoric. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Kass, L. R. (2003). The beginning of wisdom: Reading Genesis. New York: Free Press. Katsh, A. I. (1977). The biblical heritage of American democracy. New York: Ktav Publishing House. Kincheloe, J. L. (1993). Toward a critical politics of teacher thinking: Mapping the postmodern. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Knoblauch, C. H., & Brannon, L. (1993). Critical teaching and the idea of literacy. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers. Kozol, J. (2005). The shame of a nation: The restoration of apartheid schooling in America. New York: Crown. Kress, G. (1989). Linguistic processes in sociocultural practice. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Kroll, W. (2012). The Bible’s influence on American culture. Center for Bible Engagement. Retrieved February 23, 2012, from http://www.centerforbibleengagement.org/ index.php?Itemid=7&id=22&option=com_content&task=view Luke, A. (1995). Text and discourse in education: An introduction to critical discourse analysis. Review of Research in Education, 21, 3–48. Washington, DC: AERA. Mahiri, J. (2006). New literacies in a new century. In J. Mahiri (Ed.), What they don’t learn in school: Literacy in the lives of urban youth. (pp. 1–18). New York: Peter Lang Publishing.

68  The Bible McLaren, P. (1999). Schooling as a ritual performance: Toward a political economy of educational symbols and gestures. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Meislin, B. (1988). The role of the Ten Commandments in American judicial decisions. Jewish Law Association Studies, 3, 187–209. Ravitch, D. (2010). The death and life of the great American school system: How testing and choice are undermining education. New York: Basic Books. Rudduck, J. (1984). Teaching as an art, teacher research, and research-based teacher education. Second annual Lawrence Stenhouse Memorial Lecture, University of East Anglia. Schrag, P. (1967, January).Voices in the classroom:The emasculated voice of the textbook. Saturday Review, 21, 74. Shannon, P. (2011). Reading wide awake: Politics, pedagogies, and possibilities. New York: Teachers College Press. Smyth, J. W. (1992). Teacher’ work and the politics of reflection. American Educational Research Journal, 29(2), 267–300. Spong, J. S. (2007). Jesus for the non-religious. New York: HarperCollins. Spong, J. S. (2011). Re-claiming the Bible for a non-religious world. New York: HarperOne. Sumara, D. J., & Luce-Kapler, R. (1993). Action research as a writerly text: Locating colabouring in collaboration. Educational Action Research, 1(3), 387–395. Watkins, W. H. (2012). The assault on public education: Confronting the politics of corporate school reform. New York: Teachers College Press. Wills, G. (2006). What Paul meant. New York:Viking Adult. Wineburg, S. S. (1991). On the reading of historical texts: Notes on the breach between school and academy. American Educational Research Journal, 28(3), 495–519. Young, R. (1981). Poststructuralism: An introduction. In R.Young (Ed.), Untying the text: A post-structuralist reader (pp. 1–28). London: Routledge. Zornberg, A. G. (1995). Genesis: The beginning of desire. Philadelphia and Jerusalem: The Jewish Publication Society.

4 The Inherent Religiosity of the Standards Movement

E. D. Hirsch, in his argument for his Core Knowledge series (at least one progenitor for the ongoing standards movement in contemporary America) makes the point that “historians date the present era of American education from the publication in 1918 of the Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education” (1996, p. 48). And while Hirsch is making an argument for the value of national standards upon which we might better socialize newer generations of Americans into a (his) version of the citizen, we wish to attend more closely, to take seriously (Nord, 2002), the notion of cardinal principles and the concept of standards in American education, seeking to connect standardization as a program of learning, to long-standing notions about, as noted in prior chapters, testing and student possibility rooted firmly in religious— particularly Judeo–Christian—assumptions. In the process we examine the language used to frame standards, making the point again and differently that a given document need not reference religious texts explicitly to be guided by undergirding theological histories. We are exploring, in the vein of Asad (2003), “what makes a discourse and an action ‘religious’ or ‘secular’ ” (p. 8), asserting here that there is much to suggest that the standards movement is religious if not in branch then certainly in root. We close by addressing a recent call to consider the resacralization of society and research (Wexler, 2013), particularly education research. In keeping with the larger project of this book, and thinking especially here about the implications of engaging education itself as a writerly text, we work to provide readers with tools for the sake of reading religion back into the standards movement and its many manifestations in current education practice and policy. Our thinking about standards is explicitly tied to reading practices. Asad (2003) suggests that reading the Bible as art “is no derogation of its sacred status,” though certainly “an atheist will not read it in the way a Christian would.” He wonders, then: Is this text essentially “religious” because it deals with the supernatural in which the Christian believes—either a text divinely revealed or a true record of divine inspiration? Or is it really “literature” because it can be read by the atheist as a human work of art? Or is the text neither

70  Inherent Religiosity of the Standards

in itself, but simply a reading that is either religious or literary—or possibly, as for the modern Christian, both together? (p. 9) We would do well, in other words, to consider the ways in which we might read religion into and through so-called secular documents, such as standards documents, for the echoes of the sacred that remain and that indeed might guide the very assumptions behind their creation. Thus, we seek in this chapter to, as William James suggests, broaden and “thicken up” the discussion about standards by “allying . . . empiricism” not only to “the insights of religion” (Wexler, 2013, p. 133) but more so to the insight that religion, thickly, lies at the heart (and as the soul, perhaps) of American schooling and particularly the standards that guide it. Sorkin (2008) is very explicit that a clean split between the confessional religious and nationalism (Americanism) as supersessionist “new religion” misses the point that “if we trace modern culture to the Enlightenment, its foundations were decidedly religious” (p. 3). Funkenstein (1986) argues, differently, that the “key fields of modern knowledge . . . are recontextualizations of the core religious assumptions, the ‘divine predicates . . . about the omnipresence, the omnipotence, and the providence of God.’ ” Thus, any “ ‘critical-contextual understanding of history’ must take into account the fundamentally intertwined nature of the sacred as it alters and informs the secular” (as cited in Wexler, 2013, p. 181). To think, in other words, that a standards movement related to education in America, for example could somehow be areligious—if not rabidly irreligious—misses the fact that our understanding of standards themselves cannot be disentangled from historical religious predicates. It strikes us, then, as instructive that Hirsch alludes to the cardinal principles as the beginning of a movement in American education because of course the notion of cardinal virtues—and cardinal sins—has long been handed down through Christian (and increasingly “secularized” though historically religious) usage. That is to say: the very beginning of the standards movement as we might understand it, and as its proponents certainly seem to, relied on religious language to tell its story, to assert its importance. This should not be revelatory, but it is certainly little studied if acknowledged at all (see Apple, 2001, for a happy exception). Here we are very clearly in agreement with Eliade, who asserts that “it must not be forgotten that . . . cultures have a religious structure” (1960, p. 232). And though we might quibble with Eliade’s structuralist assumptions, we agree with the sentiment that religion, because of its deep connection with and outlining of society— and particularly American society—pervades schooling; even when laws make explicit shows of religion verboten, the history and sediment of religion remain. Indeed, as we document throughout the book, the very structure and practice of the rhetoric around schooling is rooted in religious assumptions, language, and history.1 We would do well to attend to this fact.

Inherent Religiosity of the Standards 71

So we go forward attending to “how intertwined . . . the domains of sacred and secular” are, suggesting in agreement with Wexler (2013) “that the deep duality, sacred/secular, does not hold, is now evidently more porous, and is itself based on incorrect assumptions about our larger intellectual, cultural” (p. 180) and, we would add, educational heritage. Particularly as vocal opponents of the new CCSS2 have arisen both from the religious right and the, presumably, secular left, we find interesting the confluence of arguments against national standards imposed for whatever reason. Concerns from the left congeal around matters of forced testing and punitive evaluations of teaching, while critiques on the right seem to run through the long tradition (misapplied, often enough) of states’ rights to implement local education. Still, that standards are a flashpoint, again, means that the conversation, though vehement, has become mostly rutted. That the very foundational assumptions of what standards might be made to do, or have a purpose for, is never questioned in light of an intriguing religious history strikes us as illuminating—again and in new ways here—the paucity of conversation around religion in American schooling. If a discussion is to be had about the undergirding religion of standards in education then, as Connolly (2008) suggests, “radicals, liberals, and secularists need to appreciate the role that a spiritual ethos plays in politics and economic life, overturning the self-defeating drive to pretend that religious creeds and modes of spirituality can be quarantined in the private realm” (p. 61). We are all perhaps some combination of radical, liberal, secular, and religious all at once; here we seek to undo some certain assumptions about the possibility of the quarantine of schooling and religion. And we do so by engaging in the “maieutic: bringing out what is already there” (Biesta, 2014, p. 47). We might think of this in terms of proximity where, for Ahmed (2006) “we inherit proximities (and hence orientations) as our point of entry . . . as ‘a part’ of a new generation. Such an inheritance in turn generates ‘likeness’ ” (p. 123). And that likeness brings certain (curricular) objects to the fore and leaves others behind us. The habit of curriculum, and here the very notion that standards are appropriate objects for educational consideration, becomes the repetition of certain things and the habitual repetition of the exclusion of others where “when something becomes habitual, it ceases to be an object of perception: it is simply put to work” (p. 131). And so it is no surprise that the religion that underpins the very notion of the appropriateness of standards disappears for those of us educated, in any number of ways, in Western institutions. The inherited proximities of schooling, of literacy, of standards, are religious, but we are largely blinded to this fact. We fail to perceive because of the habitual orientation—their sub-discursivity as it were—of objects around schooling that when otherwise examined, queered perhaps, come to reveal their religious hi(stories). In that sense, then, we wish to take up Bruce and Bailey’s (2014) project of reading for religion in curricular documents. While these authors seek, in the Common Core, to find (and do not, largely) explicit reference to

72  Inherent Religiosity of the Standards

religion and religious texts, we do not see absence as a lack of presence, as it were. That is, we use the current standards documents to make a broader argument about standards in general, returning to our larger assertion that any discussion about American education (and any element of it) and in this case a discussion about standards, must look to the religious character of the document to get at the heart of the thinking that underlines it. It would be surprising, based on the history of public education in America, not to find echoes of religious sentiment in the language and structure of the document. Still, the conversation around standards misses this point. To the degree that religion is discussed in education, it is examined for its explicit manifestation in practice (are we reading the Bible in English class?) or lamented as long disappeared from the hallowed halls of our public schools. We find the former analysis useful but limited and the latter ahistorical and problematic. We take as our objects of study the Common Core standards as well as curriculum tied to the standards, distributed by some major educational companies. Specifically we look at the language and structure as they are inflected with and by religious assumptions and history. In the process, then, we read back briefly to some of the original versions of standards read through religious texts (here, the Bible, but we might just as easily page through St. Ignatius’ Examen of Conscience or the Baltimore Catechism to provide fodder for similar analyses3) to make the point that our very understanding of a standard measure for acceptable passage through education hangs on long branches attached to deep historical Judeo-Christian roots. This is not our suggesting that this reality is necessarily problematic, but its elision in research certainly is.

Religion and Standards Etymological Considerations

Here we explore the structure and language that undergirds the standards of the Common Core, recognizing that “we have to formulate the problems [they] invent in the words [they] offer” (Ramonet, as cited in Asad, 2003, p. 151). The standards are constructed—and here we are looking specifically at the “Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/ Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects” (2010)—around larger precepts that are then filtered down into age ranges and subject-specific topics. For now we linger with the larger, more general standards called the “College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards” for any given subject. They form the “backbone” of the document “by articulating core knowledge and skills, while grade-specific standards provide additional specificity.” While the “grades 6–12 standards” of the English language arts (ELA) document “define what students should understand and be able to do by the end of each grade” the Anchor Standards are meant to connect skills and understandings across grade levels. The assumption of course is that this is possible and valuable, but we leave that to others to interrogate.

Inherent Religiosity of the Standards 73

While we have, in other parts of this book, analyzed the language that has outlined the religious character of words and phrases that make up a great deal of our linguistic resources around education, in this space we choose to focus in on the notion of Anchor Standards. In particular, and again using the Oxford English Dictionary, we find it important that an anchor, here used presumably to demonstrate something that holds fast the larger portion of the standards—the subject-specific standards themselves—originally alluded to an anchorite or anchoress. These men and women were generally hermits who removed themselves from society for religious reasons, and the feminine in particular denotes a rule for nuns that is tied to the order of the anchorites. That is, we have in this word a history of religious hermitage but more interestingly an explicit link to a religious rulebook that would have, being consistent with the monastic custom of the time, dictated not only the reading and learning of the religious women but also their various oblations, physical dispositions, and time. Of course part of the first meaning of the word “college” is tied very explicitly to the long-standing Catholic understanding linked to the organizational structure of cardinals. In short, we have, at the very core of the common here a religious rulebook perhaps training anchorites for their roles in the church’s college and anchoresses for very different, likely humbler stations. One might ask what college the Common Core is getting students ready for, but we risk being too flip. Still, that the standards, as they are being implemented, will become (indeed have become in some places) the rule of teaching (by outlining what is tested and in turn, then, what materials get sold in support of those tests) in a great many states, if not the whole country, bespeaks a parentage with religious connotations that we ought at least acknowledge if not trouble. What then of the etymology of the word “standards?” One definition is “the books or documents accepted by a church as the authoritative statement of its creed.” Given the assertion that Americanism replaced evangelicalism (Nord, 1995) as the religion of public schooling, late in the 19th century, it is instructive to examine the fact that even for critics like Nord, faith in some form of a religion (Christian or Nationalism), as noted, continues to underwrite public schooling. Were one to read public schooling as the ongoing public church of American nationalism (which has always ever been tied to religion), how might we think about the “books or documents” accepted by this church as authoritative? In other words, might we not consider standards, to which all teaching must be pegged, and all teacher preparation must be aimed, as the underlying religious credo of American schooling today? Chapter and Verse

There are, within the CCSS for ELA, very few references to sample texts that might best be taught. Beyond “texts illustrating complexity, quality, and range of student reading 6–12” (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices [NGA Center] & Council of Chief State School Officers

74  Inherent Religiosity of the Standards

[CCSSO], 2010, p. 58), a section separate from the Anchor Standards, we find scarce reference to books that might illustrate exemplars for helping students “analyze a particular point of view or cultural experience reflected in a work of literature from outside the United States” (p. 38). This is no doubt because the standards are, as admitted, less about content and more about skills (as if such things could be so neatly separated), but it is also a nod to the kind of subsidiarity that all political documents, such as this one, must account for in a nation that sees itself often only loosely knit together by federal obligations. Still there are some few places in the document where the Bible—along with other well-regarded ancient works like those from Ovid—is put forward as a possible text that might best be used to fulfill a standard (pp. 37, 38, 47). This kind of documenting of texts that fulfill a litmus test as “religious” rather than secular is addressed elsewhere (Bruce & Bailey, 2014); still we might ask, when looking at the spare list of texts meant to illustrate various “bands” of complexity, how one reads Grapes of Wrath or the Letter From Birmingham Jail without attending to their religious context, precursors, rhetorical flourishes, and images. Regardless we think there is a conceptual lesson that is more vital in the previous parentheticals: the citation of standards, in whatever form, that has become the accounting measure of the new accountability regime. This citation brings with it an evocation of the sacred: this is chapter and verse as well as a suggestion that because the standard has been cited, learning of some kind has occurred. In a sense teachers have been taught in this case, if nothing about pedagogy, at least something about how to survive within the structure: cite liberally.4 What we have ended up with in the standards movement, and again we use the CCSS as something of a synecdoche of the movement, if not its apotheosis, is a sense of citation of standards as a sacred must. That is, though one might look at the citation of texts that occurs in scholarly writing as the building of knowledge from the basis of texts and thinking that has gone before (and there are certainly sacred cows that must be appeased in given fields), the citation of standards does not send the reader or observer back to conversations in a field but rather points to the legitimacy of a practice as backed, ultimately, by a text of religious import. Teachers, increasingly, must provide with lessons, units, and course plans, checklists of standards cited; the sheer volume of these documents means that they cannot possibly be investigated in depth and rather the imputation of a teaching practice to a standard performs the transubstantiation of a moment in the classroom into a standards-based practice, of some mystical higher value for the citation provided. Like the ubiquitous “John 3:16”5 signs that pop up at sporting events, these lists of standards are meant to refer readers to a specific chapter and verse but end up often enough signifying nothing so much as the sense that the holder of the sign, like the teacher with lessons pegged to standards, has brought something of meaning to the table simply through reference to a sacred text.

Inherent Religiosity of the Standards 75

And there is probably no better text to exemplify this form of education as guiding (or guiding as education) than the Bible. We have suggested that many of the underlying assumptions and practices present in current educational policy are also foundational to and in the Bible and that the basis of some of today’s educational policies may be linked—even if indirectly—to their biblical roots. Indeed, much like the premise underlying educational policies such as the Common Core, NCLB, or Race to the Top, as well as the various standardized tests accompanying them, the Bible—as elucidated in the previous chapter, a text inherently intended to educate a nation— sets out an educational agenda and tests its “students” to determine their compliance, measuring their accomplishments in obtaining or subscribing to that particular educational agenda. All, in many ways, are intended not only to impart knowledge but also, and more importantly, particular ways of knowing and a set of criteria by which such knowing—and being—is to be conducted and evaluated. The power of all these texts and the discursive practices they foster, to use Bakhtin (1991), is in their ability to ensure that the authoritative discourses with which they speak are rendered internally persuasive by those consuming them and, in the process, render that authority natural and the texts through which that authority speaks as beyond critical scrutiny. It is the compulsion to naturalize that element of authority and make these texts “natural” that gives them the power to operate so effectively. Pearson and Fidelity

In her ethnographic work in the classrooms of beginning secondary English teachers, Berchini (2014) comes across a number of departments in different schools utilizing a particular curricular sequence from Pearson. This ought not be surprising as the reach and influence of Pearson into American, but also international, education, is vast. It’s perhaps useful then to put into perspective, before we move forward, the extent of the influence of Pearson as regards American education in particular.A multinational educational corporation, Pearson owns publishers like Puffin and Harcourt as well as textbook companies like Prentice Hall and Scott Foresman. They also administer the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the manifold pieces of the Stanford testing suite, and various state testing regimes like the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) in Texas, in addition to owning data systems like Powerschool. Further, they are instrumental in the development and implementation of the assessment for the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), one of two consortia developing tests for the new CCSS. Pearson is, as far as education goes, ubiquitous. And while others have problematized the rapid influx and influence of money in education and on education policy (e.g., Zeichner & Pena-Sandoval, 2015) as well as, particularly, the flattening of the curriculum through a systematic (and highly profitable) linking of curriculum with

76  Inherent Religiosity of the Standards

testing with teacher practice (e.g., Ravitch, 2013) in addition to the larger troubling move to instrumentalize education for neoliberal ends (e.g., Giroux, 2012), we are more interested in the ways in which particular assumptions about education through standards, increasingly set by Pearson, can be linked back to religious notions. Certainly it matters that this corporation, operating (testing and standardizing) in 70 countries has become something of its own British empire on which the sun never sets. But that it, unconsciously, borrows from the religious in language and form, as it perpetuates various forms of curriculum, interests us a great deal. Though there may be few explicitly religious texts in the CCSS (Bruce & Bailey, 2014), rather in the PARCC, meant to assess the implementation of the former, this does not mean that the concatenation of the two has not drawn on religious sedimentation to further their adoption. A case study of what this looks like will be helpful. What Berchini (2014) finds is that over time her teachers become well socialized into thinking about student achievement as outlined by the programs used in the school.We are intrigued by the ways in which the Pearson series that is used in these schools, and of course in a great many schools besides them, holds fast to a notion, through certain kinds of research, of fidelity, as in if a teacher has fidelity (there is no adjectival form of the word, interestingly) to the text series, as laid out, then greater student success will be achieved. Of course we could quibble with what success means—here in fact we might suggest it means successful in learning how to learn based on what the textbook says as well as how it assesses and maybe not much else. But we’d choose in this case, rather, to investigate the notion of fidelity and its etymological roots for the sake of understanding just why it matters that a text series would stress fidelity and why research would take such a term as helpful in elucidating its claims. The Oxford English Dictionary defines fidelity as “the quality of being faithful” but also as the taking of an oath of fealty. Further on the word is taken to mean “strict conformity to truth or fact.”What might it mean, then, if a teacher were to, say, be “untrue” to the curriculum, if they were, in fact, to refuse the oath? The Oxford English Dictionary describes the term “infidelity” as “want of faith; unbelief in religious matters, esp. disbelief in the truth or evidences of Christianity” and our personal favorite, “the attitude of an infidel.” Given this word’s denotations, as well as the cultural connotations that spring to mind (e.g., unfaithful partners and spouses, religious infidels, etc.), it is more than a little curious to direct, encourage, and structure teachers’ practices and students’ learning around a word historically associated with religious faith. Indeed, it is an interesting term to use in schools, and perhaps a powerful one, given the imagery it provokes. Surely, most people do not want to be seen—or caught—in an act of unfaithfulness. Still, Pearson (perhaps rightly) uses the term “fidelity” as it is given in some certain research to mean “the degree to which an intervention or model of instruction is implemented as it was originally designed to be

Inherent Religiosity of the Standards 77

implemented” (Echevarria, Richards-Tutor, Chinn, & Ratleff, 2011, p. 426). In fact the website for Pearson links to this study as an indication that fealty to their learning system (which, of course, is for purchase) will lead in particular to better learning gains for English language learners—fair enough and perhaps worthy work. Still, the Pearson site continues in pleading its case noting that: A scientific efficacy study, conducted by Cobblestone Evaluation, found that students in classrooms where Prentice Hall Literature is implemented with high fidelity significantly outperformed their peers using other language arts programs on the GMRT Vocabulary test and the MAT8 Writing Test. (Pearson, n.d.) Fidelity is a well-worn term in the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol used to “develop English language proficiency” for English learners. Pearson in particular provides extensive tools and professional development to ensure that “districts and schools” have a “way to measure and constantly improve fidelity in each Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) implementation” (Pearson, n.d.). Far be it from us to question whether these claims are true (or not) or particularly useful (or not).What we find interesting is the use, in a field that takes words and their meaning very seriously, of the term “fidelity.” Teachers implementing the SIOP are called to a certain fealty that “it works” and are thus required to be faithful to its prescriptions. Of course someone who teaches in the system (and by and large decisions about textbooks and web materials are made above the heads of teachers) in a way that lacks fidelity (even “high fidelity” eliciting interesting allusions to sound) becomes, of necessity, an infidel. Their unbelief, perhaps, in the efficacy of the program is thus translated into a kind of lack of faith in the standards laid out for their behavior; they risk, in effect, excommunication from their school for a failure—they are in want of faith, and having been tested (for this is all tested), and found lacking, they are perhaps let go. Again, perhaps SIOP works, and perhaps the Pearson materials are useful, but what the protocol works through is an assumption, tied to language that has religious roots, about how faith in implementation will “save” the teacher and student from failure. And as the implementation of common standards occurs nationwide, coimplemented with policies tying teacher evaluations to student gains on tests that are linked very closely to curricular materials produced for the sake of aligning students (and classrooms) back to those standards, we have a nice, complete feedback loop where fidelity—a conversion to new modes of teaching, evaluation, and thinking about students—becomes necessary for survival. The system of educational evaluation in America on the whole, when looked at in this way, almost looks like a religion complete with urtext, dogma, and oblates.

78  Inherent Religiosity of the Standards

Still, given this wordplay, and we think playfulness here is actually part of the work of reorientation toward the educational world and kinds of texts where, for Ahmed (2006) “the work of reorientation needs to be made visible as a form of work” (p. 100), we might come to reconnect religious influences with assumptions of the value of concepts like fidelity in modern curriculum, with their historical antecedents. It is important to note that, as we’ve written throughout the book, we are not drawing straight lines here. It is not that one document begat the other directly, but as with the long genealogies present in the Bible, we suggest that the begetting of one text from another may be shaded through generations, and the connections, though long strung this way and that, still exist and are worth examining. We should close this section with the words of Titus 2:9–10 from the King James translation of the Bible: Exhort servants to be obedient unto their own masters, and to please them well in all things; not answering again; not purloining, but shewing all good fidelity; that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things.

Eventalization and a Resacralization of Research Here we return to Wexler (2013), and his proposal for a program of research under the heading of “mystical sociology,” where he wonders “how the old language of mystical traditions offers a new vocabulary pertinent for understanding contemporary life; and how mysticism in the world is transformed into secular mysticism” (p. 13). Recognizing, of course, that mysticism and religion are not necessarily coextensive, we still find use in the notion here that a reexamination of language imbued with religious import should come to inform new modes of educational research in particular. Further we take it as instructive that “secularization should no longer be the assumed position for theorists in sociology . . . the religious turn, the emergence of a postsecular society, this resacralization, ‘demands . . . social science itself, just as much as its subject matter, must respond to the demands of resacralization’ ” (Davie, as cited in Wexler, 2013, p. 5). We find it valuable to think through the ways in which education research might best come to grapple with the existence (reemergence, if you like) of the religious in supposedly secular spaces: schools, for instance, and in the standards that shape those schools more particularly. Indeed, “One cannot understand our perception of the world, our philosophical conceptions of the soul, of immortality, of life, if one does not know the religious beliefs which are their primordial forms” (Durkheim, as cited in Wexler, 2013, p. 149). One cannot, further we think, understand our perception of the world without considering the ways in which schools shape and re/de/ form it; one cannot, either, understand American schools without connecting them to their religious roots, if necessary through extant and ongoing practices and standards that have been deeply anchored in faith.

Inherent Religiosity of the Standards 79

One argument contra ours here might be that we are cherry-picking in some sense. That were one to try, he/she might find hundreds of instances of significant concepts and words in education that have no clear (or not so clear) connections to misted religious pasts—fair enough. But this is the stuff of the entanglement of a post-qualitative research like the one St. Pierre (2011) develops, centered very clearly on the simultaneity of space-time. We can read the same texts very differently and over again, and well we should; here we read back into the text of standards the religion from which they emerged and continue to emerge. Resacralizing requires, then, disentangling the inherently religious from a default assumption of secularity and coming to take it seriously in a program of analysis in an ongoing conversation about policy and curriculum. We take up, then, Foucault’s (1984) suggestion that “the critical question today has to be turned back into a positive one: In what is given to us as universal, necessary, obligatory, what place is occupied by whatever is singular, contingent, and the product of arbitrary constraints?” (p. 76). He calls this work of interrupting universality—here, of the assumption of secular public schooling and educational standards—“eventalization,” which: Means making visible a singularity at places where there is a temptation to invoke a historical constant, an immediate anthropological trait, or an obviousness which imposes itself uniformly on all. Eventalization works by “constructing” around the singular event a “polygon” or rather a “polyhedron” of intelligibility, the number of whose faces is not given in advance and can never properly be taken as finite. (p. 77) “Eventalization thus means to complicate and to pluralize our understanding of events, their elements, their relations, and their domains of reference” (Biesta, 2014, p. 73). Our hope, in addressing ourselves to standards as religious objects, is to build a kind of polygon around them that elucidates their theological forebears, not because religion is problematic of itself but because the assumption that it does not exist in places where it very much does impoverishes our understanding of how the world works and could be made to differently work in the future. It is precisely because “ ‘themes of salvation, redemption, and fear of a fall from grace’ were integrated within the discourses of modern schooling” (Trohler et al., as cited in Allen, 2013, p. 238)—often disappearing into an understanding of education that came to feel secular, though its many roots are inherently religious—that the work of pluralizing our understandings of schooling, through an increased attention to the religious progenitors of policy, practice, and standards, becomes vital. The hope here is that we can sufficiently complicate the mundane as to make it explicit again for the sake of rendering that which has become selfsame and obligatory, no longer satisfactory to be taken on faith. With that in mind, we seek in the next chapter to put into practice this notion of building a polygon around those most immediately affected by the standards movement: teachers.

80  Inherent Religiosity of the Standards

Notes 1 The work seems all the more timely given the recent Supreme Court decision in Town of Greece v. Galloway (2014) in which the Court held that the practice of sectarian prayer at the opening of local legislative sessions did not violate the Establishment Clause, even though only Christian chaplains (of various stripes) had been invited to give their benediction over the entirety of the history of the practice. This was not, presumably, the establishment of state religion because, we might say, the state religion was already assumed to be de facto Christian. Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, asserted that holding “that invocations must be non-sectarian would force the legislatures sponsoring prayers and the courts deciding these cases to act as supervisors and censors of religious speech,” forgetting, presumably, that in choosing who would give the prayer, the legislature had already done such work. Still, we think the point holds that in law, as in schooling (subject to the law and perhaps about to change in relation to new decisions under the cover of law) in the American context is very ready to ignore its own religious commitments, viewing them as neutral if viewing them at all. 2 It is interesting to consider the use of the term “common” here.The term does a great deal of work that we might usefully attend to. It seems clear that the authors of the “text” sought to connect the standards to the common schools movement that created public education as we knew and know it in America; beyond this there is the sense of a common shared space in which people might congregate and discuss issues of importance. Still, the Oxford English Dictionary reminds us that the word shares a root with “communion,” a word freighted with religious importance in Christian settings. Still, there is the connotation of the term connected to the historical adjectival appendage used to smear women of low birth or morals. And so the common, though it is a rather common word, comes to mean that which is shared, that which is religious, and that which is low, base, and in many settings, of “ordinary or inferior quality.” 3 These are not, of course, the only religious documents that might fit the bill of “standard” bearing. We use them, however, as emblems of the kinds of standards-asreligious documents whose distant ancestors come to us in the form of (facially secular) educational standards. Of course, these theological documents are educational and set standards themselves. 4 For other welcome work on the religiosity (and especially Protestant Christian) habitus created by and through citation, see Blumenfeld-Jones, 2016). 5 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Most recently, and from the standpoint of the cauterization (and perhaps fraught nature) of American sport and religion, one could easily find images of this passage in the eye black of Tim Tebow, a collegiate quarterback at the University of Florida. His biblical messages, in fact, led the governing body, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) to ban eye black messages. Still the signs in the stands persist.

References Ahmed, S. (2006). Queer phenomenology: Orientations, objects, others. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Allen, A. (2013). The examined life: On the formation of souls and schooling. American Educational Research Journal, 50(2), 216–250. Apple, M. (2001). Educating the right way: Markets, standards, god, and inequality. New York: Routledge. Asad, T. (2003). Formations of the secular: Christianity, Islam, modernity. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

Inherent Religiosity of the Standards 81 Bakhtin, M. M. (1991). Dialogic imagination: Four essays by M. M. Bakhtin (C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Trans.). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Berchini, C. (2014). Teachers constructing and being constructed by prevailing discourses and practices of whiteness in their curriculum, classroom, and school community: A critical inquiry of three first-year English teachers (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from Proquest, LLC. database. (UMI No. 3630576). Biesta, G. J. J. (2014). The beautiful risk of education. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Blumenfeld-Jones, D. (2016). The violence of words, words of violence: Keeping the uncomfortable at bay, a Jewish perspective. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 31(1), 4–23. Bruce, R. T., & Bailey, B. (2014). Religious issues in English education: An examination of the field. Religion & Education, 41(1), 1–39. Connolly, W. (2008). Capitalism and Christianity, American style. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Echevarria, J., Richards-Tutor, C., Chinn, V. P., & Ratleff, P. A. (2011). Did they get it? The role of fidelity in teaching English learners. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 54(6), 425–434. Eliade, M. (1960). Myths, dreams, and mysteries: The encounter between contemporary faiths and archaic realities. New York: Harper & Brothers. Foucault, M. (1984). What is enlightenment? In P. Rabinow (Ed.), The Foucault reader (pp. 32–50). New York: Pantheon. Funkenstein, A. (1986). Theology and the scientific imagination from the Middle Ages to the seventeenth century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Giroux, H. A. (2012). Education and the crisis of public values: Challenging the assault on teacher, students, and public education. New York: Peter Lang. Hirsch, E. D., Jr. (1996). The schools we need & why we don’t have them. New York: Doubleday. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers. (2010). Common Core State Standards for English language arts and literacy in history/social studies, science, and technical subjects. Washington, DC: Authors. Nord, W. (1995). Religion and American education: Rethinking a national dilemma. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Nord, W. (2002). Liberal education and religious studies. In E. L. Blumhofer (Ed.), Religion, education, and the American experience (pp. 9–40). Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press. Pearson Instructional Resources. (n.d.) in Pearson School. Retrieved June 5, 2014, from http://www.pearsonschool.com Ravitch, D. (2013). Reign of error: The hoax of the privatization movement and the danger to America’s public schools. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. St. Pierre, E. A. (2011). Post qualitative research: The critique and the coming after. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (Vol. 4, pp. 611–626). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Sorkin, D. (2008). The religious enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Town of Greece v. Galloway, 572 U.S. (2014). Wexler, P. (2013). Mystical sociology:Toward a cosmic social theory. New York: Peter Lang. Zeichner, K., & Pena-Sandoval, C. (2015). Venture philanthropy and teacher education policy in the U.S.: The role of the new schools venture fund. Teachers College Record, 117(6). Retrieved from http://www.tcrecord.org

5 To Teach as Jesus (Would)

Jesus has been described as a philosopher, an economist, a social reformer, and many other things. But more than these, the Savior was a teacher. If you were to ask, ‘What did Jesus have as an occupation?’ There is only one answer: He was a teacher. (Packer, 2008, p. 336)

In what ways, we ask, might public school teaching—that purportedly secular activity we all know so well as educators—be conceived as embedded not only with religious—Christian—overtones but, more specifically, with characteristics normally ascribed to Jesus, as teacher, martyr, and savior, that help construct even secular contemporary teachers in his image. Indeed, how might the very understandings of teachers—the ones teachers construct themselves and those constructed for them by others, including by colleges of education—become not only reflections but also reifications of Christian—and Christ-specific—understandings about the purposes of teaching, of who teachers are, and of what they are meant to do? Religion, as we have demonstrated, still very much—even if only implicitly— underlies our educational thoughts and practices. Indeed, as we have suggested throughout, education, regardless of teachers’ own personal beliefs, tends, by the very prevailing culture of teaching and learning, to follow— and possibly advance—particular Christian understandings.This, we suggest, is not so much a voluntary issue, one that teachers and teacher educators choose to embrace (though some surely do) but, rather, the very effect of how schooling, teaching, and teachers have come to consider their own roles and work and by which these roles and this work has been viewed and constructed by others. Nor are we attempting, as we haven’t throughout, to make causal connections between contemporary teaching and Jesus as teacher.What we are proposing instead is that a resonance of a religious past is still with us today and that what was originally considered religious has, through millennia, become cultural and secular, yet nevertheless, and necessarily for the sake of a fuller understanding of the various workings and influences of this tradition on

To Teach as Jesus (Would) 83

modern thought, might be reattached to its religious origins. Accordingly, we use this chapter to explore ways in which Christianity, and particularly the images of Jesus as teacher, savior, and martyr, implicitly inform (resonate through) current understandings about teaching and teachers. Indeed, as “teachers, like students, bring their faith through the schoolhouse door each morning” (Nord & Haynes, 1998, p. 26)—whether they know it or not and whether that faith is evangel, dormant, or cultural— any analysis of religion in American education will need to take seriously the ways in which teachers in particular might not fully fathom just how religion—and, as we suggest in this chapter, the image of Jesus as teacher— manifests in or through their day-to-day work as teachers. One could, of course, explore Jesus’s actual practices as teacher and pedagogue through the numerous examples provided in Scripture of his teaching (including the fact that our first meaningful encounter with Jesus following his birth is as a 12-year-old teacher). That is, the ways in which he positions himself and is positioned as a teacher: how he is portrayed as the holder of knowledge; how he pedagogically engages those he teaches; how he uses teaching to inform his adversaries and disciples of what they ought to know, of what it means to know, and of how one ought to come to such knowing; and in the event one is interested in contemporary teaching, the possible impact these issues might have (or the residue they may have left) on the kind of instruction taking place in classrooms today. Our interest here, however, is quite different. Rather than examine the images that have been constructed of Jesus as teacher—in Scriptures, paintings, literature, film, and the broader public imagination—we focus in this chapter on something else in relation to teaching and teachers. Our interest here is in the relationship between Jesus—as teacher, martyr, and savior—and contemporary educators. We attend especially to the implications of these ongoing notions of martyr and savior on our modern-day understandings of teaching and the teacher. In other words, our focus is on the ways in which the concepts of savior and martyr, borrowed from and attached to Jesus, may have influenced the ways teachers and teaching have been conceptualized and articulated. Indeed, as we will suggest, these images of Jesus—possibly more cultural than religious, even though the effects may be similar—are very much embedded in how we think of teachers and teaching today, even though teachers may be nonbelievers and while the explicit content taught in their classrooms is inherently secular.

Context A number of studies have highlighted the correlation between teachers’ religious beliefs and their curricular choices and pedagogical stances (e.g., Feinberg & Layton, 2013; Juzwik & McKenzie, 2015; Schweber, 2006; Schweber & Irwin, 2003; White, 2009, 2010). Here we wish to make a larger argument about the historical (and ongoing) religious assumptions

84  To Teach as Jesus (Would)

about teachers and teaching that carry through in the practice, pedagogy, and imaginings of teachers in American schools more broadly, regardless of individual teachers’ particular religious convictions. We see such prevalent, yet unexamined understandings playing out in language underlying education. For example, one might look at the word ‘disciple’ and its most popular meaning (i.e., a particularized follower of Christ). Buried in it, however, are fourth- and fifth-century meanings where in the verb form, it means “to teach” but also “to chastise, correct” or “punish,” and as a noun it means “pupil.” It matters that the obsolete meaning, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, has to do with punishment but also that the archaic deals with training and education. Along the same lines we might think about the usage and meaning of the word “doctrine” (e.g., Mark 4:2, “And he taught them many things by parables, and said unto them in his doctrine.”). Doctrine, from the Greek: Means “teaching” and it occurs a total of 30 times in the New Testament. The four gospels refer to Jesus teaching 43 times and preaching 19 times, and six verses refer to him preaching and teaching in the same verse. This might indicate that Jesus spent twice as much time teaching as he did preaching. (Wommack, 2012) Lohfink (2012) is helpful here. He notes that “the word ‘disciple’ is based on the Greek word mathetes, and mathetes means nothing but student” (p. 73). Jesus’s teaching is the basic building block of making disciples, in other words, and though he might have taught when he preached (lectured?), he most certainly made pupils with his doctrine. Our very language for understanding both religion and teaching, we’d suggest, crosses in many and interesting ways that remain long neglected for their implications on American education.Vital here is the shifting notion of a teacher’s orientation to, and relationship with, students. Jesus, in the Gospels, calls people to discipleship. This runs counter, Lohfink argues, to the rabbinic model where “a rabbinic student” would seek “his own teacher” and even “change teachers in order to get to know other interpretations of Torah” (p. 74). Rather, Jesus called his followers his pupils and kept them (jealously even) to himself. Particularly in the most recent move to link teacher performance ratings with student test scores in a causal relationship, we see a very distinct version of the process of disciple making in the classroom. For of course it would be in a model that took Jesus as its genesis that students were produced as measurable only by the lone and all-seeing prophet in the room in front of them. As teaching (and the teaching of teaching) has historical links to disciple making and the doctrinal, it makes sense to think about how teachers get positioned as and by particular and resonant themes surrounding the Nazarene teacher of great repute for what teaching practice looks like, how

To Teach as Jesus (Would) 85

teaching philosophies get shaped, and how the larger American context of teacher education on a whole gets handed along. We may similarly look at the prevalent notions that teaching is a calling and that teachers are born, not made: it’s no coincidence that Luke (2: 41–52) has Jesus teaching in the temple at the age of 12 (having slipped his parents’ notice during Passover) as a precursor to his later life’s work.This mirrors nicely the play of children, as they imagine themselves into the role of teacher with their peers, but it also further, and importantly, suggests a long-assumed notion that teaching is more vocation than mere profession and one that is not particularly ‘teachable’ as it is inborn, indeed, both Godgiven and doing God’s work. Frye’s (1982) idea of cultural inheritance in relation to the Bible is useful as he notes something “we might call resonance” where “a particular statement in a particular context acquires a universal significance” (p. 215), which when thus considered common sense, tends to be left unexamined. This “resonance” as acculturation helps us begin to consider the link between how teachers think, act, are evaluated and self-define—and Christian understandings, particularly, in our case, the popular notion of Jesus, in Western society, as if not the first, but the best (and certainly the most emulated) teacher. Religion, like education, is inherently about the passing down of faith through generations, most evident in an ongoing onus on tradition (Blumenthal, 1993; Carroll, 2010). Think of Mark 10:13–16, where Jesus makes explicit the value and role of children, who are to be suffered and taught, as they are the future of the Kingdom; or turn to the first letter to the Corinthians where teachers are third in the role of greatness behind apostles and prophets (12:28, NSV); we might also return to Mark where Jesus “entered the synagogue and taught” and those listening were stunned wondering “at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority” even casting out demons (1:21–28). The goal is to be suggestive on our part: Jesus is most prominently framed as teacher (as rabbi) in his short public life. We think this teaching role is significant and resonates in the construction of teachers today because of the unique and ongoing religious influence that bubbles under the surface of American (but not only American) society. There are relations among teachers, between teachers and students, and lenses through which we read the profession of teaching that are full of meaning, refracted through a prism of Christ as teacher. It’s problematic, then, that this explicit and implicit religiosity of the profession has been little discussed beyond research on and in parochial schools (e.g., Greeley, 2002; Heft, 2011; Nothwehr, 1998). Frye’s (1982) idea of polysemous meaning helps suggest that the ever-present image of Christ in society, as teacher, as the teacher, continues to influence practice and possibility in (parochial of course, but also) public schooling. What we are suggesting here is that, as educators, we ought to be more deliberate in acknowledging the subtle, sideways, and overt ways in which religion infuses our very notion of

86  To Teach as Jesus (Would)

teaching and the teacher, particularly with respect to notions of teacher as martyr and teacher as savior.

Teacher as Martyr How is it, Palmer (1998) asks that, “the more one loves teaching, the more heartbreaking it can be?” (p. 11). If we’re to believe the recent Metlife Survey of the American Teacher (2012), this condition of brokenness is pervasive and caused by any number of pressures put on contemporary educators including but not limited to budgetary issues, salary difficulties, spurious reforms, and the public shaming of the profession. But of course this stigmatizing of the teacher, this long-term heart breaking has been a part of the structure of education for quite some time. Indeed Goodlad (1984) recognized these issues early on in the most recent ‘reform’ process noting that “increased utilization of schools to solve critical social problems . . . a marked growth in governance of the schools through legislation and the courts; continuation of relatively low personal economic returns; limited opportunities for career changes within the field of education” (p. 196) all contributed to high turnover and the temporalizing of the profession. Teachers were being “held accountable for improved student learning without” any move to address these problematic “circumstances,” which he argued “is not likely to improve the quality of their professional lives and the schools in which they teach” (p. 196). Why teach, then? He suggests: We might speculate that, anticipating rewards intrinsic to the work, teachers begin with a willingness to forgo high salaries. However when confronted with the frustration of these expectations, the fact that they sometimes are paid less than the bus drivers who bring their students to school may become a considerable source of dissatisfaction. (p. 172) There is something teleological in taking up work (in large measure) for its intrinsic rewards. John the XXIII, borrowing from The Imitation of Christ, in fact provides a nice summation of this line of thinking noting the value of a life where one ought “endeavor . . . to do the will of others instead of your own; choose to always have less rather than more; always seek out the lowest place and be subordinate to everyone . . . thus may a man enter quiet peace” (Benigni & Zanchi, 2002, p. 35). Buffeted by the winds of political change, salary, and benefit cuts and faced with work after hours that is un(der)paid, what other recourse does a teacher have but to make sense of his/her work through a familiar lens? It’s not just that teachers seek to imitate Christ but that society (in the messages it sends, in the respect it withholds, and in the money it fails to give) expects them to. Control of the classroom curriculum given over to political and business interests, teachers must turn their collective cheeks as policy failures beyond their control become the root of criticism of their work.

To Teach as Jesus (Would) 87

Lortie (1975) suggested that “to persist in teaching” was “in a sense, to be ‘passed over’ for higher position or” for women, “marriage” (p. 89). And while we might make an argument that, some 40 years later this gendered condition exists in different ways, the larger point is that teaching on a whole requires the sacrifice of other, perhaps higher (more challenging and more remuneratively rewarding or otherwise) callings, that is, of course, if one sees teaching as a permanent career, an idea to which we will return shortly. For now, however, it’s important to note that in the face of restricted freedom and limited respect, teachers construct an ethos that makes the profession tenable, indeed passionately worthwhile. What we suggest is that though this offers some certain explanations for the tortured nature of teaching, indeed its call to sacrifice and something like martyrdom (to give oneself up for one’s students no matter the cost) has deep historico-religious roots.We see echoes of the banishment and willingness to forgo in Luke 12:22–34 (NSRV), where Jesus tells his disciples (those pupils who teach, recall) to: Worry not about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. . . . Do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. . . . Instead strive for the kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well. . . . [S]ell your possessions and give alms. Worry not, selfishly, for rewards like salary or respect or personal fulfillment, we are reminded by the teacher: those will come in the satisfaction of the students who go forth from you. To teach, to disciple, in America at least, has long been about this sacrifice. We see it, in some sense, accelerating in our time. 1 For now let us examine, further, the notion of the teacher as a martyr whose personal fulfillment is to be subjugated in service (recall Luke 22: 26–27: “You are not like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. . . . I am among you as one who serves.”) of students but who is also capable of saving students from themselves, regardless of their home lives, their larger neighborhood contexts, and the structural deficiencies of an unequal society through the magical forgiveness of high expectations. Useful here is the religious concept of the scapegoat and sacrificial lamb, both symbolically fulfilled in the person of Jesus. Spong (2007) places the evolving stories of Jesus, as told in the various Gospels, in the Midrashic and messianic context of Jewish history. He notes that for Yom Kippur “two animals were to be chosen from out of their flocks to be the sacrificial symbols through which” the liturgical act of penance and “reconciliation with God” might occur (p. 165). “Tradition” tends to “understand one as a lamb and the other as a goat” whereby the “lamb chosen for sacrifice was thought to be the perfect creature to achieve reconciliation with God” (p. 165) and was

88  To Teach as Jesus (Would)

slaughtered for the purpose of sprinkling the cleansing blood on the people present.2 From here the goat was taken by the high priest who confessed “in the name of the people all of their sins and evil” and “the sins of the people were symbolically pictured as rising out of the people and landing on the head and back of [the] creature”; in the process the people became “both cleansed and sinless” (p. 166). The goat was then banished to the wilderness carrying the sins of the people away from the temple and out into the beyond. It is from this practice that the term scapegoating has come to us. For later Jews, interpreting the story of Jesus, there was a movement to connect to the messianic Jewish tradition in the form of Jesus who became both “sacrificial lamb and scapegoat” (p. 167) as a means for interpreting his life but particularly in re-narrating his death. Here is the prime mover, the first teacher in Western culture, giving up his temporal career so that larger lessons might be learned. In these symbols we have a cauterizing of the sacrificial with the role of teacher. Mclaren (1999) suggests that we are all “ontogenetically constituted by ritual and cosmologically informed by it as well”; indeed “rituals are natural social activities found in, but not confined to, religious contexts” (p. 36). What we suggest is that the long-standing ritual implications of the sacrificial lamb and the scapegoat, as embodied in Christ, inflect heavily on expectations for and reactions to teacher practice. That is, the teacher as symbol is linked with the first and most prominent teacher in Western culture and consistently made and remade in the dual model of both lamb and scapegoat, the martyr of schooling and society.3 Kumashiro (2012) seems appropriate here: in a critique of neoliberal reforms he illustrates a recent shift in the discourse surrounding teachers that moves from the kinds of wider considerations that Goodlad (1984) suggested and instead centers on a model of scapegoating that sees education as the ultimate market instrument. Students who struggle are being failed by their teachers, the collective sins of a society piled onto the avatar of slovenly union indifference. Our interest is not in engaging a policy discussion about the proper role of school reform, nor union representation, but rather is meant to suggest that this move toward demonization of teachers (Giroux, 2012; Ravitch, 2010; Watkins, 2012) is part of a larger religious context that expects certain things of teachers and, indeed, increasingly requires their (bloodless at least but still very real) sacrifice. Teachers have long been expected to provide out of their own resources for their students. We rarely ask, however, why this is the case. We might think hard about the exchange between Jesus and the young man in Mark 10:17–22. Here the Christ asserts that salvation comes only through the renunciation of all worldly goods. To be a disciple, to teach, is very much to sacrifice the worldly for later rewards; such is the discourse around teaching: the rewards, though not monetary, are always deferred. To seek for financial stability, increasingly, is seen as problematic. To this end, then, it’s fairly common to read accounts of teachers spending money on vital classroom supplies.

To Teach as Jesus (Would) 89

A recent National School Supply & Equipment Association (NSSEA, 2010) survey4 reports a 92% rate of teachers spending for work supplies to the tune of, on average, just under $1,000. The idea isn’t that this number is high or low (indeed the study isn’t clear on how much of that sum is out-of-pocket and how much is school and parentally subsidized) but rather that there is an expectation profession wide that what might otherwise be considered reimbursable expenses in other fields become part of the naturalized culture of teaching. One sacrifices more than just time for one’s students; one also sacrifices one’s own money; combined with the relatively low salaries of teachers and the opportunity expenses of forgoing other careers for service in the classroom, we have a large-scale cultural imposition of the expectation of sacrifice for the sake of children.5 Of course it would be Scrooge-like to know what students need and fail to provide it simply for its cost. And there is honor in this beatitude-inal approach to life, to teaching. Teachers will be blessed at a later date (a divine TBD) for their meekness and poverty (in spirit and otherwise), for theirs will be a kingdom not of this place (Matthew 5:1–12, NSRV). This rhetoric, of providing for students at all costs, doesn’t necessarily ring true at the state nor the federal level where funding for public education has gone largely flat in recent years (indeed teachers have been furloughed and laid off at stunning rates since 2009).6 The notion, broadly speaking, is that teachers can be expected to make up financial holes in their immediate contexts because their work is a calling, done for reasons beyond base financial drives. And while this may well be true of teachers in general, it’s worth asking if teachers are more altruistic going into their careers or if they are shaped into the altruistic (and self-denying) mold by the discourses that surround their work. Lesko (1988) reminds that “words, objects and persons have no intrinsic meaning, but mean in relation to other words, objects or persons” (p. 74). What is expected of teachers, vis-à-vis their students and their own finances, suggests a profession very much expected to, in relation to other perhaps more ‘selfish’ callings, forgo opportunity for fiscal stability in favor of the needs of their students. They are called to sacrifice so that others might learn. This is, we think, very much in relation to the words, objects, and person of Christ as sacrificial lamb: one does without for one’s flock. Indeed Allen (2013), writing of the use of pastoral power in 19th-century schooling, to illustrate historic religious techniques of examination still relevant in contemporary schooling, notes that such a system relies “on the willingness of the pastor” and now teacher in public schools “to sacrifice his or her own interests for the care of the flock” (p. 238). It’s also illustrative of this point that there has been a rhetorical shift of the notion of teaching as a profession to teaching as a temporary calling that moves one to something else (more prestigious) that is played upon by well-established alternative certification programs. The idea that one might parachute into a community, ‘serve’ for two years (while earnestly working for social justice and ‘closing the achievement’ gap) all as a procedure toward

90  To Teach as Jesus (Would)

something greater and different is riven with religious implications. Here we have not only a mirror of Christ’s brief time teaching himself (roughly three years from the wedding at Cana to his crucifixion) but also a mirror of the kind of white dwarf career he followed: one is to teach until one burns out and can be taken away to a higher place. The kingdom, in other words, of these bright stars of teaching, “is not from this world . . . as it is, [their] kingdom is not here” (John 18: 36, NSRV). It is elsewhere in the mythic heights of policy or graduate school or hedge fund management and for those other kingdoms, they bring the word to the masses only to flame out as teachers, not crucified but suffering the slings and arrows of inner-city life (cheeks always turning) for the time being. This is not to knock idealistic young people who enter national service programs intending to do good things, but it is suggestive of the Christ/ martyr model that teachers in these programs are expected to give everything they possibly can in their two years of service with the explicit intent of leaving immediately after. One must teach, and nearly die from it, that one can rise again as a professional in something else; indeed the promotional materials of many of these programs play on this exact trope.7 The implication of course is then projected onto veteran teachers with families or other commitments: they are not willing to spend 12 hours a day in a school and are thus not caring in the mold of their soon-to-be-martyred counterparts. Poor apostates, they must merely teach, spend money on their students, and stay for life to make sense of the students through time; theirs is a gospel of longevity: St. John, they survive and must continue to spread the message as their younger peers cycle through. It’s easy, then, to think about schools in the KIPP model, say, which require Herculean hours of their teachers on behalf of students, in this mold. If one really cares about students (as Jesus would have) then one will not need union protections that limit work hours, and one will certainly do home visits on weekends and take students on out-of-town trips and sacrifice outside relationships for as long as one can last. The point isn’t a career in teaching; the point is helping students until one dies as a teacher and rises again in law school or medical school or in a Charter Management Organization (CMO). Lost in this model are the ways in which long-term teaching careers indeed do ‘save’ students as well. But of course this notion of teacher as savior is powerful too. Allen (2013) notes that “themes of salvation, redemption, and fear of a fall from grace” remain “integrated within the discourses of modern schooling” (p. 238). We would agree and suggest that though Allen is writing of the echoes of past practices, recent reforms have intensified the notion of teaching as “professional sacrifice for the present and future moral, social, and educational well-being of the pupil” where “the schoolteacher” still “require[s] ‘no small support from the Christian faith’ ” (p. 239). The notion that we must, as Kay Shuttleworth (1841) notes, “prepare teachers for a ‘life of self denial’ ” (as cited in Allen, 2013, p. 239) persists; further it is this denial that allows one to justify the ultimate denial: leaving

To Teach as Jesus (Would) 91

the profession altogether. Of course before one leaves, one must save the students from themselves, their culture (of excuses), their incompleteness, their poverty, and so on. Here we turn toward an explication of what this model of teacher as savior entails.

Teacher as Savior: The Missionary Position In a manner similar to that expressed by the teachers’ studies by Hartwick (2009), Schweber (2006), and White (2010), whereby religious beliefs not only impact what and how teachers teach but also their very understanding of their role and mission as teachers, a teacher interviewed by Jackson (1990) described his work as follows: “I think it’s like missionary work. I’ve always been very socially-minded, and I think that we really do have a lot of work to do right in these communities, not just in the underprivileged ones” (p. 134). In this case, and as we suspect, in many, many more, we see the shaping of something that can be (and has been) called the missionary or salvific model of teaching. A notion of teacher as a mission worker, as savior, we think, bears further examination, one that explores its historical—and historically Christian—roots as well as its contemporary manifestations. A ‘savior,’ as the dictionary reminds us, is a deliverer, a rescuer. In delivering a curriculum and delivering students to it, in caring for students and administering their minds and bodies, a teacher becomes a savior, one who rescues students from ignorance or circumstance, who ensures their minds and souls are not harmed, ‘lost,’ or allowed to ‘spoil’ and in the process, redeems—saves and delivers—students and teacher alike. Schools, it appears, not only have mission statements (a religious notion of propagating faith), but the very act of teaching is mission work that intends to save. And, like religious mission work, teaching is a calling, a vocation that intends to save, to safeguard, to deliver believers to the church and students to particular forms of understanding and ways of knowing. In the face of any number of exigencies, teachers persist through a sense that what they are pursuing has to do with vocation (a very religious word, we need not remind), a notion that Palmer (1998) relies on in calling individuals to the courage of teaching, citing Frederick Buechner, who suggests that vocation is “the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet” (p. 30).That hunger, we ought note, is very much linked to the salvific model of Christ who, in Christian belief, is the bread of life, in whom none shall hunger.8 Teaching, here, especially since schooling, like church, is tied closely to moral ends, may be seen not simply as that which eradicates hunger but as equally associated with a hunger to teach, to provide salvation for the “hungry.” Teaching as a moral act can be seen not only as that which is bestowed upon students but also as an inherent desire to moralize, to educate, to save. Goodman and Lesnick (2001) say as much, beginning their work The Moral Stake in Education with a simple premise (simple as in commonsensical, so embedded as to need no real explication): “Although

92  To Teach as Jesus (Would)

moral education belongs in school, and is much needed, it is a simple, relatively uncontroversial matter of telling students what is right and wrong and maintaining incentives for right conduct” (p. 4). This telling, of course, has a history that links to the assumption that schooling—teaching—is a moral act, rooted in the need to shield children from a wicked world, “bent on ‘seducing them to ruin’ ” (Mintz, 2006, p. 90). Teachers, of course, in this frame must bring knowledge and produce disciples lest children remain base “slaves to emotion” if allowed to develop on their own in a natural state (Hirsch, 1996, p. 7). The notion of teacher as savior is not particularly new in the literature in education.There are cautionary tales that deal with the potential for cultural and linguistic paternalism when teachers of different races and socioeconomic classes encounter other people’s children (e.g., Delpit, 2006, 2012; Ladson-Billings 2001). As well there are chronicles of exceptional teachers who altered an otherwise problematic life course in print (Kearney, 2008; Kozol, 2000; Rose, 1989) and particularly in film: for example, Stand and Deliver; Dangerous Minds; The Dead Poets Society; DreamKeepers. While the salvific nature of such teaching has been widely critiqued (e.g., Kelly & Caughlin, 2011; Ladson-Billings, 1998, Marshall & Sensoy, 2011) on various grounds, missing from these analyses are the roots of a story that would take the teacher to be, ultimately, a savior. There is indeed something to the expertise of the sage on the stage, as it were, but the passionate vision of an individual who appears among those who need him (or her) most just at the right moment comes, we think, from the very real cultural assumption that the teacher is ultimately to model a career on that of Christ’s brief and then presumably eternal one as well as on various ideas about the child and learner that have permeated Christianity ever since. Whether one considers the learning child Apollonian or Dionysian, each seems to be in need of saving—whether from the evils and sins of the eternal world in the first case or from the sin that already exists in the child, in the latter case. One is deserving of preserving the existing innocence inside the child, the other of eradicating the devil inside the (other) child. Regardless, the role of the teacher is, in both cases, that of savior, of saving the child from what already is or what might be. There are echoes of Mark 10:15 here. The more common story cited ends in the verse 10:14, where Jesus chides the crowd for keeping the children from him, but note that he continues, for just as children must be suffered, they also must “receive the kingdom of God as a little child,” lest they miss out on salvation. Here we have seeds of later battles among Anabaptists and certainly contemporary ones between Gnostics and other sects, but the point that seems to have been carried through time is that children need a teacher early that they might be saved. The notion of teacher as savior in relation to the internal and external characteristics of the learner has also been explored by others. Contrary to Socrates, who saw the child’s lack of knowledge, and the wrongdoing that might follow, as the result of a child’s lack of knowledge—one that is external

To Teach as Jesus (Would) 93

to the child and, once corrected, will lead the learner on a moral and ethical journey toward truth—Kierkegaard (1962) saw this lack of knowing, this disconnection from truth, not as external to the learner but internal and a consequence of his/her own doing. Infusing his philosophy with theological understandings, Kierkegaard viewed the learner not simply as ignorant but as in a state of sin. For the learner to obtain truth, the teacher must bring it to him/her, saving the learner from his/her existing condition of untruth. As such, the teacher must act as god him/herself, both alerting the learner to his/her existing state of untruth and revealing truth to him/her, forming, reforming, and transforming the learner along the way. This teacher doesn’t simply teach; he/she is engaging a learner who needs to be converted, acting as a “savior, deliverer, reconciler, and judge” in the process of that conversion (Storm, 2013). Certainly, the notion of teacher as savior, where a heroic individual teacher is able, through forms of devotion, personal sacrifice, and “heroism,” to “fix” children and save them from their lot, is still with us today. While those of us currently in colleges of education may recoil at such definitions of teaching, centuries of education as a form of (Christian) saving were considered routine in European as well as in early American schools (e.g., Archard, 2004; Aries, 1965; Heywood, 2001; Mintz, 2006). Puritan schools were based on a long-standing tradition rooted very early in Martin Luther’s teachings that “infant hearts craved after ‘adultery, fornication, impure desires, lewdness, idol worship, belief in magic, hostility, quarrelling, passion, anger, strife, dissension, factiousness, hatred, murder, drunkenness’ ” and for good measure, “gluttony” (Heywood, 2001, p. 33). Suffer the little children, indeed—Samuel Davies, a Virginian, “wondered whether his son was ‘an embryo-angel’ or an ‘infant-fiend’ ”; indeed this ambivalence could have come from Luther himself, who in spite of their base nature, still lovingly referred to children as “God’s little fools” (p. 33). The point of schools, emerging from early Sunday schools, was character development. One, of course, need not go as far back to find other examples of the saving of ‘savages.’ Much has been discussed—indeed, criticized—regarding the lethal combination of religion and education in the context of Western colonialism. Administered by churches, missionary schools in Africa, Asia, and the Americas served as an important agent of colonialism by assimilating, often forcefully and aggressively, aboriginal peoples into Western culture and Christianity, with the idea of saving and civilizing indigenous children by converting them to Christianity (Miller, 1996, see also Dickason, 1997). Acting as the religious arm of colonial powers—its “ideological shock troops” (Andrews, 2010)—missionary schools were in the business of “saving,” and redeeming native souls, bringing “liberation—spiritual, cultural, economic, and political—by sharing the blessings of the Christ-inspired civilization of the West with a people suffering under satanic oppression, ignorance, and disease” (Falola, 2001, p. 33). Teaching in this context became a form of theological and moral transformation. Christianity, and Jesus as its symbol,

94  To Teach as Jesus (Would)

its master teacher, became instruments of rescue, the embodiment of knowledge, morality, and salvation all at once. Indeed, in the spirit of enhancing Christianity and its message, that which is provided by teachers, or that is given by Jesus (which, in this case were one and the same) became inseparable from the salvation given by either or both.9 Though missionary schools bent on Christianizing or saving native bodies and souls might be a notion of the past, the very mission of salvation in modern education still persists, even if in more implicit ways. With the church no longer underlying the operation of schooling (at least not in public education), contemporary discourses about standards, accountability, NCLB, and Race to the Top purport to play a role that is fundamentally about raising—and, in the process, also “saving”—the disenfranchised from their lot (and, in the process, the nation as a whole from falling behind and losing its competitive edge). Such discourses focus less on ameliorating, let alone understanding if even acknowledging, the conditions—political, economic, and social—that have created inequality than on saving students from those conditions, with the teacher, as savior, carrying the heaviest load in operationalizing that process. This teacher, like Moses or Jesus, is the one who is to lead students to the economic and moral promised land of the middle class: the new religion of economic, neoliberal success and international competitiveness. As teacher educators, we ought to consider the ways in which these legacies still remain with us today.To what degree, and in what ways, might the notions of the Apollonian and Dionysian child be still prevalent in how we think about teaching? And regardless of whether we currently refer to the unknowing learner as being in a state of sin, as Kierkegaard did, might the idea, despite the change in language, nevertheless permeate our conceptions of the role and practice of teaching? How might our understandings of pedagogy and curriculum, the routines of classrooms, and the rules of schooling still be infused with such understandings? But even if the answer to all of this is in the negative—that we no longer see a state of unknowing as sinful, that we no longer attempt to purify students and save them through the overt values of Christianity—fracturing the relationship between teaching and salvation is more difficult than separating Bibles from classrooms. Indeed, the notion of teacher as savior exceeds the troubled colonial past or even the troubling present—whether that represented in “official” discourses of accountability or through popular Hollywood films. In fact, it very much comes with the territory of teaching, an inherent part of the landscape of teaching—any teaching! At a most rudimentary level, the relationship between teacher and savior—or the idea of teacher as savior— underlies the very definition of the terms: indeed, every act of teaching involves some element of “saving” students from a space of lack—often defined as a state of unknowing or ignorance. As such, all teachers, by definition, can be regarded as saviors. Whether one chooses to save students

To Teach as Jesus (Would) 95

from ignorance (as a lack of knowledge) through phonics, the amassment of historical facts, the repetition of mathematical formulas, or group work, engaged discussion, or even critical pedagogy, each approach assumes that there is a lack, a wrong, that education ought to “fix” and that this fixing will save students from their existing state of not knowing that which they ought to know, a way of bringing them out of darkness and allowing them to see the light. Of course this vision—cultural trope—from the darkness of knowing-not into the light of knowing has teleological and religious roots, or as John 8:12 had it, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” The bringing of light, of knowledge, if very much a banishing of the darkness of not knowing (Jesus); teachers enact it constantly with precious little acknowledgment of the godly work it implies. In light of this, we suggest that whether explicitly or implicitly, the connection between teaching and “saving” ought to be more seriously considered in preservice teacher education.What such an engagement might mean and entail is the focus of the next, concluding section of the chapter.

Considerations for Teacher Education One of the problems in thinking about just what to do with teacher education, should we choose to accept its inherently Christian roots (and leaves and branches and bark) in the transmutation of the expectations of teachers into the expectations of the godly, comes in the realm of just where to even begin. We don’t foresee an elimination of the Christian from the discourse of schooling, nor do we see value necessarily in pursuing such an end; likely there’s too much history and cultural weight to maintain the practices described in this chapter and a certain blindness to even recognizing them as such in what we see currently as teaching. What we can suggest is threefold, however. The first approach is simple: engaging, as we do here and elsewhere in a frank, ongoing conversation that seeks to address the myriad ways in which history, culture, and discourse remain informed by religion and just what that might mean for the formation of schooling, of teachers, and of students. Such an approach cannot, however, stop with the residue and impact of Christian thought and understandings on “general” education and the mostly Christian bodies involved. It also requires an exploration of how Christian thought and the practices that go along with it (e.g., a mostly Christian academic calendar, Christian culture, and the myriad ways it manifests itself in the day-to-day operations of schooling, teaching, and learning) impact teachers (and students) of other religions who share those classrooms. A second strand, we propose, might need to take seriously the ways in which love, as a concept—both in broad terms, as well as in how it underlies the very concepts of teacher as martyr and teacher as savior—is leveraged and indeed compelled in schools. Thinking particularly about the socialization into teacher education, we might need to consider something akin to

96  To Teach as Jesus (Would)

Alison’s (2003) caution that often in religious situations, love means “I feel that in obedience to God’s love for sinners I must stop you from being who you are. . . . My love for you means that I will like you if you become someone else” (p. 107).10 What is teaching as broadly conceived and taught, after all, but the compulsion to change children into different (increasingly standardized) images? We might think of the old saw in teacher training that tells candidates that they won’t always like their students, but the calling of the profession requires that they have love for them. This love, we think, is well rooted in an explicitly Christ-like vision drawn from (variously Matthew 22: 36–40, Luke 10:27, and Mark 12: 30–31) the condensed commandments given to the disciples by Jesus: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ” These are the foundational truths behind the message of Christ the teacher: here we have the culmination of the movement from the old law and the new law. Typical of any good teacher, he summarizes and simplifies. But note the implications: if it is true that to love in a religious sense, as for Alison, is to compel change in others, and if teaching is an inherently religious practice as we’ve suggested, then the love that is demanded of teachers (socialized into them, in fact) requires that they turn their students into proto-teachers themselves. They must love their students, their neighbors, as they love themselves: they must mold them into smaller versions of the martyr and savior on a daily basis. There are implications to this that, in some ways, go beyond the scope of the chapter here, but we think that love becomes problematic as it functions in education precisely because of its religious implications. What we propose, then, as a third approach, is an a-religious teaching that will, somewhat oxymoronically, require attention to the religion that underlies schooling and its history but that also then moves away from notions of martyrs and saviors preaching at the podium or pulpit of the classroom.This involves an incorporation into teacher education of an acknowledgment of the religious identities of teacher candidates (and professors) that will then require a constituting of just what this category of experience and difference might mean for and do to practice and experience. Rather than seek, as most teacher preparation programs now do, to expunge the religious and its underpinnings from education and ignore its influence, we suggest that teacher education take on this topic more seriously for, whether we choose to ignore or bury its ramifications on teachers and teaching, its influence persists. We thus call for a more deliberate engagement in teacher preparation of the existence and relative importance of religion in the formation of schooling and society; an engagement that will explore different sets of questions about the necessity of certain affects, attitudes, and disciplinary regimes on practice.This approach will be always pointing to the limits of the frames. It will constantly strive to acknowledge the water in which we are all swimming (to borrow from David Foster Wallace), even though we might be

To Teach as Jesus (Would) 97

impervious to it. And it will hopefully drive a discussion about just what role religion writ large still has in education and what role it might better and differently have in schooling and teacher education, in particular, going forward. Martyrs and saviors are all well and good, but they may not make the best teachers, particularly for people who do believe deeply in Jesus as God for to understand oneself as teaching and preaching in his image may lead to a problem of despair at the moment(s) one falls short. One answer might be to point toward the mystery of God in religion, or as St. Augustine put it, “if you have understood, it is not God” (as cited in Johnson, 2007, p. 13); quite another might be to think through just how to make teaching as a-religious in our pedagogy, in our training, and in our discipline as it is religious now. We suggest a move in this direction in the next chapter, which takes a deep dive into the ways in which the God of the Hebrew Scriptures taught.

Notes 1 One need be careful about sources, but infographics like this abound, demonstrating the delinking of the amount of work American teachers do in relation to their pay: http://soshable.com/a-teachers-worth-around-the-world-infographic/. Surveys abound attesting to reasons teachers abandon the profession (http://www. nea.org/home/12630.htm). The career and well-being of teachers are of little concern it seems, so long as reform (in whatever form that word takes) is happening. And so the profession churns. 2 It is easy to find echoes of this practice in the various accounts of the Last Supper, of course, as the Apostles ate of his body and drank of his blood (Luke 22: 17–20; Matthew 26: 27–29; Mark 14: 22–25). 3 It is of course vital to acknowledge that assuming there to be a singular reading of the scapegoat and lamb imagery would belie both the theological complexity of the concept and would limit the semiotic possibility in ways that we don’t intend. In that sense we are indebted to Juzwik for the reminder that a dismissive positioning of certain readings of the Bible (and of Jesus’s meaning in particular) would be to reduce the scope of religion and in particular our own reading to an essentialist one. Rather, we wish to be suggestive and broad in our work here. We thus use the scapegoat and lamb imagery to foster further dialog around what happens to teachers in a society that vilifies them, intent on the fact that there is, if not religious grounding, then certainly religious fervor in the pursuit of teacher hides. 4 See http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nssea-releases-study-on-teacherspending-on-classroom-materials-98015529.html. 5 To say nothing of recent tragedies in which teachers very literally sacrificed or offered to sacrifice their lives acting as human shields for their students in Newtown, CT, and Moore, OK. 6 Acknowledging of course that the Brookings Institute is a center-left organization, the numbers of teaching jobs lost here is at least broadly illustrative: http://www. brookings.edu/blogs/jobs/posts/2012/08/03-jobs-greenstone-looney. We might also look to the state of North Carolina as a more localized evidentiary provider: http:// www.dpi.state.nc.us/newsroom/news/2011–12/20110831–01. 7 This manner of work—throwing teachers in the classroom with very little training— is often, interestingly, alluded to as a ‘baptism by fire.’ 8 The highly symbolic Gospel of John, written later and not likely based off of his synoptic predecessors (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) uses a number of images of Christ as sating worldly hunger. He tells the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4:14 that

98  To Teach as Jesus (Would) “those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” and later in John 6:35 after the miracle of the loaves and fishes (and in an explicit link to the manna of early Jewish memory), he declares: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” These moments occur in explicit teaching situations as he “tutors” a woman individually and the masses gathered for a “lecture.” 9 It’s worth noting, as well, that this hermeneutic, emblematized in the early colonies by John Wesley’s entreaty that parents “ ‘break the will of [their] child’ to ‘bring his will into subjection to yours that it may be afterward subject to the will of God’ ” (Heywood, 2001, p. 36) led to a sense that should the parents fail at discipline, the Church and increasingly its schools were present to re/form the delinquent child, spiritually but particularly, physically (p. 44). There’s a good bit of Proverbs 13:24 in this anxiety that parents might spoil the child, and so schools (and teachers) were meant to take up the rod. 10 For a fuller development of this idea, see Burke and Greteman (2013).

References Alison, J. (2003). On being liked. New York: Herder & Herder. Allen, A. (2013). The examined life: On the formation of souls and schooling. American Educational Research Journal, 50(2), 216–250. Andrews, E. (2010). Christian missions and colonial empires reconsidered: A black evangelist in west Africa, 1766–1816. Journal of Church & State, 51(4), 663–691. Archard, D. (1993). Children: Rights and childhood. New York: Routledge. Archard, D. (2004). Children: Rights and childhood. New York: Routledge. Aries, P. (1965). Centuries of childhood: A social history of family life (R. Baldick,Trans.). New York:Vintage. Benigni, M., & Zanchi, G. (2002). John XXIII: The official biography (E. DiFabio, Trans.). Boston: Pauline. Blumenthal, D. (1993). Facing the abusing God: A theology of protest. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. Burke, K. J., & Greteman, A. J. (2013). Toward a theory of liking. Educational Theory, 63(2), 151–170. Carroll, J. (2010). Practicing Catholic. New York: Mariner Books. Delpit, L. (2006). Other people’s children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. New York: The New Press. Delpit, L. (2012). Multiplication is for white people: Raising expectations for other people’s children. New York: The New Press. Dickason, O. P. (1997). Canada’s first nations: A history of founding peoples from earliest times (2nd ed.). Toronto: Oxford University Press. Falola, T. (2001). Violence in nigeria: The crisis of religious politics and secular ideologies. Rochester: University of Rochester Press. Feinberg, W., & Layton, R. A. (2013). Teaching bible in public high schools: Toward a conception of educational legitimacy. American Educational Research Journal, 50(6), 1279–1307. Frye, N. (1982). The great code:The Bible and literature. New York: Harcourt. Giroux, H. (2012). Education and the crisis of public values: Challenging the assault on teacher, students, and public education. New York: Peter Lang. Goodlad, J. I. (1984). A place called school: Prospects for the future. New York: McGraw-Hill.

To Teach as Jesus (Would) 99 Goodman, J. F., & Lesnick, H. (2001). The moral stake in education: Contested premises and practices. New York: Longman. Greeley, A. (2002). Catholic high schools and minority students. New York: Transaction. Hartwick, J. M. (2009). Public school teachers’ beliefs in and conceptions of God:What do teachers believe, and why it matters? Paper presented at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego. Heft, J. L. (2011). Catholic high schools: Facing the new realities. NewYork: Oxford University Press. Heywood, C. (2001). A history of childhood: Children and childhood in the west from medieval to modern times. New York: Polity. Hirsch, E. D. (1996). The schools we need & why we don’t have them. New York: Doubleday. Jackson, P. W. (1990). Life in classrooms. New York: Teachers College Press. Johnson, E. A. (2007). Quest for the living God: mapping frontiers in the theology of God. New York: Continuum. Juzwik, M. M., & McKenzie, C. (2015). Writing, religious faith, and rooted cosmopolitan dialogue: Portraits of two American evangelical men in a public school English classroom. Written Communication, 32(2), 121–149. Kearney, G. R. (2008). More than a dream: How one school’s vision is changing the world. Chicago: Loyola University Press. Kelly, S., & Caughlan, S. (2011). The Hollywood teachers’ perspective on authority. Pedagogies, 6, 46–65. Kierkegaard, S. (1962). Philosophical fragments, or a fragment of philosophy by Johanes Climacus. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kozol, J. (2000). Ordinary resurrections: Children in the years of hope. New York: Crown. Kumashiro, K. K. (2012). Bad teacher! How blaming teachers distorts the bigger picture. New York: Teachers College Press. Ladson-Billings, G. (1998). Teaching in dangerous times: Culturally relevant approaches to teacher assessment. Journal of Negro Education, 67(3), 255–267. Ladson-Billings, G. (2001). Crossing over to Canaan: The journey of new teachers in diverse classrooms. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Lesko, N. (1988). Symbolizing society: Stories, rites and structure in a Catholic high school. New York: Falmer Press. Lohfink, G. (2012). Jesus of Nazareth:What he wanted, who he was. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press. Lortie, D. C. (1975). Schoolteacher. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Marshall, E., & Sensoy, O. (Eds.). (2011). Rethinking popular culture and media. Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools, Ltd. McLaren, P. (1999). Schooling as a ritual performance: Toward a political economy of educational symbols and gestures. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Miller, J. R. (1996). Shingwauk’s vision: A history of Canadian residential schools. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Mintz, S. (2006). Huck’s raft: A history of American childhood. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Nord,W. A., & Haynes, C. C. (1998). Taking religion seriously across the curriculum. Nashville: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Nothwehr, D. (1998). A lesson from a sarcastic Jesus. Catholic Education: A Journal of Inquiry and Practice, 2(1), 82–97. Packer, B. K. (2008). Mine errand from the Lord. Salt Lake City, Utah: Desert Book. Retrieved June 15, 2013, from https://www.lds.org/ensign/2011/01/the-savior-themaster-teacher?lang=eng

100  To Teach as Jesus (Would) Palmer, P. (1998). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Ravitch, D. (2010). The death and life of the great American school system: How testing and choice are undermining education. New York: Basic Books. Rose, M. (1989). Lives on the boundary: A moving account of the struggles and achievements of America’s educationally underprepared. New York: Penguin. Schweber, S. (2006). Breaking down barriers or building strong Christians: Two treatments of Holocaust history. Theory & Research in Social Education, 34(1), 9–33. Schweber, S., & Irwin, R. (2003). Especially special: Learning about Jews in a fundamentalist Christian school. Teachers College Record, 105(9), 1693–1719. Spong, J. S. (2007). Jesus for the non-religious. New York: HarperCollins. Storm, D. A. (2013). D. Anthony storm’s commentary on Kierkegaard. Retrieved May 24, 2013, from http://www.sorenkierkegaard.org/ Watkins, W. H. (2012). The assault on public education: Confronting the politics of corporate school reform. New York: Teachers College Press. White, K. R. (2009). Connecting religion and teacher identity: The unexplored relationship between religion and teachers in public schools. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25, 857–866. White, K. R. (2010). Asking sacred questions: Understanding religion’s impact on teacher belief and action. Religion and Education, 37(1), 40–59. Wommack, A. (2012, April 4). Jesus, Teacher Savior. Retrieved from http://www.awmi. net/devotion/jesus/apr_04

6 PedaGod God as Teacher1

The fear of the LORd is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. (Proverbs 9:10) I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you should go; I will counsel you with My eye upon you. (Psalm 32:8) They have turned their back to Me . . . though I taught them, teaching again and again, they would not listen and receive instruction. (Jeremiah 32:33)

Elsewhere in this book, we have explored the role of religion and the Bible in helping shape our educational imagination. Continuing with that theme, this time focusing on the Old Testament exclusively, our aim here is a bit more daring, and playful, in that the subject of the chapter is God himself through the purview of him2 as teacher. Focusing on God as teacher,“reducing” the Almighty to only one of his many facets, might appear troubling— even blasphemous—to some but, as we have indicated earlier, the main purpose of the Bible is educational—beginning with the education of a newly formed human race and then shifting to a more focused education of teaching the nation of Israel in the ways of the Lord. If the primary purpose of the Bible is to educate, as we’ve asserted, the main teacher in this pedagogical endeavor is none other than God himself. Taking, then, as our assumption, that God is not only the primary biblical teacher but is primarily a teacher—that is, instructing as in laying out what should be done, drawing something out of someone, and/or guiding that someone’s doing and learning so they and/or others learn from it—our focus here is on God’s pedagogy, his forms of teaching, and his overall trajectory as a teacher. One could, of course, claim that in whatever God does, he teaches.That is, God always teaches, whether he does so explicitly or implicitly, through his presence and even through his absence (e.g., during the Holocaust, though

102  PedaGod

some suggest that he was present even there, that he is always present, even if the kind of teaching demonstrated and its outcomes are impossible for us to fathom). In this chapter, however, we take a less philosophical approach and, instead, read (and read into) the Bible—in this case, the Old Testament— more closely and often literally (to some probably too literally) to explore God’s engagements in actual, direct teaching—in other words, his explicit encounters with people—his students—as they appear in the biblical text. Of interest to us are his pedagogical stances, his approaches as teacher, his forms of instruction, his teacherly tone, his development and presence as teacher, the curriculum he structures for his students, and the educative encounters he creates for them as learners. As teacher educators, rather than biblical or religious scholars, our approach here invokes some of the field’s current understandings about pedagogy and teaching and uses those as the prism through which to explore God as teacher and his teaching. This sort of endeavor inevitably risks anthropomorphizing God, conflating time and space, and imposing current understandings about teaching onto the past and onto someone—God—who obviously never enrolled in a university-based teacher education program and who surely had in mind plans in/for his teaching of which we are not (and never can be fully) aware. We understand those limitations. Still, we find value in these superimpositions, as fraught with problems as they might be, to tease out the teaching aspects of God’s work and then, later in the chapter, examine ways in which God’s pedagogy is both still prevalent in our thinking as teachers today and the ways in which his pedagogy continues to in/form our thinking as teachers and teacher educators. To be sure, God is no “regular” teacher. Unlike earthly teachers, he does not stand in front of a classroom or directly teach a group of 20-something students confined in one room. Instead, he teaches in informal places (e.g., the desert, Mount Sinai, the Garden of Eden, the halls of Pharaoh’s palace) and often uses props (e.g., the burning bush) and proxies (angels) to convey his message rather than directly appearing in his own image. Moreover, while his ultimate audience is humanity as a whole and, later, the larger nation of Israel, God rarely addresses his students as a whole. In that regard, God’s teaching mostly takes the form of one-on-one instruction more so than instructing large audiences directly. Indeed, though those to be instructed through much of the Hebrew Bible are the children of Israel, God appears to them in his own image only once, in Horeb, in the context of the giving of the Ten Commandments. Other than that, God’s teaching of the Israelites is conveyed either through symbols (e.g., the splitting of the Red Sea, the pillars of cloud and fire guiding the Israelites through the desert) or through words conveyed to the people through God’s messengers. While God does closely monitor his students (to Adam: “Where are you?”, to Cain: “What have you done?” [Genesis, 3:9, 4:10]), takes attendance (to Cain: “Where is Abel your brother?” [Genesis, 4:9]), gets frustrated with his students (“They have turned their back to Me. . . . [T]hey would

PedaGod 103

not listen and receive instruction” (Jeremiah 32:33), and punishes them (the flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, the destruction of the temple), he also closely interacts with some of his students (e.g., Abraham, Moses), cares about them, allows them to speak back to him, even negotiates with them to amend his intended actions. In all, we encounter God as a multifaceted teacher who is at times absent, provides confusing instructions, and is short-tempered but is also reflective, open to suggestions, adjusts instruction in light of student responses, and wants to be respected—even loved—by his students, not unlike most “regular,” contemporary teachers. Where God is also quite similar to our contemporary teachers is in his career trajectory as teacher. Like many teachers today, we find God in the early parts of the book of Genesis eager and motivated to teach yet somewhat unprepared to do so, surprised by the outcomes of his teaching, disappointed with his students, and “learning on the job.” Upon reflection, he recognizes his mistakes and chooses, accordingly, to amend his pedagogy, getting more involved as a teacher and focusing intently on forging more intense and longer-term relationships with those taught. This intense teaching period—a “honeymoon period” in some ways—exemplified by his teaching of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses, takes place in the remainder of Genesis and Exodus and into the book of Kings with Samuel. Following that, and as the nation begins to grow, we find God “increasingly remote and noncommunicative” (Kass, 2003, p. 662), somewhat retreating from teaching, removing himself from the “classroom” and using substitutes to do his teaching. One could consider God, at that point, an administrator of teaching rather than a teacher, creating the curriculum, but having it delivered by others (the prophets), yet still orchestrating events from above. This is not unlike contemporary teachers who devote five years to classroom teaching and then, for multiple reasons, often move on to administrative positions that take them away from direct instruction. One could suggest that God, as teacher, was able to distance himself from the “classroom,” having provided a strong enough educational foundation that he could step back and leave the students, with the help of his messengers, to manage on their own. But, as history indicates, removing himself from the classroom did not produce the kind of learning he hoped for. If we take the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and the exile of the Israelites as the end point, we see that removing himself from the classroom might not have been the wisest pedagogical approach, at least not from a teacher’s perspective. We proceed now to explore God’s teaching, beginning by looking specifically at two teaching encounters, those with Adam and Eve and then with Abraham. We use those examples to both provide a closer examination of his teaching and to identify a variety of themes from those two encounters, which we then use to explore God’s teaching more broadly and across contexts. We conclude the chapter with an exploration of the degree and ways in which God’s teaching still remains in our collective imagination about teaching and teacher education.

104  PedaGod

Teaching and Learning in the Garden of Eden God’s first act of teaching begins on the sixth day of creation and concludes in the Garden of Eden, where as readers will recall, Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and were subsequently punished and banished from the garden. Of interest to us in this story are its complex and nuanced pedagogical underpinnings, maneuvers, and outcomes that beyond the particular lesson itself, shed some light on God as teacher, or at least in his first foray into teaching, one for which he seemed somewhat unprepared. After all, why would he have gone through the trouble of creating an entire garden to house Adam and Eve and then banish them from it? Several aspects in the encounter in the garden are worthy of exploration when one examines them through the purview of teaching: the intent of the lesson in relation to the pedagogy applied; the nature of guidance provided the students; the students’ ability and readiness to learn; the positioning of knowledge; and the degree to which the teacher achieved his initial goals through the lesson. We address these in turn. One of the hallmarks of teaching, many teachers suggest, is providing clear and unambiguous instructions to all students to help guide them through a lesson. How well did God do in that regard? That depends on which chapter of Genesis one reads. But assuming one reads all of them, as we did, the answer is inconclusive. This is because Genesis has two stories of creation—two different stories, one in the first chapter of Genesis, the other in Chapter 2. In each, God gives Adam and Eve a different set of instructions—actually giving those instructions to both Adam and Eve in Chapter 1 but only to Adam (prior to making Eve) in Chapter 2.3 In Chapter 1 of Genesis, at the end of the sixth day of creation, God blesses Adam and Eve, stating they will multiply, prosper, and rule the Earth. He then adds: “Behold, I have given you every . . . tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you” (1:29). In the second story of creation, in Chapter 2, however, God instructs Adam otherwise, saying: “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die” (2:16–17).What we have here are two sets of contradictory instructions with regard to the teacher’s intent (a blessing in Chapter 1, a command and a threat in Chapter 2), tone (loving in Chapter 1, imperious in Chapter 2), and consequence (prosperity in Chapter 1, pending death in Chapter 2). Added to that is the fact that while the first set of instructions—the blessing—was given to both Adam and Eve, the second set of instructions—the command forbidding the Tree of Knowledge—was only provided to Adam. What are the students—Adam and Eve—to do with those instructions, especially with Eve only receiving the first set? Are they to choose which one to follow since they can obviously not follow both at the same time? How can they choose, since choice requires knowledge, and they have yet to eat from the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge? They might ask God, but the

PedaGod 105

teacher seems to no longer be around for the asking after Chapter 2. And wouldn’t the very idea of asking, and one’s state of confusion as the impetus for asking, require knowledge of a lack, of being confused without actually having the knowledge of what confusion even entails? (For a related conversation, see Noddings, 1993.) As teachers, we ought always question whether our students are ready and able to learn that which we wish to teach them. Do they have the capacity to learn in and from our intended pedagogical encounter? Will they fail or succeed? While we already have the answer to the last question—one we all carry with us as descendants of the fallen Adam and Eve according to a number of major faith traditions—one ought to inquire, as Kass (2003) does, as to whether Adam and Eve were in fact sufficiently self-conscious or had the depth and experience to understand God’s command to not eat the fruit or what the consequences of such an action might entail. How could they know that before eating from the apple, an act that, while giving them the capacity to know already positioned them as disobeyers of the teacher’s command? Though Adam did convey the prohibition to Eve, as evident from her discussion with the snake, she, after much shrewd cajoling from the serpent, eats from the Tree of Knowledge and then feeds its fruit to Adam. Both, now in the know, not only realize they are naked, and cover themselves, but also know that they have sinned by disobeying the Lord. God, obviously aware of what has taken place, calls on Adam: ‘Where are you?’ He said, ‘I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.’ And He said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?’ The man said, ‘The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.’ Then the LORd God said to the woman, ‘What is this you have done?’ And the woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.’ (3:9–13) We have discussed some of the back-and-forth of the questioning here previously (see Chapter 3). Here, though, it’s worth focusing on seeing a teacher who begins the dialog not with assertions or accusations but “like a good teacher and investigator, with a question” (Kass, 2003, p. 142), one who invites Adam to confront his actions. Questions are used to engage the students in discourse, without pushing students so as to entrap them in their own responses. Instead, taking their responses at face value—as a form of nonanswers—and moving on though the movement, in this case directly toward the punishment phase, seems somewhat hasty in light of the questions about student readiness raised earlier. Still, the punishment imposed, banishment from the garden and enduring hard labor (both as physical work and childbearing) is not sure death, with which they were threatened initially.

106  PedaGod

In all, we see in this first biblical pedagogical encounter numerous elements in play: a teacher who, as presented in the text, is of two minds with regard to the instructions provided to students; a teaching encounter that by the results, was not fruitful in promoting the knowledge initially intended; students who do not follow instructions, who are rebellious in disregarding the teacher’s orders; and a teacher who, not knowing how to proceed, moves directly to punishment, albeit a reduced punishment shrouded in compassion and care. It was not a resoundingly successful first attempt at teaching but not a total failure either—we are, after all, still here to recount the story. From a teaching perspective, however, larger pedagogical questions loom heavy in the context of this lesson: Why, for example, one may ask, tempt one’s students with something that is forbidden and carries with it the penalty of death? Why incorporate such a lethal hazard in one’s lesson? One could, of course, argue that the forbidden Tree of Knowledge stands at the heart of the lesson, that without it there would be no lesson at all. That may be true, but from a teacherly stance, one could question whether the lesson— any lesson—justifies such ends, as powerful as the lesson may be. One could equally question why knowledge—the prized result of learning— and the process of ascertaining it are forbidden, punishable, and lethal. How, under such conditions, do knowledge and learning relate and correspond? What might be the purpose of education if not wisdom and knowledge— even when the latter includes knowing both good and evil?4 And what messages might be conveyed, one ought to wonder, as does Kass (2003, p. 3), when knowledge and understanding are associated with obedience and reverence to the teacher rather than with curiosity, wonder, and open inquiry? How do such associations position students to know and not know, to inquire and challenge, or to remain docile and silent? And how might they position future teachers and the enterprise of education as a whole?

The Education of Abraham To understand God’s education of Abraham,5 Kass (2003) claims, “it is necessary to keep in mind the pre-Abrahamic world, which is to say the natural and uninstructed, human condition and to see just what needs educating and why” (p. 251). Biblical stories—such as those of Cain and Abel, Noah and the flood, or the Tower of Babel, to which we will return later—that preceded Abraham, Kass adds: Have shown us why it will be extremely difficult to establish a better way of life for human beings. For they have exposed the perennial problems in human relations and laid bare deep psychic roots. From these stories we have learned especially about the dangers of human freedom and rationality, about the injustices that follow from excessive self-love and vanity, and about the evils born of human pride and the aspiration to full self-sufficiency. (p. 251)

PedaGod 107

Beginning with Abraham, God is determined to embark on a new form of education by becoming more actively involved as teacher, to “take Abraham by the hand,” “to serve as his tutor,” and to “educate him to be a new human being, one who will stand in right relation to his household, to other people”—and to God—“one who will set an example for countless generations, who, inspired by his story, will cleave of these righteous ways” (Kass, 2003, p. 252). Abraham’s encounters with God, his teacher, begin in Haran, where God appeared to him and said, “Go forth from your country, And from your relatives, And from your father’s house, To the land which I will show you; And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great” (Genesis, 2:1–2). Not knowing who is speaking to him or where this land might be, Abraham obeys with no hesitation—passing his first “test”—and sets out with his family to Canaan. Here begins the education of Abraham and the nation of Israel. Abraham’s education comprises multiple commands and tests given by God as well as promises and blessings, “with the promises more prominent at the outset, and the commands more prominent toward the end and increasing in difficulty. The carrots come before the stick” (Kass, 2003, p. 264). Some of God’s lessons are embedded in those commands, and tests relate to Abraham’s personal and familial life; some are about regional politics more generally. Mostly, however, they are about establishing a relationship with God, a trust in, and a sense of obedience to him, an element already present in the biblical text cited. God speaks to Abraham and commands him to leave all that is known to him but does not identify himself to Abraham. Nor does he tell Abraham where he will be led. It is a request for full compliance, one that requires and evokes a full trust, blind following, and a sense of obedience. God’s continued education of Abraham occurs once Abraham has reached Canaan. That education included familiarizing Abraham with the land that God promised to him (“Arise, walk about the land through its length and breadth; for I will give it to you” [Genesis, 13:17]); understanding and appropriating the rules of the covenant with God, where God promised Abraham that he will father a great nation and required all males to be circumcised as a sign of allegiance; learning to “manage” familial issues through handling the fraught relationship between Sarah and Hagar, and the issue of birthright between Ishmael and Isaac; learning to assert himself within regional politics through engagement with area kings; learning the art of hospitality as demonstrated through his hosting of the three messengers (angels) carrying God’s word that Sarah will soon bear a child; and finally, the most crucial and problematic of tests: the binding of Isaac on Mount Moriah. Though much of Abraham’s education comprised an imbalanced relationship between teacher and student, whereby God commands (or blesses) and Abraham, by and large, complies immediately, fully and with no question, that relationship also included much more than blind obedience. Indeed, there is no other teacher-student relationship (perhaps with the exclusion of Moses) where God cares as much about his student in ways that

108  PedaGod

exceeded the teaching offered to others. Beyond commands and a desire for reverence, we also find in this relationship much care, compassion, and protection, even a sense of equilibrium, where God treats Abraham not simply as a student to be merely instructed but as a partner in the endeavor and a councilor to God. Examples of this include God reaching out to protect Abraham, as in the case of striking Pharaoh with great plagues or threatening Abimilech, King of Gerar, and sterilizing the women of his palace for taking Sarah (deceivingly presented by Abraham in both cases as his sister) into their households, and saving Lot and his family from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah due to God’s relationship with Abraham. We also find some intimate teacherly moments, for example, when Sarah laughed having heard that she will be carrying a child at her old age. When God questioned Abraham as to why Sarah laughed, adding, “Is anything too difficult for the LORd?,” Sarah denied laughing and the implied disbelief in God’s promise. “ ‘I did not laugh,’ she said, for she was afraid. And He said, ‘No, but you did laugh’ ” (Genesis, 18: 14–15). Though God appears to scold Sarah (and, implicitly, Abraham too) for her lack of reverence toward him, the exchange reveals less a sense of anger on God’s part, or fear to speak her mind on Sarah’s part, and instead demonstrates signs of the intimate relationship God had with Abraham and Sarah that allowed for some coyness and the kind of banter one would find within a family more than in a relationship with the Almighty. And when God was determined to use brimstone and fire to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for their sins, he pondered to himself: “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do . . . [f]or I have chosen him, so that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORd by doing righteousness and justice [?]” (Genesis, 18: 17–19). When God revealed his plan to destroy the two cities to Abraham, Abraham did not keep silent but approached God with the following question and ensuing exchange: Will You indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will You indeed sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from You to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?” So the LORd said, “If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare the whole place on their account.” (Genesis, 18: 23–25) Of note is that, while there is certainly an element of respect in God’s sharing his plan with Abraham in advance of its execution, there is also an element of teaching involved. And it is not for God to miss such an opportunity.

PedaGod 109

Having chosen Abraham to lead a nation who will “keep the way of the LORd by doing righteousness and justice,” God saw this as an opportunity not simply to address those issues with him at a theoretical level but to also explore them with him in the context of a real life-and-death issue and gauge his reaction, hoping perhaps, that Abraham would in fact respond the way he did. If that was indeed God’s plan, it worked. Contrary to other exchanges with God, where Abraham silently followed God’s plan without question, this time the student steps up and challenges the teacher and does so repeatedly, talking God down from 50 righteous souls to a mere (though apparently still impossible to find) 10. And God relents. In doing so, the exchange illustrates that God’s previous lessons to Abraham about righteousness and justice were well received and that Abraham not only understood them but also was committed to them even if that meant challenging God and in the process, pushing God to consider and reconsider multiple times. Though Abraham confronted God and argued with him to save the lives of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, he did nothing of the kind for the life of his own child as told in the story of the binding of Isaac—Abraham’s final and most daunting test. Much like in God’s first encounter with Abraham, when Abraham was told to leave his homeland and go to a place God would show him, the sense of being guided to an unknown location, a place whose name is not provided, to encounter a life-altering—and, in this case, also life-shattering—experience, also underlies the test administered to Abraham in the context of the binding of Isaac. As the biblical narrator tells us, “God tested Abraham, and said to him, ‘Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ He said, ‘Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you’ ” (Genesis, 22: 2). As in their first encounter, Abraham obeys not only without question but with a sense of readiness. Showing his eagerness to comply, he gets up early in the morning, saddles his donkey, splits the wood to burn the offering, takes two of his servants and Isaac, and ventures off “to the place of which God had told him”6 (2:3). Abraham leaves the two servants and the donkey at the base of the mountain, takes Isaac, who was made to carry the wood, and takes the fire and knife himself. As they walk up the mountain, Isaac said, “ ‘My father!’ And he said, ‘Here I am, my son.’ And he said, ‘Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?’ Abraham said, ‘God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.’ And “the two of them walked on together” (22: 7–8). When they reached the top of the mountain: Abraham built the altar there and arranged the wood, and bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the LORd called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he

110  PedaGod

said, “Here I am.” He said, “Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.” Then Abraham raised his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in the thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram and offered him up for a burnt offering in the place of his son. (22: 9–13) The angel then reappears to tell Abraham, on behalf of God, “because you have done this thing and have not withheld your son, your only son. . . . I will greatly bless you (22: 16–18). If there was, at some point, any doubt that despite the close relationship between God and Abraham described earlier, the ultimate goal of his education was obedience to God, the story of the binding of Isaac ought to put an end to it. One finds in this “educative” encounter much to question and wonder about through the lens of pedagogy: what are the relational and psychic costs of this lesson? What does this test add that was not already known? Were there not other ways for Abraham to demonstrate his ultimate devotion to God without having to sacrifice that which was most dear to him? Why did Abraham and Isaac have to go through this ordeal if God already knew, as he surely did, the outcome—that it was the lamb that would ultimately serve as the sacrifice? Or was the lesson intending to demonstrate that contrary to other gods, God wishes to sanctify life rather than have it sacrificed to him? If so, would a declaration from him to that effect not suffice? And, finally, one might ask, as any teacher does when preparing one’s lessons: do the means justify the ends? Does a lesson, important as it is, do more harm than good? To what limits might students be pushed to ensure learning without causing too many long-lasting damaging effects? We must, of course, assume that God pondered such questions and still decided to proceed, presumably for reasons we cannot fully fathom.Though Abraham passed God’s test, and was blessed by him for it, the Bible does, at least implicitly, tell us that the passing of the test came at an immense expense for his family. While the biblical narrator tells us that both Abraham and Isaac climbed up the mountain, we only learn of Abraham coming down. We can only assume what went through Isaac’s head and why he chose not to accompany his father down the mountain. No encounters take place between Abraham and Isaac thereafter, implying their relationship was forever severed from that moment on. Indeed, the only time they are mentioned in conjunction is when Isaac and Ishmael attend Abraham’s funeral. We further learn that while Isaac grieved the death of his mother, no similar sentiment is recorded in conjunction with the death of Abraham (Kass, 2003). And one must of course question the impact the binding might have had on the relationship between Abraham and Sarah. These are not only moral issues but familial ones and ones worthy of noting because besides devotion to God, one of the main lessons throughout Genesis, as

PedaGod 111

God was establishing his new nation, was about the proper conduct of family life: about respect, the proper treatment of family members and relationships between husbands and wives, children, and slaves. In that regard, the story of the binding of Isaac is not only problematic in itself but also in that the desire to successfully achieve one of God’s lessons—the demonstration of full devotion to God—came at the expense of one of God’s other important and recurring lessons about the primacy of the family unit. The importance and impact of the lesson about the binding on Isaac is also enhanced as this was God’s last teaching encounter with Abraham. Having passed this final test, and possibly not having anything more to teach him, God, according to the text, never appeared to or spoke with Abraham again until his death.

The Pedagogy and Teaching of God In these two examples several themes emerge that we now wish to expand upon, exploring them in God’s teaching more broadly and over time. These themes—some of which were already explicitly addressed, others only hinted at—include: (1) obedience, punishment, and loving-kindness; (2) instruction and abandonment; (3) tone and interactions; and (4) testing. Our purpose in this section of the chapter is to substantiate and extend these themes by examining their prevalence in other instances of God’s teaching. Obedience, Punishment, and (Some) Love

In the third of the Ten Commandments, as God warns the children of Israel against worshiping idols, he also speaks of consequences: For I, the LORd your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments. (Exodus 20: 4–6) Later in Exodus, as Moses is in the process of replacing the original tablets— the ones [with this quote] he broke in anger as he came down the mountain and saw the Israelites worshiping the golden calf—God passed in front of Moses and, addressing the Israelites, proclaimed: “The LORd, the LORd God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished” (Exodus, 34: 6–7). As we have already seen in the context of God’s teaching of Adam and Eve, as well as of Abraham, the prominent terms in these quotes—obedience, punishment, and loving-kindness—reflect not only God’s stance toward idol

112  PedaGod

worshipers or his approach to justice but also serve as important elements in his teaching.Yet as the examples about Adam, Eve, and Abraham’s educational experiences also indicate, not only were the elements of obedience, punishment, and love present, but there was also a particular hierarchy with regard to their prominence, where it appears, obedience supersedes the others. We find this hierarchy prevalent throughout God’s teaching. Whether in the case of Adam and Eve, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, or Samuel, God primarily teaches for, and seeks, obedience to his orders and commands. Obedience and reverence to him and his word underlie the very essence of his teaching, whether the taught is an individual or the nation as a whole. Non-obedience, as in the case of Moses disbelieving God will provide water from the rock, has its price: punishment (in Moses’s case, not being allowed to enter the Promised Land with the Israelites, whom he led through the desert for 40 years). Punishment for disobedience or lack of reverence is meted equally to those who are close to God (e.g., Moses and David) and to those who are close to those who are close to God (e.g., punishing Miriam, Moses’s sister, with leprosy for her lack of reverence to Moses and God). Interestingly, God is often at his most imaginative as a teacher when punishing, as when he turns Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt for disobeying his command. He is also quite specific—even poetic—in describing potential punishment, as when God claims he will never forgive a man who turns away from him and proclaims: The anger of the LORd and His jealousy will burn against that man, and every curse which is written in this book will rest on him, and the LORd will blot out his name from under heaven. Then the LORd will single him out for adversity from all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant which are written in this book of the law. (Deuteronomy 29: 20–21) Punishment meted to the larger population often comes in more sweeping and violent forms: flooding the world for the wickedness of its people; confusing the language of the people of Babel and scattering them over the face of the Earth; leveling the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah; punishing the Egyptians with the 10 plagues and drowning their armies in the Red Sea; and finally, using the invading armies of the Babylonians to destroy Jerusalem and exile its people for disobeying and turning away from Him. Indeed, God of the Old Testament as teacher appears to be first and foremost a disciplinarian who frequently teaches through instructive punishment— one of his common methods being banishment. In Genesis, Adam and Eve have barely entered the room (the world!) before “He drove [them] out” (Genesis 3:24), evicted from the garden for disobeying his command. Banishment was also the punishment for Cain, their son, for killing his brother Abel. The inhabitants of Babel were banished from their city and scattered for wanting to make a name for themselves. The Israelites were first made

PedaGod 113

slaves in the exile of Egypt for 400 years—not as their own punishment but to allow for the pending annihilation of the Amorites when the Israelites return—and then to wander in the desert for 40 years on their way from Egypt until the generation of the golden calf died off. The Israelites were banished, scattered among the nations by the Assyrians and the people of Judea exiled to Babylon, both “because of all the evil of the sons of Israel and the sons of Judah which they have done to provoke Me to anger—they, their kings, their leaders, their priests, their prophets, the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem” (Jeremiah 2:32). Exile, banishment, and wanderings in deserts it seems, were methods employed continuously as forms of punishment throughout God’s teaching.7 God’s main lesson for his human student is, more often than not, obedience, with disobedience followed by swift, severe punishment. Such punishment is not exceptional to God’s teaching in the Old Testament but instead very much part and parcel with his engagement with human beings; it is his most consistent response to disobedience and irreverence. But, as we have also seen from the examples of the education of Adam, Eve, and Abraham, obedience and punishment were not God’s only pedagogical tools. As we saw, compassion, care, loving-kindness, and elements of forgiveness were also part of God’s pedagogical equation. As we may recall, God commuted Adam and Eve’s punishment from death to banishment and ensured they were well clothed prior to leaving Eden. He also didn’t punish Cain with death following Cain’s murder of Abel. Instead, God made him a vagrant, condemned to wander the Earth. Still, to protect Cain, God put a mark on Cain’s forehead “so that no one finding him would slay him” (4: 15), even though slaying was at the very root of Cain’s own punishment. We have also seen God protect Abraham in several instances of his own wrongdoing (e.g., twice presenting Sarah as his sister rather than his wife while in Egypt and Gerar). More generally, one may also consider the exodus from Egypt, the providing of the Promised Land, and all other victories provided by God to the people of Israel—as they entered the land and were already settled in it—as forms of loving-kindness, at least toward the Israelites if not their enemies. Loving-kindness, a disposition or characteristic God attributed to Himself, however, should not be conflated with love. While love does prove an important aspect of God’s education, that love is projected by the students in the direction of their teacher rather than the other way around (or at least as a mutual sentiment). It is a love that is obligatory, ordered, and enforced, regardless of whether it might also have been genuine and self-motivated (which it surely was). Deuteronomy is abundant (and abundantly clear) on this issue: “[T]he Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live (Deuteronomy 30:6);“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:5); “I command you today to love the Lord your God, to

114  PedaGod

walk in His ways and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments, that you may live and multiply, and that the Lord your God may bless you in the land where you are entering to possess it” (Deuteronomy 30:16). A similar call for love is also embedded in the “Shma Israel,” the most important and sacred Jewish prayer, recited twice daily by believers, often uttered on one’s deathbed and said by children before going to bed: Hear, O Israel! The LORd is our God, the LORd is one! You shall love the LORd your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart.You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4–9) Love, as we have seen, is not conditional, not dependent on God’s actions, and not reciprocal. It is a required rather than organic sentiment from the student toward God, the teacher. It is a love by the obedient, of the obedient, and as such is an obedient love, not one necessarily found through self-discovery. And it is this specific notion of love, and its relation to obedience and punishment, that underlies God’s educational endeavors with his students, regardless of his particular relationship with them—the demand for love of God is universal and uncompromising. Instruction and Abandonment

Perhaps one way to explain why God is always punishing his students is that he’s only intermittently around to keep them in line. For a teacher, God is often absent from the classroom, appearing briefly to teach and then removing himself for days, even months at a time—surely not the best way to keep students in check and ensure they follow the teacher’s directions and achieve the intended pedagogical goals, even if verbal or written instructions for students’ conduct were provided in advance. We see this in the story of the Garden of Eden, where God, following instruction, leaves Adam and Eve alone and only reemerges once they have eaten the forbidden fruit. We find a similar pattern with Noah, who is taught (through command) to “make for yourself an ark” (Genesis 6:14) and obeys, only to find himself on his own for over a year floating in his ark and trying to determine if the waters have sufficiently receded before God reenters the picture. While God presumably keeps in contact with Abraham as he initially led him to Canaan, the biblical narrator does not reveal this. Instead, we read that the first encounter between God and Abraham following his departure from Haran took place only after Abraham arrived in Canaan—a rather lengthy journey in those

PedaGod 115

days. When God ordered Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, he waits three days before reappearing, at the last moment, to substitute the ram for Isaac. He also left the Israelites for 400 years as slaves in Egypt without a sign, a visit, or any other form of assurance from him. In Exodus and Numbers, God teaches by providing the children of Israel with the Ten Commandments before leaving them to their own wicked devices, only to return later to punish them for these devices. What might we make of a teacher who demands continuous obedience— and punishes so harshly for not getting it right—but does not remain with his students every step of the way to see the lesson through, who isn’t available to add instruction, redirect, and answer questions? One might understand this pattern of instruction and absence by looking at its consequences—it makes punishment almost inevitable as God sets students up to fail. It provides (many) opportunities for God to teach through punishment, but it also establishes the need for divine mercy; the teacher must be willing to forgive his students for their inevitable mistakes.Yet even in forgiveness—indeed, to forgive—mistakes must be the provenance of students, since “[a]s for God. His way is blameless” (2 Samuel 22:31). Regardless of the teacher’s absence, mistakes are pinned on students who do not follow instruction, who are wicked, or who simply refuse to listen and learn. For as the teacher noted: “They have turned their back to Me . . . though I taught them, teaching again and again, they would not listen and receive instruction” (Jeremiah 32:33). Tone and Interactions

The various tones that God uses in the act of teaching are of interest to us, too: it may be that such a substantial variety of tones, the modulation of voice(s), reflects the polyphonic nature of the Bible as assembled text(s), as some scholars have suggested (Friedman, 2005). In any case, a consideration of different voices is essential to our project, interested as we are in the different versions and visions of teacher present in a (singular?) God. “Teacher voice” is a concept both colloquial—as in the popular T-shirt and coffee-mug meme, “Don’t make me use my teacher voice!”—and scholarly, theorized by various voices across the intellectual spectrum (e.g., Goodson, 1991; Dana, 1995; Kirk & MacDonald, 2001). As a teacher, God often orders, adopting the commanding tone of a parent, supervisor, or well, the Lord. His commands can be imbued with literal and sonic force, as with Jacob (“I will not let you go unless you bless me” [Genesis 22:26]), or Job (“Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me” [Job 40:7]); he can also sound perfunctory and professionally specific, as with the detailed architectural instructions God gives to Noah as he describes how to build the ark, or to Moses, on the summoning of plague: “Tell Aaron, ‘Take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt—over the streams and canals, over the ponds and all the reservoirs—and they will turn to blood’ ” (Exodus 7:19). God’s voice is by turns accusatory (Genesis 3:11: “Who told you that

116  PedaGod

you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”) and disinterested (Exodus 32:10: “Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn”). The distinction to make here is one of the personal, emotional investment in his voices; while God’s irate and accusatory tone can betray hot-blooded, rash—human, even—feeling toward his students, the distance of God’s alternatively dispassionate, professional teacher voice emphasizes the technical aspects of God as teacher, establishing a relative indifference in what seem to be almost contractual encounters. Interestingly, God’s tone in teaching can seem at times (surprisingly, perhaps) sarcastic, disdainful, and even cruel in the commanding. We hear this when God tells Abram to “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them” (Genesis 15:5), taunting his subject’s lack of ability. Later in the education of Abraham, God shows a darker side in the story of the sacrifice of Isaac, revealing that He knows full well (as any all-knower should) what he is asking of Abraham: “Take your son, your only son, whom you love [emphasis added]—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you” (Genesis 22:2). So as not to be misunderstood, God repeats himself in Genesis 22: 16–17: “[B]ecause you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, [emphasis added] I will surely bless you.” The difficult aspect here lies in the confirmation that God acknowledges the extremely difficult place in which he positions Abraham by asking him to sacrifice not just his son but his only son, the one he loves. But the God of the Old Testament also teaches his students with compassion, even loving-kindness, in his voice. God reasons in a compassionate tone when deciding that “it is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him” (Genesis 2:18). In changing his mind and agreeing to spare Lot’s life, he adopts a conciliatory tone: “Very well, I will grant this request too; I will not overthrow the town you speak of. But flee there quickly, because I cannot do anything until you reach it” (Genesis 19:21–22). This willingness to grant Lot’s request is also representative of another aspect of God’s voice: in listening to his subjects, God’s tone can become absent altogether. God demonstrates an ability to listen elsewhere, as with Moses in Exodus 22. There is a certain tension between such a thoughtful, sensitive, soft-voiced tone and the authoritative and powerful voice described earlier. Of course, there are many other tones we could make use of here—God the teacher is many voiced. Our intent is to point out this many-voiced-ness to complicate the notion that God teaches through a singular tone. Pluralizing the sound of God as a teacher helps establish that while God teaches, he does so in a multiplicity of sometimes contradictory and discordant ways. On Reflection and Changing His Mind

Like any teacher, God is not monolithic or unidimensional. And like any of our Earthly teachers, he develops over time—shifting and refining his

PedaGod 117

pedagogical approaches as he learns “on the job,” trying new plans after old ones fail, making concessions to unavoidable—yet still undesirable—human traits. He reflects back on the effectiveness of his teaching and, sometimes, especially at the beginning, changes course, even changing his classroom. He sees his teaching succeed with some students, while others disappoint him. In many ways, he is the embodiment of what we have come to know as a teacher. God’s lessons are not set in stone (well, 10 of them are) but respond to the situation and to the students involved. He announces to Adam and Eve that eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge will result in sure death but then substitutes it for banishment instead. Though the diet prescribed to humans in creation was vegetarian, God changed his mind and allowed humans, after Noah, to eat meat as well (Kass, 2003). Following the pleas of Abraham, God changes his initial plans for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and through an exchange with Moses, decides to not follow up on his plan to annihilate the Israelites in the desert. In these cases we see God change his plan following feedback from his students. Some of those changed plans are a result of God’s own reflection and a recognition that things need to change, both because of the nature of students and his own misconceived assumptions about them. Prior to the flood, and an impetus for it, “the LORd saw that the wickedness of man was great on the Earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of His heart was only evil continually. The LORd was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart” and was, thus, determined to “blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them” (Genesis 6: 5–7). Following the flood and the destruction of all living things (other than those on the ark), God ponders his actions and says to “Himself, ‘I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done’ ” (Genesis 8: 20–21), a pledge he repeats a chapter later, saying: “and never again shall the water become a flood to destroy all flesh (Genesis 9:15). In this, we find a reflective God willing to acknowledge his limitations. He does not, it seems, know everything or get everything right as a teacher. We encounter a teacher who understands that the measures applied were ineffective, that his students are different than what he expected, and that new pedagogical approaches are needed. In some ways, what God determined at that point was not only to alter his pedagogical approach but also to change his classroom and shift the target of his teaching. While God initially saw himself as teaching “all of humanity all at once” (Kass, 2003, p. 217), God devises a different plan following the flood and, instead, chooses to focus his teaching on only one nation—the one he will create through Abraham. This shift marks God’s third incarnation as teacher with a new set of students (or, his third placement, so to speak). His first was with his

118  PedaGod

original students, Adam and Eve. When human life was eradicated following the flood, Noah—in a sense, the second Adam—became God’s student. And with Abraham, God has moved to his third classroom; He would remain in that setting with Abraham and his descendants for a very long time.

God and Contemporary Teachers and Teaching While it is impossible to fully determine in what ways (if any) God’s teaching— and its image in our imagination—might shape teachers’ understanding of their profession, there is some evidence in research that there may be a closer relationship between God and teachers than we might assume and that God does in fact play a role in teachers’ thinking about teaching, learning, and students—not surprising in the context of a U.S. a society that, by and large, identifies itself as religious. A 2008 Pew study states that 92% of Americans reported a belief in God or a universal spirit and that 82% of those reported that religion was either very important (56%) or somewhat important (26%) in their lives. An earlier study by Gallup in 1999 reported that 90% of Americans pray, with 75% of them reporting praying on a weekly basis (Hartwick, 2015, p. 59). Studies of public school teachers show similar data with regard to prayer and belief in God. A 2003 survey of Wisconsin public school teachers found that 90% indicated a belief in God and prayed to God or a higher being on a regular basis (p. 62) and believe those prayers to be “an important part of their professional life” (p. 68). Almost a third of those teachers agreed with the statement that “prayer prior to teaching helps me achieve a state of readiness, an openness to my students and to teachable moments” (p. 69). The study also found that “the stronger the teacher’s spiritual beliefs . . . the more profound influence the spiritual beliefs may have on how the teacher thinks and acts professionally” (p. 59). In all, those teachers “were more likely to believe they had been called by God to teach, prayer was important to their professional lives, and praying made them better teachers” (p. 70). Such findings about the religiosity or spirituality of public school teachers are corroborated by other researchers (Logan, 2015; White, 2010). Kimberly White’s qualitative study of six public school elementary teachers found that teachers’ religious beliefs “impact how they view students and how they structure social relationships between students and between themselves and the students” (White, 2010, p. 45). Students in White’s study who identified as Christian saw teaching as a way to witness God’s love—to “be a model of God’s light and love” to students and colleagues a “mirror to reflect God’s light’ ” (p. 46). Some of those teachers “connected mistakes and repentance to the Christian belief in forgiveness and redemption through Jesus Christ as dying to save people from their sins” (p. 49). Teachers “who believed in a dichotomy between the eternal consequences of heaven and hell were more likely to adopt authoritarian, teacher-directed methods of behavior modification” (p. 50).

PedaGod 119

Kimberly Logan’s (2015) research of teaching and religious beliefs with early childhood preservice teachers at a large public university in the U.S. Southeast reports that teachers with strong religious beliefs often spoke of teaching as a calling that “was influenced by God’s guidance” (p. 45). One teacher “spoke of her connection to God and ‘doing stuff for Him’ ” (p. 43). Several of the teachers “spoke of God wanting them to support their students and forge trusting relationships with them. Speaking to these issues, one of the preservice teachers noted she is “able to demonstrate God’s love through her relationships with students and other teachers” by using “the love that God has poured out on me” (pp. 46–47). That the public school teachers and preservice teachers—who are likely to teach in public schools—depicted in these studies find God to be a force in their professional thinking is of import and one the field is increasingly exploring. Of more interest to us here, however, are the possible ways in which our image of God as teacher impacts the thinking of the fields of education more broadly and teacher education specifically. In other words, and despite the fact that God or religion are not normally referenced in the literature on teachers and teaching, can we still recognize God’s methods in current educational practices? That White (2010), among others, found a correlation between godly teachers and those who teach in authoritarian, disciplinary ways seems a good place to begin, given the ubiquity of punishment and teaching as discipline in the Old Testament. In the current climate of no excuses and zero-tolerance educational practices and policies, we often see teachers who operate in God’s disciplinarian image: those who see their role, first and foremost, as establishing order within the classroom and punishing students who step out of line. Such a commitment is manifested explicitly in the military-like disciplinary procedures currently on the rise in some fastgrowing charter chains (Lack, 2011) as well as in the well-documented, widespread (ab)use of school suspensions in recent years (e.g., Skiba & Knesting, 2001). This latter phenomenon seems especially pertinent to our work here: it’s not just that teaching is so often equated with punishment (as it is in the Old Testament); it’s also the specific type of punishment used. Increasingly, teachers punish—and teach—as God so often did, through banishment by suspension and expulsion, exiling problematic (and disproportionately, black, brown, and disabled) students from the Edenic space of the rigorous, high-expectations classroom. Regardless of the type of pedagogical punishment used, teaching as punishment, in line with practices in the Old Testament, demands obedience at all cost. Think for example, of the emphasis on SLANTing and behavioral programming, where students’ every moment is disciplined and their bodies are made docile (Foucault, 1997) so that they might better learn. Such an orientation toward students presumes that they are always already fallen, as it were, that they enter the classroom as a behavioral problem to be addressed (solved?) through obedience or banishment.

120  PedaGod

The idea of banishment as punishment might gesture toward another aspect of contemporary teaching: the increased (and increasing) banishment of the teacher from the classroom. We note this positioning in relation to scripted, standardized curricula prominent across a diverse set of educational contexts: because designers of such curricula are increasingly removed from the classroom (as teacher autonomy is stripped away) and the community, the effect is one of appearance and absence. A curriculum is dropped into a classroom, announcing itself—I AM, it might say—but those best prepared to explain it (district-, state-, and national-level curriculum designers) are troublingly absent, leaving teachers and students to flounder on their own. The absence of curriculum designers would not be so much of a problem if the teacher could reshape the curriculum him/herself. In the advent of data-driven accountability, however, teachers are often expected to refrain from such modifications. Under this increasingly precarious and reduced role, the teacher (as historically conceived) has little alternative but to make him/herself absent, even when physically present and “teaching” students. Teaching as proxy and the role of proxies in education are not limited to the Hebrew Bible—quite the opposite. The recent excitement surrounding the “transformative” possibilities and proliferation of virtual and online education, especially on a massive scale (Guthrie, 2014) provides one example of how such teaching proxies enter the classroom. These digital programs operate under the assumption that new technologies (e.g., the Skype terminal and online portal), providing a proxy of a teacher rather than an actual in-person teacher, are not only useful but have become central to the project of education. This holds true of K–12 teaching and of teacher education, both of which are making increasing use of virtual education to instruct, graduate, and certify. While not digital, the Old Testament God nevertheless sent avatars of his own to teach in his stead. Often enough, these proxies are angels, as when God intervenes in the sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22) or when punishing the people of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19) or Egypt (Exodus 8–11). We might read these examples, simplistically perhaps, as God’s way of sometimes sending someone else to do his teacherly work. In other cases, God appears to Moses in the proxy form of a burning bush in Exodus 3, while He appears as a mysterious man who wrestles with Jacob in Genesis 32. It is this latter that is of particular interest as the mystery of this interaction pairs well with the mystification of education through proxies. “What is your name?” (Genesis 32:27) Jacob asks, only to receive not an answer but a blessing. ‘Who is teaching?’ is a question increasingly obscured in contemporary education; as proxies become the norm, critical questions like “Who decides what is taught?” and “Whose values and visions of teaching are being represented in our schools?” become difficult to ask, not so much because we don’t realize the value of such questions but because we don’t know who to ask. Instead of answers to such questions or revelations of the (wo)men behind the teaching curtain, students are increasingly blessed, as Jacob was, by proxy with the approval of certification and graduation.

PedaGod 121

We made much of the ubiquity of godly tests and testing in the Old Testament in an earlier chapter; this is, in part, because that frequency is curious to us but more so because tests are so numerous and prominent in teaching today.While many scholars have documented the proliferation of assessment of all forms and especially standardized testing (Council of the Great City Schools, 2015) in the advent of NCLB for its connection to teacher evaluation, accountability, and punishment (Ravitch, 2010), we want to reaffirm here that testing in teaching today, like in biblical times, produces, validates, and affirms as much as it disciplines. Like testing in today’s classrooms, discourses of reflection have long saturated the world of teacher education (e.g., Brookfield, 1995; Clift & Houston, 1990; Grimmett & Erickson, 1989; Korthagen & Kim, 2012; Zeichner & Liston, 2013). We are not suggesting that the prevalence and prominence of reflection in teacher education is due to God’s use of reflection as a teacher. Still, that God spent time reflecting on his practices early on as a teacher, makes for an interesting connection, possibly giving some credence to reflection not only as a necessary bread-and-butter element of teaching but also as an important—even godly—activity. While it is difficult to think of God as needing to reflect on his practice and having to amend—he is so often characterized as “omniscient” and “omnipotent”—but our earlier analysis of his use of reflection and willingness to change his mind demonstrates instances in which he does indeed regret his actions, recognizing them as mistakes. We may recall, for example, the story of Noah and the Flood. God shows not just that he is a merciful teacher but that he is willing to acknowledge the limitations of his teaching and negotiate their outcomes. Though the stakes attached to teachers’ mistakes aren’t biblically high, they nevertheless can have violent consequences for students, as some have noted (Butler, 2010; Zembylas, 2015). God then could act as one teacherly model for what it might mean to reflect on the violence of pedagogy and change course, hopefully—though not always— for the better. But God’s reflections also point to other aspects of teaching: its complexity and impossibility. There seem to be analogous questions related to the tension between God as teacher and God as, well, God: how can a divine being make mistakes? Why would an omniscient God need to reflect on his actions, to doubt himself, or change his mind? That this contradiction, wherein teachers are simultaneously teachers and students—that is, students of their own education by learning from and reflecting on it—is laid out first, at least in the Western tradition, in the Old Testament. God’s dilemmas of how to convey his messages to his students and assessing whether his pedagogical means justify his pedagogical ends—indeed, whether what one teaches in fact promotes or subverts the intended lesson, assuming a lesson is ever learned as intended—help illustrate to us not only the difficulty of teaching but possibly, as Freud more recently suggested, also the very impossibilities, holy or not, underlying teaching as a profession (Britzman, 2009).

122  PedaGod

The following chapter takes up the impossibility of teaching as related to strands of eschatological thinking prevalent in recent reform efforts.

Notes 1 This chapter was coauthored with Scott Jarvie, doctoral student at Michigan State University. We would like to thank Margaret Crocco for her comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. 2 Although the Bible refers to God both in the singular and plural and as masculine and feminine at the same time, we follow tradition here and refer to God in the masculine form. 3 Biblical scholars (e.g., Friedman, 2005) have long determined that the two different versions are not necessarily contradictory but, rather, the consequence of the Bible being a compilation of several textual versions formed into the Bible we know today. These different versions often recount the same events differently—as is the case in the two stories of creation. Our reading of the Bible uses the entire biblical text, as we currently know it, as one, continuous text. 4 The words “good and evil” are inaccurate translations of the Hebrew “good and bad,” which in the original, most probably refer to the tree rather than to knowledge itself. 5 This early in his education, Abraham was still called Abram, his original birth name. The “H,” which stands for “Hamon”—multitude, in English—and signifies him as a father of a multitude of nations, was added later in the context of the covenant with God. For consistency, however, we use the names Abraham and Sarah (initially called Sarai) throughout. 6 The “place” is commonly identified as Mount Moriah, where the God’s temple in Jerusalem was subsequently built and where the mosques of Omar and Al-Aqsa currently stand. 7 Removing someone from his or her home or land—a form of exile and banishment— was also used by God to enable and protect (Zornberg, 1995). Abraham was told to leave his homeland to begin a new life with God in a land that he will show him (Canaan), and Hagar was sent into the desert (and protected by God during her journey) to start a new life away from Sarah. Using this positive concept of exile, God, as a teacher, demonstrates how a pedagogical tool can be used differently for different purposes.

References Britzman, D. P. (2009). The very thought of education: Psychoanalysis and the impossible professions. Albany, NY: SUNNY Press. Brookfield, S. D. (1995). Becoming a critically reflective teacher. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Butler, J. (2010). Frames of war. New York:Verso Books. Clift, R. T., & Houston, R. W. (1990). Encouraging reflective practice in education: An analysis of issues and programs. New York: Teachers College Press. Council of the Great City Schools. (2015). Student testing in America’s great city schools: An inventory and preliminary analysis. Washington. Retrieved from http://www.cgcs.org/ cms/lib/DC00001581/Centricity/Domain/87/Testing%20Report.pdf Dana, N. F. (1995). Action research, school change, and the silencing of teacher voice. Action in Teacher Education, 16(4), 59–70. doi:10.1080/01626620.1995.10463219 Foucault, M. (1997). Discipline and punish:The birth of the prison. New York:Vintage. Friedman, R. E. (2005). The Bible with sources revealed: A new view into the five books of Moses. New York and San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.

PedaGod 123 Goodson, I. F. (1991). Sponsoring the teacher’s voice:Teachers’ lives and teacher development. Cambridge Journal of Education, 21(1), 35–45. doi:10.1080/0305764910210104 Grimmett, P. P., & Erickson, G. C. (1989). Reflection in teacher education. New York: Teachers College Press. Guthrie, D. (2014, March 18). The real disrupters: The innovators who are truly transforming education. Retrieved December 18, 2015, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/doug guthrie/2014/03/18/the-real-disrupters-the-innovators-who-are-truly-transformingeducation/ Hartwick, J. (2015). Teacher prayerfulness: Identifying public school teachers who connect their spiritual and religious lives to their professional lives. Religion & Education, 42(1), 54–80. Kass, L. R. (2003). The beginning of wisdom: Reading Genesis. New York: Free Press. Kirk, D., & MacDonald, D. (2001). Teacher voice and ownership of curriculum change. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 33(5), 551–557. doi:10.1080/00220270010016874 Korthagen, F. A. J., & Kim, Y. A. (2012). Teaching and learning from within: A core reflection approach to quality and inspiration in education. New York: Routledge. Lack, B. (2011). Anti-Democratic militaristic education: An overview and critical analysis of KIPP Schools. Counterpoints, 402, 65–90. Logan, K. (2015). Unpacking narratives of calling and purpose in teaching. In J. Hauver James, S. Schweber, R. Kunzman, K. C. Barton, & K. Logan (Eds.), Religion in the classroom: Dilemmas for democratic education (pp. 39–52). New York: Routledge. Noddings, N. (1993). Educating for intelligent belief or unbelief. New York: Teachers College Press. Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. (2008). Retrieved from http://religions.pew forum.org/pdf/report-religious-landscape-study-full.pdf Ravitch, D. (2010). The death and life of the great American school system: How testing and choice are undermining education. New York: Basic Books. Skiba, R. J., & Knesting, K. (2001). Zero tolerance, zero evidence: An analysis of school disciplinary practice. Innovative Practices for Leadership Learning, 92, 17–43. White, K. (2010). Asking sacred questions: Understanding religion’s impact on teacher belief and action. Religion & Education, 37, 40–59. Zeichner, K. M., & Liston, D. P. (2013). Reflective teaching: An introduction (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. Zembylas, M. (2015). “Pedagogy of discomfort” and its ethical implications: The tensions of ethical violence in social justice education. Ethics and Education, 10(2), 163–174. http://doi.org/10.1080/17449642.2015.1039274 Zornberg, A. G. (1995). Genesis: The beginning of desire. Philadelphia and Jerusalem: The Jewish Publication Society.

7 Teaching as Revelation

I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. The heavens receded like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. (Revelation 6:12–14, NSV) [The Twelve] arrived in a high-strung state of eschatological expectation, looking for the Parousia, the final, ultimate appearance of the Risen One . . . at that time . . . the end-time events had already begun. (Lohfink, 2012, p. 303) Teachers are no longer seen as a crucial civic and intellectual resource but as commodities and low-skilled technicians (Giroux, 2012, p. 62)

Maria Santos de Barona, dean of the College of Education at Purdue University had a unique opportunity in May of 2015. At a meeting of the trustees of the university she had the grim task of explaining the wholesale collapse of undergraduate enrollment in the College of Education—down a third over the course of five years—to, many would argue, the architect of that collapse, former governor and current president of the university, Mitch Daniels. Daniels had presided over, in his time at the helm of the state, the explosion of ‘school reform’ initiatives including massive voucher expansion, the adoption of punitive teacher accountability measures, and salary freezes that coupled with the rhetorical flourishes on which such ‘reform’ initiatives relied (the inherent and often explicit singling out of teachers as lazy, uncaring, underqualified, and easily replaceable) would, Santos de Barona implied, very soon bring the profession of teaching to an end. She noted that, in addition to Purdue, Ball State University had seen its enrollment drop by nearly half; teacher education in the state, in essence, had been put on life support. Mike Pence, Daniels’s successor in the governor’s mansion, it was understood, was standing at the bedside, pillow at the ready, set to finish

Teaching as Revelation 125

the job (Bangert, 2015).The meeting was, from the standpoint of a longtime educator like Santos de Barona, perhaps meant to elicit a particular response from the trustees just as much as it was probably meant to signal a crisis to the media and citizens of the state. The dean, in other words, was teaching and relying through numbers on a long-standing trope of the educational establishment: the teachable moment. In this construction, lessons aim at producing revelation in students, such that learning is clear, even visible in the eyes and the very posture of the learner—more on that in a moment. But suffice to say that the double here is the sense of teacher education (and public education just generally) in the state of Indiana and beyond as nearing the eschaton: the end-time events—in massive under enrollment, in teacher shortage, in the wholesale defunding of public schools—have begun (Kumashiro, 2012; Ravitch, 2013; Watkins, 2012). We have, as yet, spent a great deal of time establishing the theoretical, historical, and curricular underpinnings for our argument that education in the United States is, at base, a religious pursuit. And though the manifestations of that religiosity continue to evolve with the linguistic, policy, and legal discourses present in the country, we find that, of late, particular orientations to teachers and teaching have surfaced unique Christian strands of understanding that are worth exploring further. While the last two chapters have examined implications of pedagogical orientations centered on some certain visions of God in the world, this chapter looks at two current trends tied to revelation and Revelation. Given that we’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about the beginning, in Genesis, it’s likely fitting to move then to the presumption of an end in Revelation. In any event, the first strand of the chapter examines the long-standing role of teachers as bringers of knowledge, as focused through the idea of ‘teachable moments.’The rhetoric and literature around object lessons and planning processes in teaching and teacher education suggest that there are moments of revelation that occur in the classroom, if it is properly structured, through which students learn . . . something. This focus on the revelatory—the a-ha moment—has a long tradition in Christian preaching and the preaching that became teaching. Our analysis tarries briefly with the etymological (revelation and its religious linguistic roots) but then shifts to the larger argument that through school (as it is, of course, compulsory) alone in society must come revelatory moments. They are in essence, mediated by attendance in the church of knowledge and brought forth by pedagogues with an ability to read the signs (standards, curricula, test data, IEPs, etc.) at the heart of the prophesy. Beyond this, however, we move in a second direction to understand the use of apocalyptic language in recent and ongoing reform rhetoric around schooling as in this example. It is the case that eschatological language has become a part of the language of education more recently, across the political aisle, as it were (public schooling as we know it is being destroyed; we are losing generations of students, etc.). And though lamentations of the failures in schooling have been a part of the American educational tradition since,

126  Teaching as Revelation

well, the beginning of formal schooling (e.g., Herbst, 1989; Kaestle, 1983), the character of the language has shifted in noticeable ways of late. Much of this is tied to moves in the political sphere that effectively (sought to) undermine what has become understood as ‘traditional’ public education. The disruptions of charter schooling, voucher initiatives, and the decline of teacher unionization (and the power of remaining unions broadly) have led observers, casual and interested, to foresee as if Hoseanic prophets of doom, the ending of education ‘as we know it.’ And while we’d happily trouble the essentialist ‘we’ here—as well as the notion that there was ever even a static sense of education in the public in American history, as if indeed, that could even be possible—the uptake of doomsaying strikes us as unique and worth encountering further. Some of this use of crisis language (Klein, 2007) has been analyzed as applied to various policy documents (A Nation at Risk, Johnny Can’t Read, No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top) but never much for its religious undercurrents. We find this particularly odd given the uniquely Christian cant of most of the proponents of the policies that led up to and came out of such documents; in particular very specific understandings of Evangelical end-times language (and its uses) produce certain movements to engage with educational policy prerogatives.This chapter seeks to reconnect the revelations of ‘failing’ schools and teachers to the work that the book of Revelation does for certain members of Christian coalitions who see the destruction of government schools as necessary for the production of the right kind of citizen through schooling.To begin, we return to the classroom, where the compulsion for teachers is to sound for the hidden depths of their pupils.

Ex-Stasis, Routinization, and the Power of the Revelatory Jim Burke, a prominent teacher-scholar in English education, writes of teachable moments in this way: “in the course of the writing process, moments arise when we should stop and teach student writers what they next need to know” (2007, p. 163). And while we might make hay of the notion that time can be chunked into moments—are the rest of the collection of moments of a given school day not, by contrast, teachable? What, in the end, makes a moment a moment rather than just time passing? Are there unteachable moments? We choose, at least for now, to note that the larger rhetorical move is tied into a long tradition in teacher education that suggests that moments—a-ha moments as they’re often called (e.g., Ballenger, 2009; Goldstein, 2005; Parker-Gibson, 2008)—are the bailiwick of good teachers. The story of Tia Begay, from National Public Radio’s (NPR’s) Morning Edition is emblematic of the concept. Interviewer Claudio Sanchez (2015), in a report about Begay’s Navajo heritage and its role in her teaching, notes that in his time in her classroom, he is able to watch “the proverbial lightbulb

Teaching as Revelation 127

go on in a child’s head, like this morning when one of her students who is struggling with English blurted out, ‘We need to use textual evidence.’ ”We’ll linger only briefly over the meaning here of proverbial—in the Oxford English Dictionary, of course, the first definition is “of the nature of a proverb”— though we think it’s useful to note that the usage likely intended by the reporter is tied to the a-ha moment occurring in the classroom as being “something so well known” as to be “common” or “stereotypical.” Proverbs being so generally well-known as to be common or stereotypical suggests support for our sense of the Bible as primary teaching text (see Chapter 3). The point here, though, is that the revelatory moment, when kids are known to have learned something, to have demonstrated that learning in measurable or cognizable ways, is written into our very understanding of what it means to teach and be a teacher. It’s worth clearing some ground away here around the meaning of revelation as well. In the Oxford English Dictionary, it has come to signify “the disclosure or communication of knowledge, instructions, etc.” but particularly “by divine or supernatural means.” More to the point, though, is the second meaning offered: “an instance or experience of . . . something disclosed or communicated by divine or supernatural means.”This focus on the instant— the moment, say—brings us back to an important point here: this is not entirely new knowledge for the student; rather, it’s the communication (as in the case of Mrs. Begay’s student) of knowledge that has been, finally and in a new (divine) light, connected back to the supernatural. That is, if we’re to understand teachers as Christ figures in American schools, an argument we have made elsewhere (see Chapter 5), then the notion that revelatory moments of divine intervention through the work of teachers come to be fetishized makes a great deal of sense. It’s interesting to note that the intent of the ‘teachable moment’ upon which the revelatory relies suggests that the function of a good teacher, one who takes advantage of this common and necessary mode of instruction, is really to teach a moment rather than to teach students. That is, the central role of teaching can really be understood as the mastery of time through which students can be reached, and while we’ve done a bit of work around time and the structuring of student bodies in classrooms already (Chapter 2), we wish to turn differently to understandings of the ecstatic and the routine, for what is more routine than the school day of a child (and her teachers)? The point, we think, of teachable moments, the promise of their revelation, lies in the breaking of routine. The trouble, of course, becomes the idea that most of what happens in schools has to necessarily be reduced to unteachable strands of time, interrupted periodically (presumably more often by better teachers) by moments out of time where the ecstatic, the ex-stasis of learning, can be seen to occur. From the Greek, where ek means ‘out’ and stasis roughly means ‘a stand,’ the notion of ecstasy is an experience, for Wexler (2013), of standing outside of the self. It is, in essence, an out-of-body experience. Given the long-standing

128  Teaching as Revelation

focus of schooling on control over the body, we can understand the revelatory moments of teaching that occur, those about which we are to be ecstatic as teachers, as instances where students transcend their weak, problematic, and lined-up, SLANTing bodies and demonstrate real learning. This break from the routine, and here we rely a great deal on Wexler, who drawing from both Durkheim and Weber, suggests the problematic nature of the “ ‘routinization of charisma’ that comes to secularize the “ecstatic experience . . . at the root core of religious life” (p. 43). Resacralization, for Wexler, is the move away from the routinized fall from grace, as it were, in lives seeking ecstasy through “supra-mundane . . . instrumental” activities like shopping (p. 43). A resacralized world, and in his case, social science research, would take it as a mission to think about how “remysticization in particular promise[s] a reversal of the routinization of ecstasy” (p. 44).We’re ambivalent regarding the mission of this last point but still wish to engage with a conceptualization that sees education as the ultimate expression of the kind of interplay between sacralization and secularization that comes through the routinization of charisma and the seeking for out-of-timeness that comes with the revelatory. Charisma, and in particular its association with charismatic belief, becomes important here. Wexler pulls from Weber in particular to note that one concern in a secularized world1 is the loss of the “energizing archaic life force of religion, which runs from magic through the organized religions of salvation” whereby the “now famous ‘charisma,’ has dried up, or at least disappeared from the public arena” (p. 8). One of the hallmarks of the remaining magical and energizing outbursts of religion comes in the form of charismatic belief, manifest often but not only in the ecstasy of speaking in tongues. Most often affiliated with Protestant (and particularly evangelical and fundamentalist) belief, there was even still a robust charismatic movement among Catholics in the middle of the 20th century.We’re of two minds about whether this was a sudden coalescence of the Spirit or perhaps a memetic confluence (Zipes, 2006) of competitive forces pushing for the harvesting of souls. It likely little matters. The moment of the ek-static that arises through the experience of speaking in tongues aligns neatly with Asad’s (2003) concern that secularism “holds out the problematic promise that the passions can ultimately be mastered by reason through systematic observation and interpretation” (p. 69). Speaking in tongues, in a moment out of time, has come in any number of American (and global) churches to signify the ultimate in profound religious experience. An observer can readily discern that what is ‘said’ in the glossolalic trance, amid the charisma of a religious moment, may or may not make any sense from the outside. The language itself is of less concern in terms of its signifying anything beyond gibberish to the outsider; the point is the commune with the divine; still it’s an experience in a moment, out of time, where the ecstatic of the religious is possible. How better to understand, then, a student with the lightbulb going off (touched by the light—a very Pentecostal sentiment after all),

Teaching as Revelation 129

speaking the, let’s say, gibberish language of the Common Core in a classroom? Internal to the space of education, and particularly internal to a certain kind of standardization movement, the notion that kids would blurt out “we need to cite textual evidence” could be taken as a kind of success. But of course the utterance is never fully of its own accord, as Bakhtin (1994) has illustrated. Rather, the student, in the ecstasy of the teachable moment, comes to speak in the tongues of acceptable discourse, much as his/her peer might do shaking in front of an altar, backed by a cross on a Sunday. Because of course, as with our student in Mrs. Begay’s room, the point isn’t actually necessarily that evidence is or will be cited but that the meta-language parroted directly from standards material about the process comes out. We don’t know, in that moment, if the student actually cites any evidence; the citing of the need to cite is the point. Our student has become a glossolalist of a tongue that need not make sense in any space beyond the moment of the expostulation. Another word for the ecstasy of the teachable moment, as the light goes off, would be an epiphany, which Asad (2003) sees as, at least in the 20th (and presumably the 21st) century, “the sudden showing forth of the spiritual in the actual” (p. 53).This bursting out of the magic of charisma, in a supposedly secularized world, comes primarily because “the sacred, [mis]constituted by anthropologists and then taken over by theologians, became a universal quality hidden in things and an objective limit to mundane action” (p. 33). Good teachers, in essence, produce breaks in the mundanity (inanity?) of daily time such that the sacred reemerges as possible again in the schooled space. Given that the long history of education in America has tied teachers to the preaching role, it comes as little surprise that the expectation (indeed the proverbial) is that educators produce the conditions for a return, albeit briefly, to the possibility of sacred time in the classroom. Foucault (1990) notes that for the Greeks, pleasure, as much as it was tied to control and a kind of acetic ideal, was linked particularly to “the opportune time, the kairos” (p. 157). Indeed “one of the essential aspects of the virtue of prudence” was tied to “ ‘the politics of timeliness’ in the different domains—whether this involved the city or the individual, the body or the soul—where it was important to seize the kairos” (p. 58). The kairotic has been taken up by rhetoric as the point at which action becomes possible (roughly) but has also taken on Christian religious significance as much as anything for the conflation of its Greek characters as a symbol for early believers (Burke, 2012). More relevant for our purposes here, however, is that the denotation of difference between chronological (Chronos), or linear lived and routinized time, from felt, nonlinear and revelatory God’s time (Kairos) has emerged as a rough way to understand the spaces of possibility where the sacred bursts out. In this sense, then, teachers can be understood as immersed in a discourse that privileges the construction of, and onus on, moments of revelation in which learning of some kind or another can be said to be observable, even if unquantifiable. That there is a focus on the

130  Teaching as Revelation

moment, as a space in time, through which teaching happens, makes sense largely when read through the scrim of a religious understanding of how the sacred bursts out. Teachers, it is thought, can produce these moments of grace. Indeed it’s one of the few things that the general public knows that teachers can do, other than—in the reform rhetoric of the last 20-odd years of so—fail.

Revelation and the Eschaton in/as Education Lohfink (2012), in his larger project trying to contextualize the Christ through the Gospels, notes a moment in Mark (10:18) where [Jesus] “corrects someone who calls him ‘good teacher’: ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone’ ” (p. 236). One way to think about this is in the immediate context of the statement. Lohfink suggests that this is Jesus’s way of suggesting that those around him have still failed to realize his significance, indeed his very divinity. Thus, he rebukes them for thinking that he is (a) merely a teacher and (b) singularly human in his capacity to teach. From our standpoint, however, this suggests a contemporary link to the fallenness of the teaching profession. If even Jesus, the first teacher of Christianity, was not ‘good’ in his craft, then what hope do latter-day expositors have? This is perhaps a useful and different way of understanding Britzman’s (2009) reframing of the Freudian claim that education is an impossible profession. She suggests that: What may be most impossible is the education of the impossible professions, particularly as the transference to education, because those who carry out the education of others convey both the experience of their own education and their experience of what is impossible in the profession itself. (p. 20) In a similar vein, Labaree (2010), writing (and rewriting) about the conflicting goals of the American educational system, notes that “as savior and whipping boy” (as lamb and scapegoat, perhaps) “education as the answer to social problems is an indispensable political tool” (p. 232) for “at worst, we can always blame schools for getting it wrong and then demand that they redouble their efforts to reform themselves in order to reform society” (p. 234). That such reform is ontologically impossible (given the conflicting demands placed on schools) matters very little because ultimately “we hold the school system responsible for expressing our values rather than for actually realizing them in practice” (p. 232). It’s not a far leap, then, to consider this in light of recent surveys of teacher satisfaction, noting the toll that—at least in a correlative sense—reformbased accountability movements have taken on teacher efficacy as well as teacher satisfaction. The Metlife Survey of the American Teacher (2012)2

Teaching as Revelation 131

noted that job satisfaction had plunged 23% over the course of just four years from 2008 to 2012.3 Satisfaction tended to be lowest among experienced educators who, it would seem, were privy to the history of the profession and the changing orientation toward a focus on the lack of ‘good’ teachers systemwide. At the same time teacher stress increased exponentially. The pressure on the school system, and teachers particularly, to save students but also serve as a scapegoat for societal anxieties seems to increasingly be coming to bear on teachers themselves. More recent surveys of teachers suggest differently complex reads of the profession, including the damaging effect of “policies created by non-teachers” as well as issues surrounding a focus on standardized testing in education generally (Moeny, 2015).4 One point to make is that generally speaking, the conditions built around the profession of teaching (through policy broadly), particularly by non-teachers (with specific orientations to the teaching profession), are perhaps making teaching itself all the more impossible. One reason for that, we think, is that the drivers of policy currently have a unique eschatological epistemological understanding of not only education but of teachers; that is, if even Jesus was not a good teacher by his own lights, then no mere human teacher could possibly be good either. Given that paradigm, a general stance that schools and teachers are failing (and indeed must fail) makes a great deal of sense. Failure is human, but it is particularly the work of teachers; given the words of Jesus, they may not even be good themselves. The question then becomes one of reform or, more probably, destruction. Connolly (2008) notes that “the right leg of the evangelical movement today is joined at the hip to the left leg of the capitalist juggernaut” (p. 44). This is a particularly illustrative metaphor for the kind of right/left junction that has arisen in the educational sphere around the neoliberal certainty behind the value of competition (from charter schools but also tax credits and vouchers) as it stands in education. Ravitch (2010) writes of the “billionaire boys club” (p. 195) by way of explaining the gathered forces across the political spectrum from Gates to Walton citing the need for market disruption in the ‘monopoly’ of education. Missing in Ravitch’s analysis is the way in which powerful religious forces on the right have threaded their way throughout the kinds of market analyses made from think tanks in particular (but not only there) of late in support of educational reform. The trick, of course, is that educational reform as it is understood today has come through the long coalescence of a Protestant partnership begun (in fitful stops and starts) in the courts (DelFattore, 2004) aimed at the “return” of “God to all of America’s public institutions” (Robinson & Lugg, 2012, p. 230). Kohn (2012) argues that the ultimate goal, the teleology of this movement is not the reform of public education but rather its destruction for “public education” in the view of current reformers “is not something to be made better; it is something from which we need to be freed” (p. 84). In that context then, it’s useful to recall that the beginning of the marketization movement came through “protestant conservatives’ efforts to avoid desegregation and

132  Teaching as Revelation

from the loss of a federal tax exemption by conservative, segregated Protestant academies during the 1970s and 1980s” (Robinson & Lugg, 2012, p. 230). And while we might spend more time thinking about how critical race theory and the notion of interest convergence (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001) might explain the eagerness with which so-called secular leftists like, say, Gates or Zuckerberg, have signed on to this project of religious fatalism, we choose instead to dig in around the kinds of linguistic “Christian-capital assemblages” (Connolly, 2008, p. 13) that have come to make Revelationstyle eschatological language a necessary part of conversations around education in America. Carroll (2004) writes that “despite our much vaunted separation of church and state, America has always had a quasi-religious understanding of itself ” (p.7). And while we might take issue with an essentialist notion of identity whereby a personified America can have any (and only one even) sense of itself, and further while this statement might seem more or less clear given the larger project of this book, we note it here in particular because Carroll, a columnist with the Boston Globe and former Catholic priest is writing in the context of a collection of articles around and about the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent wars waged by the United States in the Middle East. The departure point for Carroll is the blithe verbiage by then President Bush who called for a ‘crusade’ against evil in the Middle East. It’s easy enough at this point to editorialize as to the effects (and effectiveness) of this and any crusade, but mostly we point back to the larger theological implications for (some) evangelical Protestants in the mold of politicians like the former president. There is a particular focus in a great many Christian denominations on the end times. And while all religions have something to say about the ways in which the ultimate struggle between good and evil might end, in an American context, there is a particular flavor tied to the geographical Middle East that says that the eschaton can only come when the Jewish people have full control of Jerusalem. That a Christian nation might see itself at war with a population identified broadly (and incorrectly) as Muslim in and around the Promised Land of Israel, then, suggests an earthly battle meant to bring about the final reckoning. For evangelical Christians, in a great many senses, the Parousia has already begun, indeed is always beginning. Such a worldview is not, to our mind, right or wrong; rather, it just is. But what of schooling in all of this? When thinking of Connolly’s assemblages of Christian capital, it’s important to note that the ongoing reform moment as it is continually reconstructed, is uniquely market based. That is, for the first time in American educational history, the prevailing logic across the political spectrum from actors interested in educational ‘reform’ has coalesced around the value of competition for, as it were, raising all boats. This ethos, was noted by Apple (1990) in a shift from citizens participating in the educational project collectively to consumers choosing products (schools) from among many (not to say good) options. This move has come through long-standing forays from the political right assailing so-called government

Teaching as Revelation 133

schools (public schools) for their inherent collectivity—tantamount to Marxism—as well as their eventual perception as godless spaces due to later court cases; of late it has been combined with an emergent though flawed (see Lepore, 2014) move imported from business circles toward creative destruction. It’s not so much that conservative and religious actors in the United States believe that for something to be improved, it must be destroyed, but that such an ethos has seeped into the larger zeitgeist such that even neoliberal, nominally leftist policy makers can see Hurricane Katrina, say, as an opportunity to, from the flood, wholly remake a school system (see Buras, 2014; Klein, 2007). The need to destroy government schooling, through market instruments, in other words, has become the gospel of educational reform across the political aisle and the general sense is that school systems must be destroyed, plowed under, the earth salted (‘Will you save the system if I can find only 50 good schools? . . . 10?’) for anything of use to come about.Teachers, of course, are caught in the middle of all of this, made instruments in the argument, as always already failed, regardless of what their actual evaluations from principals or peers might say and particularly if they are in any way affiliated with a union. The completion of the discourse, now, has been an emergent rhetoric from critical theorists sounding the alarm about the destruction of the American school system as we know it (e.g., Ravitch, 2010). The end times are here, brought on by policy and now prophesied by nearly anyone involved in education. Some of this is despair, but most of it is an issue of discourse, in this case, of R/revelation. Spong (1992) makes the point that “a revelation of God must be received or it ceases to be revelatory” (p. 146). For a great many conservative Protestants, then, the book of Revelation has been received and remains revelatory. Our work here, of course, isn’t about the end of the world but rather the kinds of discourses that, unsurprisingly when you attend to the Christian assemblages that arise around educational policy in America, would transfer end-times thinking and rhetoric over to other institutions. “Knowledge” for Foucault (1972) “is defined by the possibilities of use and appropriation offered by discourse” (p. 183). “Discursive relations” then are “not . . . internal to discourse” but “offer it objects of which it can speak, or rather they determine the group of relations that discourse must establish in order to speak of this or that object” (p. 46). When speaking of, when considering, the object of public education, then, it makes sense that much of what leaders (and followers) on the religious right might offer as comprehensible knowledge is the sense that absent a God (who has been litigated out of the space by the courts) all that remains is for the ultimate destruction of public schooling. This is not, as it’s often considered, feckless but rather an extension of discourse—all that to which our minds have access (Fendler, 2010)—that sees the signs of the eschaton everywhere. When one thinks of life as a Manichean battle all the time, in the midst of parousia, it makes a great deal of sense to transfer that discourse to all subsequent battles along the way. Indeed it positions everything as a battle. That we are in the midst

134  Teaching as Revelation

of a potential collapse of public education, reformist and neoliberal intentionality is part of the discursive formation that is a Revelation approach to the world, to public policy, and ultimately to education. Institutions, for Foucault, roughly, filter ideologies that make certain discourses im/possible. That religious institutions informing certain discourses might beget subjects (who are at the same time begetting those institutions as both effects and causes themselves) who see themselves as “persecuted unless they are thoroughly in power” (Connolly, 2008, p. 44) makes a great deal of sense in this light. The way toward power, ultimately, is through the occupation of space amid the end of times; it’s not that evangelicalism sees the downfall of public schooling in America as a sign of the coming of Christ but, rather, that the eschatological discursive formation makes solutions that rely on the triggering of end times in institutions feel comfortable, right, even divine.

More Will Be Revealed We conclude here thinking about a different, though common, version of revelation as it is constructed in much of teaching (and the ways in which we teach teaching). That is the sense of revealing, for students, knowledge. Given our argument that teaching is steeped deeply in religious sentiment and practice, it ought not surprise the reader to find that much of what we engage here has biblical origins. In particular we can think about the narrative of Saul, knocked from his horse on the way to Damascus, faced for the first time with the true power of the Lord where, in Acts 9:18, “the scales fell” from his eyes, and he sought conversion and baptism and emerged the epistolary Paul of history. This, to be brief, is often how teaching is constructed by and for teachers. Though a great deal of work is done in the name of thinking through the implications of, say, a Freirean (1970) approach to teaching, in contrast to more didactic banking methods of instruction, the central notion of education (and indeed of curriculum as a field) is that students come to school to learn (things, processes, discipline, etc.). This is not, by the by, a bad thing. Inherent in that assumption, though, is a sense that teachers, broadly speaking, have knowledge of value that can be brought to students. We don’t see this as a critique of teaching generally, nor as a negation of such approaches that seek to draw upon student and family experiences (e.g., Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti, 2005; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Paris, 2011; Paris & Alim, 2014) to connect, for example, school literacies with home literacies. Rather there is a general sense that in going to school, students will, well, learn. And integral in that process, at least until recent iterations of online schooling have emerged, was the teacher as arbiter of knowledge. Certainly more progressive approaches to education, as noted, shy away from the sense of teacher as sole bringer of knowledge but even as a mere broker of, say, the kinds of scripted curricula handed out to a great many teachers in schools today, the educator in the room is still setting the agenda and doling out access

Teaching as Revelation 135

to concepts, while students participate in the process to greater or lesser degrees. We’re reminded, then, of the dual meanings of revelation as both “a source of enlightenment” and “the disclosure or exposure by a person of something previously unknown or kept secret; an instance of this; a fact which has been disclosed.” Given how often classrooms are reduced to the memorization of facts (particularly but not only, say, in biology or social studies), it makes sense to think of the educative process as very much tied into the revealing of the previously unknown as revelation. A distinct, though related, point has to do with the sense of reverence built into the (any) given curriculum in a school. Especially as teachers are increasingly tied to scopes and sequences that are linked to standards that are measured by tests, the feedback loop here gets tighter. As such, the tendency to rely on (holy) texts that are approved by the administration, as well as the state, and ultimately by whatever test maker has a contract in the area, increases exponentially. The sense of knowledge, then, as fixed and to be revealed, is heightened to an understanding of that which happens in the classroom as sacred. What we mean by this is not that God is hidden in the machine (though we think he is in so many ways) but that any deviation from the script, from the curriculum of facts, can bear a severe penalty. This is why, often enough, we hear teachers lament all that they must cover by the end of a given period, or day, or year; this lament is often used as justification to cut off student discussion, or to postpone pedagogical innovations, or really, to excuse the lack of creativity in a given classroom. We want to be clear: we don’t think teachers are being disingenuous here; we’re just suggesting that they’re responding quite rationally to pressures around what counts and how they will be counted upon, or discounted, come time for formal evaluations. The secret of the knowledge the teacher holds lies in the sense that students come without the knowledge that they need, and particularly of late, that knowledge will be found through the revelation of enlightenment made through study materials provided by the Pearsons of the world. In Matthew 10:26 we have Jesus reminding his disciples that they need not fear the unknown for “there is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known.” This promise is, in some sense, the same one that teachers make to their students at the beginning of every school year. They do not have the key to all knowledge, but certainly they have the key to the kind of knowledge, revealed over time through lesson, unit, and course plans, necessary to turn lowly second graders into lofty third graders. The revelation of learning is precisely what we value in the educative experiment, of course. And while queer scholars (e.g., Sedgwick, 2003) make note of the problematic that is the hermeneutics of exposure’s “infinite reservoir of naiveté in those who make up the audience for these unveilings” (p. 141), we wish only to make note of the constant role of teachers, required to reveal, in a space rife with knowledge made sacred (standards, as doctrinal, really) and forced to toil amid the end times of their own profession.

136  Teaching as Revelation

Notes 1 We think of ‘secularized’ in this space not to mean that religion has been removed from spaces, shoved in some existential closet, as it were. Rather, and following Wexler (2013), we’re taken by the notion that because religion is not much dealt with (anymore) in social science research—except perhaps as historical remnant—the understanding that spaces and public schools in particular have been secularized allows for a movement of research that resacralizes—the idea being not that we’re finding religion anew but that we’re finally attending to it again in how it manifests, perhaps differently, than in the past. Butler (1990) and Foucault (1980) both write of the ways in which the juridical not only produces as it restricts (in and through discourse) but also conceals itself in the very production of its effects. In that sense, the religious here can be thought of as concealing itself just as it conditions our possible understanding of the secular as such. 2 See https://www.metlife.com/assets/cao/foundation/MetLife-Teacher-Survey2012.pdf. 3 There are mitigating factors here in that the measure was pegged at ‘very satisfied.’ As well, teacher satisfaction was at its lowest, based on the historical data available through Metlife in 1986 (at 33%). The general trend, however, is worth following as satisfaction rose through the mid 1990s, peaked in 2008, and plunged thereafter. This roughly corresponds with the advent of value-added (VAM) measurement, which sought (aided under the auspices of policies pushed through the Race to the Top initiative in the Obama administration) to evaluate teacher performance through student test scores; policy moved in a direction, generally, that could be read as hostile to teachers under the assumption that prior evaluation systems failed to weed out vast numbers of failing and failed teachers. When VAM measures still didn’t surface massive teacher cadres to scapegoat, the narrative of failed teaching didn’t go away, however, a situation we attribute to deeper narratives about the impossibility of the work itself—the fallenness of teaching and teachers writ large. 4 See http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_now/2015/05/surveys-teachers-un derappreciated-but-satisfied-with-their-work-mostly.html.

References Apple, M. W. (1990). Ideology and curriculum (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. Asad, T. (2003). Formations of the secular: Christianity, Islam, modernity. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Bakhtin, M. (1994). Social heteroglossia. In P. Morris (Ed.), The Bakhtinian reader: Selected writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev,Voloshinov (pp. 15–17; 73–87). London: Edward Arnold. Ballenger, C. (2009). Puzzling moments, teachable moments: Practicing teacher research in urban classrooms. New York: Teachers College Press. Bangert, D. (May, 27th, 2015). Awkward . . . Ed reform called out at Purdue. Lafayette Journal & Courier. Retrieved from http://www.jconline.com/story/opinion/columnists/ dave-bangert/2015/05/27/bangert-awkward-ed-reform-called-purdue/28031101/ Britzman, D. P. (2009). The very thought of education: Psychoanalysis and the impossible professions. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Buras, K. L. (2014). Charter schools, race, and urban space: Where the market meets grassroots resistance. New York: Routledge. Burke, K. J. (2007). The English teacher’s companion: A complete guide to classroom, curriculum, and the profession (3rd ed.). New York: Heinemann. Burke, K. J. (2012). A space apart: Kairos and masculine possibility in retreats of adolescents. Journal of Men, Masculinities and Spirituality, 6(2), 77–93.

Teaching as Revelation 137 Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. Routledge. Carroll, J. (2004). Crusade: Chronicles of an unjust war. New York: Metropolitan Books. Connolly, W. (2008). Capitalism and Christianity, American style. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. DelFattore, J. (2004). The fourth r: Conflicts over religion in America's public schools. New Haven, CT:Yale University Press. Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (2001). Critical race theory: An introduction. New York: New York University Press. Fendler, L. (2010). Michel Foucault (Vol. 22). New York: Continuum. Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge. New York:Vintage Books. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977. New York: Pantheon. Foucault, M. (1990). The use of pleasure: The history of sexuality (R. Hurley, Trans., Vol. 2). New York:Vintage Books. Freirean, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Giroux, H. A. (2012). Education and the crisis of public values: Challenging the assault on teacher, students, and public education. New York: Peter Lang. Goldstein, L. S. (2005). Becoming a teacher as a hero’s journey: Using metaphor in preservice teacher education. Teacher Education Quarterly, 31(1), 7–24. Gonzalez, N., Moll, L. C., & Amanti, C. (Eds.). (2005). Funds of knowledge:Theorizing practices in households, communities, and classrooms. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Herbst, J. (1989). And sadly teach:Teacher education and professionalization in American culture. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Kaestle, C. F. (1983). Pillars of the republic: Common schools and American society, 1780–1860. New York: Hill and Wang. Klein, N. (2007). The shock doctrine:The rise of disaster capitalism. New York: Picador. Kohn, A. (2012). Test today, privatize tomorrow: Using accountability to “reform” public schools to death. In W. H. Watkins (Ed.), The assault on public education: Confronting the politics of corporate school reform (pp. 79–96). New York: Teachers College Press. Kumashiro, K. K. (2012). Bad teacher! How blaming teachers distorts the bigger picture. New York: Teachers College Press. Labaree, D. F. (2010). Someone has to fail: The zero-sum game of public schooling. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465–491. Lepore, J. (2014, June 23). The disruption machine: What the gospel of innovation gets wrong. The New Yorker. Lohfink, G. (2012). Jesus of Nazareth: What he wanted, who he was (L. M. Maloney, Trans.). Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press. Moeny, J. (2015). Surveys: Teachers underappeciated, but satisfied with their work (mostly). Retrieved from http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_now/2015/05/ surveys-teachers-underappreciated-but-satisfied-with-their-work-mostly.html Paris, D. (2011). Language across difference: Ethnicity, communication, and youth identities in changing urban schools. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Paris, D., & Alim, H. S. (2014). What are we seeking to sustain through culturally sustaining pedagogy? A loving critique forward. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 85–100. Parker-Gibson, N. (2008). A-ha moments, the nearly-now and the implementation dip: Finding learning incidents. Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian, 27(2), 69–72. Ravitch, D. (2010). The death and life of the great American school system: How testing and choice are undermining education. New York: Basic Books.

138  Teaching as Revelation Ravitch, D. (2013). Reign of error: The hoax of the privatization movement and the danger to America's public schools. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Robinson, M. N., & Lugg, C. A. (2012). The role of the religious right in restructuring education. In W. H. Watkins (Ed.), The assault on public education: Confronting the politics of corporate school reform (pp. 125–142). New York: Teachers College Press. Sanchez, C. (Narrator). (2016, January 12). A ‘Wisdom keeper’ draws from a deep well of Navajo culture. [Radio broadcast episode]. In E. McDonnell (Producer), Morning Edition. Washington, DC: National Public Radio. Sedgwick, E. S. (2003). Touching feeling: Affect, pedagogy, performativity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Spong, J. S. (1992). Born of a woman: A bishop rethinks the virgin birth and the treatment of women by a male-dominated church. New York: HarperCollins. Watkins, W. H. (2012). The assault on public education: Confronting the politics of corporate school reform. New York: Teachers College Press. Wexler, P. (2013). Mystical sociology:Toward a cosmic social theory. New York: Peter Lang. Zipes, J. (2006). Why fairy tales stick: The evolution and relevance of a genre. New York: Routledge.

Conclusion

Minikel-Lacocque (2015), in a rare intersectional study examining evangelical Latino/a students’ transitions to college, makes the point that “too few scholars have examined religious identities or minority religions as significant aspects of multicultural education” (p. 182). Drawing on Schweber and Irwin’s (2003) work thinking about fundamentalist Christian students and the relative lack of measured research regarding their presence and persistence in public schooling in America, Minikel-Lacocque (2015) hones in on a “concern . . . about how fundamentalist students fare in our public schools,” and particularly the author notes the “stark differences between the worlds from which these students come and the [schooled] settings they enter,” arguing that this disconnect between home (religion) and supposedly secular schools “may be at the root of their struggles” (p. 182).The upshot of the research, in this case, is that public schooling, as understood by the fundamentalist student(s) interviewed by Minikel-Lacocque and very much in reflection of their families, is “a place from which to be protected” (p. 188), primarily for its insidious influence related to perceived moral failure but especially for the ways in which its curriculum might contravene a belief in the literal and infallible truth of the Bible. In another vein, Petra Munro Hendry (2016), in an article titled “Protestantism as Ideology: Or, How I Learned I Was a Protestant,” writes of being produced as a Protestant through the rituals and practices of her childhood encounters with her family’s conservative Lutheran church and its attendant traditions. She continues, noting that in her “upbringing, religion functioned not as a set of spiritual beliefs, but as an ideology embedded in my schooling that was both conscious and unconscious in shaping the possibilities and limits of my desires, ideas, morals, goals, and expectations” (p. 36). The work on a whole is in response to Blumenfeld-Jones’s (2016) assertion that curriculum studies as a field is inherently and exclusively Protestant in its orientation, directionality, and—as noted in Chapter 4—citational practices. Munro Hendry (2016) then, “seeks to extricate the nonknown to trace the invisible ‘ghosts’ of Protestantism in curriculum studies . . . that are hauntingly real” (p. 37). Blumenfeld-Jones (2016) pushes for a messy engagement with the possibility of differently understanding a field (curriculum studies)

140  Conclusion

read through a lens that critically attends to its Protestant leanings and an alternative approach through the Talmudic, much in line with our readings in this book, particularly in Chapter 3. We cite this recent work first to suggest that there are ways in which religion, hidden though it may remain at times, has begun to emerge as a more prominent feature of research in and around education. That is, we started this project to attend to the ways in which religion exists and persists in American public education but also to start a conversation that differently positions debates around religion in schools. In some measure, we were naïve in presuming that the discussion wasn’t already going on around us; in another sense this work is about reading in different ways and spaces but also listening to the emergent research that continually and—we think, we hope—increasingly bubbles up. Still, the work of this book has been to address the many (though certainly not the only) ways in which religion is always ghosting our conceptions of schooling. It’s not that we think public schools will ever be religious (professing Christianity) enough for MinikelLacocque’s informants, but we would argue that a broader understanding of religion (of how it functions, how it is shunted aside, how it colors literacies and the experiences of many and probably all students and especially teacher candidates and teachers) in social science research will allow for different kinds of research trajectories that might in fact lead to situations where a student, a teacher, a parent, or anyone else might see another way into the conversation rather than through the courts. We are, as we’ve noted before, teacher educators, and so a particular concern for us, at the close of this book is thinking how the issues we have raised throughout might be addressed in teacher education. To begin, we would suggest that religion, as a category of difference, be explored more directly and explicitly in the preparation of teachers, much like gender, race, class, and sexuality are currently discussed. By and large, multiculturalism (as taken up and taught) in colleges of education hasn’t done sufficient work in thinking about religion as a category of difference or about the religious lives of teachers and their students in the U.S. context. A great deal of the difficulty here is ambiguity around the law as it stands and always changes in relation to freedom of expression and the dangers of establishment. But, to a degree, we in the field have mostly whiffed on the topic not only because of the dangers that come from possible litigation but also the discomfort that sits in the space of deeply held beliefs as tied to the supernatural.We’re comfortable knowing what’s right and wrong about race, in essence, but not necessarily when it comes to religion or religious belief. With regard to religious belief, Kunzman (2006) suggests ‘ethical dialog’ as a mode for talking about religion in the public school classroom. In his construction, ethical dialog requires “respect for particularity—for what people count as most significant about themselves” (p. 38) while asserting that “respect need not be recognized by its recipient as respect” (p. 40). That lack of recognition of respect is often what keeps teacher educators, we think, from pursuing religion as a worthy,

Conclusion 141

indeed necessary, topic in the classroom. Kunzman reminds us, however, that “for many adherents, religion is inextricably linked with one’s very self, and the roots extend deep within a community of belief and practice” (p. 54). Failing to engage religion, in other words, means only partially engaging with the prospective teachers in the rooms with us. Schweber (2015) helps here, noting that: When left unexamined, our deepest religious ideas sometimes stand in the way of our understanding each other; when discussed, the watery surface provides a slightly more level field, because no matter how briefly, all our students’ religious ideas float atop the ocean of possibilities. (p. 59) As we’ve illustrated, every person involved in the project of public education in the United States is in some way implicated in a religious system. How students, teachers, and teacher candidates understand themselves as caught in, or treading lightly across, that web is intensely personal and situational. Failing to engage belief in the teacher education classroom is failing to account for the history of American education, its structures, its languages, and its beliefs; in essence, it is a failure of the very foundations of the profession. Moving to ethical dialog, however, must be about passing beyond discussions about how big a cross a teacher candidate can safely wear while teaching in a public education classroom.The more interesting discussion, and one we try to work through in this book, lies in the continuity of history, the fractured presences of the past that can be connected to religion. This project, which moves beyond the beliefs of individual teachers or students to the broader, ongoing impact of religion on schooling, does not seek to replace secularity with religion but to link school back to its religious roots for the sake of differently thinking about and in education. If our thinking about the possibilities that lie in a more complex engagement with secularity is pushed in the process, that’s all the better. Such an endeavor, as we have touched upon in earlier chapters, would entail helping teachers understand the historic religious roots of education and schooling and their lingering presence in current practices. It would require examining the relationship between religion and educational language and practices and how religion might insert itself, even if mostly implicitly into curricular documents and assessment and into how we have come to think about teachers and teaching. The point, again, is to use these exercises not to necessarily expunge those religious elements but, instead, to better understand their legacy and their pedagogical positionings—that is, how they invite us to think about and be in the world of education in particular ways. We think that much of this can come about through conversations in teacher education as well as be driven by research that looks to more nuance than what the legal ramifications of Bible reading or religious release time

142  Conclusion

might be in relation to the most recent interpretations of the Free Exercise Clause.That’s not to say that we aren’t particularly concerned about the ways in which legal interpretations of said clause have and will come to color schooling in the 21st century in an era of voucher saturation and debates about the efficacy of opt-out provisions related to sincere beliefs and contraceptive coverage, for instance. These things matter, and in some measure, they will continue to be written about because education, religion, and law have long been intertwined in ways that are (relatively) easily intelligible to scholars both in and around the field. What we suggest, and hope to have modeled here, is that the harder and perhaps more theoretically fruitful work going forward will concern itself, as an appeals court in response to Jaffree v. James (1982) wrote, not with “the activity itself . . . [but] the purpose of the activity” (DelFattore, 2004, p. 168). Purpose and intent are difficult to intuit. This is, in large measure, the point. Research on and into religion and American education has done the relatively easy work of chronicling divisions regarding more obvious manifestations of proselytization. And in some measure this work needs to continue just as the law shifts amidst the sturm and drang of legislative import and precedent. Religion is here; it may be queer(er) than it used to be in some regards, and as researchers, as teacher educators in particular, we need to get used to it. Perhaps and probably what we need to think toward is something just a bit different from what James et al. (2015) wonder when they ask, “[W]here does a student’s or family’s right to practice their religion stop and the school’s right to privilege diversity and respect for the individual and for difference begin?” (p. 14). Hopefully we’ve made clear in this volume that the student and his/her family (literacy and history) are never not “practicing” religion in school. They are practicing it in the way they read, in how they come to think, and in what they do and don’t wear, to choose some few examples. The very words they find for answers to “secular” questions will always already be religion in nature in some degree. And the school’s sense of what it means to “privilege diversity,” in an American context particularly, has already come from a Judeo-Christian (and we lean much more heavily on the latter part of that hyphenated construction) conception of what diversity means, what privilege might look like, and especially what ‘respect’ in relation to ‘difference’ might entail. Or, these are not mutually exclusive spheres, and the questions themselves are inherently informed by religious constructions of the im/possibility of knowledge in and around schools. What we need, from here, are careful reads of religion into and out of law, yes, but also of purpose, intent, language, structure, identity, punishment, curriculum, and so on, within research in education. The conversation, we think, can be a great deal more robust, and it need not be always already oppositional.

References Blumenfeld-Jones, D. (2016). The violence of words, words of violence: Keeping the uncomfortable at bay, a Jewish perspective. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 31(1), 4–23.

Conclusion 143 DelFattore, J. (2004). The fourth R: Conflicts over religion in America’s public schools. New Haven, CT:Yale University Press. Hendry, P. M. (2016). Protestantism as ideology: Or, how I learned I was Protestant. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 31(1), 34–48. James, J. H., Schweber, S., Kunzman, R., Barton, K. C., & Logan, K. (2015). Religion in the classroom: Dilemmas for democratic education. New York: Routledge. Kunzman, R. (2006). Grappling with the good: Talking about religion and morality in public schools. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Minikel-Lacocque, J. (2015). “You see the whole tree, not just the stump:” Religious fundamentalism, capital and public schooling. Curriculum Inquiry, 45(2), 176–197. Schweber, S. (2015). Fishing below the surface: Undrestanding the role of religion in student leraning. In J. H. James, S. Schweber, R. Kunsman, K. C. Barton, & K. Logan (Eds.), Religion in the classroom: Dilemmas for democratic education. (pp. 53-60). New York: Routledge. Schweber, S., & Irwin, R. (2003). “Especially special”: Learning about Jews in a fundamentalist Christian school. Teachers College Record, 105(9), 1693–1719.

Index

abandonment 114 – 15 Abel, Cain (murder) 113 Abimilech, threat 108 Abington School District v. Schempp 27 Abington v. Schempp 10 Abraham: angel, reappearance 110; devotion, demonstration 110; education 106 – 11, 113; personal/familial life 107; pleas 117; Sarah, relationship 110 – 11; story 11 – 12; tales 51; teaching 103; testing 109 Abraham/God: education 106 – 7; encounter 107; interactions 11; questions 108; relationship 110 accountability, official discourses 94 – 5 achievement gap, closure 89 – 90 Adam: education 113; fruit, eating 105; garden, creation 104; instructions 104 – 5; punishment/banishment 55 – 6; silence 55; story 11, 14, 54 American Bible Society, founding 52 American education, Christianity (historical connections) 20 American politics, participation 24 Anchor Standards, notion 73 anti-Catholic Know-Nothing party, impact 25 Apollo 10 – 11, 40; mirth 41 – 2 Apollonian child: description 40; notions 94 apple: collective Western consciousness, perception 38 – 9; metaphor 38 – 9; symbol 39 apple-polishers 38 arbitrary constraints, product 79 Armageddon 51 artistic works, meaning 50 – 1 authoritative religious discourse 38

Ball State University 124 Baltimore Catechism 72 banishment, idea 1 20 Begay, Tia 126 – 7,  129 Bible: absence 49; acceptance 64; canonical presentation 58; chapter/ verse, examination 73 – 5; chronology, following 54; educational practices, blueprint 49; educational thinking, causal relationship 49 – 50; exploration 51 – 2; importance 52; influence 50; interpretations 60; King James translation/version 53, 78; legacy 12; polyphonic nature 115 – 16; postmodern text 59 – 65; reading, legal ramifications 141 – 2; religious consideration 54; religious text, perception 11; texts, expectations 63; understanding 60;Vulgate (Duoay-Rheims) 53 Bible, educational considerations 52 – 9; history, selection 52 – 3; testament 57 – 9; testing 53 – 7 Bible, reading 69 – 70, 72; importance 26; stances 59 biblical hermeneutics 60 biblical narrator, impact 110 – 11 biblical places, naming 51 biblical scholars, impact 102 biblical stories 106 – 7 biblical verses, memorization/ recitation 57 billionaire boys club 131 – 2 Black, Hugo: assertion 26 – 7; establishment clause interpretation 27 Block, Alan 7 Blumenthal, David 64, 65 body, organization 42 – 4 book, culture 59 – 60

146 Index Book of Books 50, 59 – 60 book of Exodus, stories 61 book of Numbers, stories 61 British schools, religion (role) 9 – 10 Buechner, Frederick 91 – 2 Burke, Jim 126 Bush, George (verbiage) 132 Cain/Abel, story 106 calendar see Christian calendar: Jewish/ Muslim religion, basis 35; usage 33 – 4 Canaan, Abraham arrival 107 Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education (Hirsch) 69 cardinals, organizational structure (Catholic understanding) 73 catechetical institutions, promulgation 22 Catholics, violence 25 CCSS see Common Core State Standards central texts, assumptions 53 certification programs 89 – 90 character, test 56 – 7 charisma, routinization 128 Charter Management Organization (CMO) 90 childhood, idea 39 – 40 children: Dionysian/Apollonian characteristic 43; Fall 41; Grecian archetype 42; innocent/deviant role 39 – 42; knowledge, absence 92 – 3; natural pride 23 – 4; notions 10 – 11 Christ: coming 134; contextualization 130; image 85 – 6; message, foundational truths 96; sacrificial lamb, relation 89; teaching 90; versions 13 Christian calendar 10 – 11; qualifiers 32 – 5; scheduling 34 – 5 Christian-capital assemblages 132 Christian elements/vestiges, reappearance/persistence 5 Christian hermeneutics 63 Christian holidays: accommodation 34; privileges 32 Christianity: approaches, differences 21; conversion 93 – 4; dominance 4; exponent 52; legacy 37; sediments, impact 10; truth/evidences 76; usage 15; visibility/invisibility 45 Christianity, American education: historical connections 20; ties 2 Christian purity, models 24 Christian religiosity 34

Christian roots, language/artifacts (usages) 44 – 5 Christian Scriptures, Jesus (reference) 24 Christian sediments: denaturalization 8, 46; resacralization 8 Christian sensibility, subsuming 33 Christian thought, residue/impact 95 Christian understandings 2; reifications 82 Christian virtue, teaching (impact) 9 – 10 Christ-inspired civilization, blessings 93 – 4 Christ-like vision 96 Chronos 129 – 30 church, ideas 43 citizenship, universalism 26 classrooms: curriculum, control 86; interactions 60; service 89; testing 121 clergy, ideas 43 Cobblestone Evaluation 77 collective Western consciousness, apple (representation) 38 – 9 collectivity 133 “College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards” 72 college, term (understanding) 73 colonial powers, religious arm 93 – 4 Common Core State Standards (CCSS) 12, 71 – 2; educational policies 75; language 129; opponents 71; religious texts, absence 76; sample texts, references 73 – 4; structure/ language 72 – 3 common religious affiliation 24 – 5 common standards, implementation 77 – 8 confessional purity, preservation 25 confession, truth (trope) 44 congregation, impact 37 constructivist education 49 contemptus mundi (St. Augustine) 21 context 83 – 6 convocation, term (usage) 36 Core Knowledge 69 corporal punishment 42; question 22 courts, litigious work 45 creation: problems 7; process 62; sixth day 104; stories 11 – 12, 14, 54 creed, authoritative statement 73 crisis language, usage 15 critical literacy 49 cultural mythology, profusion 58 cultural purity, preservation 25 cultures, religious structure 6, 70 – 1

Index  147 curriculum 35 – 8, 42 – 3; conceptual order, provision 35; designers 120; operation 35 Damascus, approach 134 Dangerous Minds 92 Daniels, Mitch 124 data-driven accountability, impact 120 Davies, Samuel 93 Dead Poets Society,The 92 de Barona, Maria Santos 124 – 5 deep structure, resacralization (relationship) 5 – 7 denaturalization, impact 8 Deuteronomy 113; purpose, question 60 – 1 Dionysian child: notion 94; presence 41 Dionysus 10 – 11; mirth 41 – 2 direct teaching 102 disciple, term (examination) 84 disciplinary upbringing, impact 40 discursive practices 35 disobedience, punishment 112 divine, communing 128 – 9 divine favor, gaining 36 divine means 127 divine, predication 70 divine TBD  89 doctrine, term (usage) 84 doom, Hoseanic prophets (foreseeing) 126 DreamKeepers 92 Easter: break 44 – 5; tradition 34 ecclesiastical calendar 34 ecstasy: notion 127 – 8; seeking 128 education: Abraham teachings 106 – 11; Christian roots, history 20 – 8; constructivist ideologies 58; conventions/practices, ideologies/ assumptions 64; discourses/practices, religious sediments 32; eschaton, relationship 130 – 4; influences 44 – 6; instruction/abandonment 114 – 15; linguistic markers 37 – 8; moral clarion call 22; notion, conflict 39; practices, blueprint 49; reforms, examination 53 – 4; religion, relationship 3; religious aspect 1; religious roots, deletion 5; revelation, relationship 130 – 4; roots 2 – 3; seminal text, usage 51 – 2; tone/ interactions 115 – 16

educational establishment, trope 125 educational research, resacralizing (impact) 7 educational spaces 6 educational thinking, Bible (causal relationship) 49 – 50 educational thoughts/practices, foundation 82 ek-static 127 – 9 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) 53 Emilia, Reggio 42 empiricism 69 end-times thinking 133 – 4 engagement in study/prayer 7 Engel v.Vitale 10, 27 English language arts (ELA) document 72 English society, schooling (character/ mission) 22 English Sunday schools 23 English, teaching 7 Enlightenment 69; faith 26 enlightenment, moral clarion call 22 enlightenment, source 135 eschatological language 15 eschaton, education (relationship) 130 – 4 ESEA see Elementary and Secondary Education Act establishment clause, Black interpretation 27 establishment, dangers 140 – 1 evangelical movement 131 – 2 Eve: education 113; garden, creation 104; instructions 104 – 5; prohibition 105; punishment/banishment 55 – 6; silence 55; story 11, 54 eventalization 78 – 9 Everson v. Board of Education 10, 26 Examen of Conscience (St. Ignatius) 72 exegesis 63 exigencies 91 experience, sin 40 ex-stasis 126 – 30 Facing the Abusing God: A Theology of Protest (Blumenthal) 64 failing schools, revelations (reconnection) 15 faith, passing down 85 fidelity, defining 75 – 8 First Amendment 26; meaning 26 – 7; protections 2 first text 49

148 Index flood, story 106 foundational truths 96 Free Exercise Clause, interpretations 142 Frye, Northrop 50 Garden of Eden: banishment 105 – 6; demonstration 56; events 60 – 1; story 114 – 15; teaching/learning 104 – 6 Gates, Bill 132 Genesis: examination 104 – 5; teachings 54 GMRT Vocabulary test 77 God: Abraham confrontation 109; Abraham encounter 107; Abraham, relationship 110; absence, Huckabee assertion 1; Adam/Eve, exchange 55; anthropomorphization 102; avatars, usage 120; belief, Pew study 118; closeness 112; commandments/ statues 114; disillusionment 14; engagement, exploration 102; faith 57; focus 101; guidance, influence 119; instruction/abandonment 114 – 15; judgments 114; lessons 117; limitations, acceptance 117 – 18; listening, ability 116; love 111 – 14; love, witness 118; messengers 57; mind, changing 116 – 18; multifaceted teacher 103; obedience 111 – 14; obtuse responses 55; opportunities 108 – 9, 115; pedagogy 101; plan, revelation 108; punishment 111 – 14; questions 56 – 7; reconciliation 87 – 8; reflection 116 – 18; teacher role 101, 102, 112 – 13; teachers, relationship 118 – 21; time 129 – 30; tone/interactions 115 – 16; true word, treatment 57 – 8; will 41 godly activity 121 godly teachers, authoritarian teachers (correlation) 119 godly tests, ubiquity 121 God, teaching 111 – 18; exploration 103; relationship 118 – 21 golden calf, story 11 – 12 Gonfalons 36 good teacher, labeling 130 Gospels 130; impact 61 Gouge, William  23 government schooling, destruction 133 Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck) 51, 74 Gregorian calendar, usages 33 Gregory XIII, Pope 33 group work 95

Handy, Robert T. 25 Hanukkah, initiation 33 – 4 Haran 107 hermeneutics 49 Hirsch, E.D. 69, 70 historical facts, amassment 95 history, critical-contextual understanding 70 Holocaust 101 – 2 hot-button issues, teaching 3 Huckabee, Mike (religious assertion) 1 Hughes, John 25 humanity, teaching 117 – 18 human pride, evils 106 hungry, salvation 91 – 2 Hunter, Ian 7 Hurricane Katrina 133 ideological shock troops 93 – 4 ideology, impact 36 Imitation of Christ,The 86 immigration, explosion 52 – 3 immortality, conceptions 78 individualism 23 individualized education programs (IEPs), usage 15, 125 inherent religiosity 69 institutions, accreditation 37 instruction 111, 114 – 15; didactic banking methods 134 intent 8 – 9; intuiting 142 Isaac: binding 107; birthright, issue 107; God’s interactions 11; teaching 103 Isaiah, prophesies 57 Ishmael, birthright (issue) 106 Israelites: annihilation, plan 117; banishment 113; God, disillusionment (connection) 14; proclamation 111 Israel, Promised Land 132 Jacob: God’s interactions 11; teaching 103 Jaffree v. James 142 James, William  70 Jeremiah, prophesies 57 Jesus 94; discipleship 84; exchange 88 – 9; forgiveness/redemption 118; image, malleability 13 – 14; life/achievements 61; pedagogy 13; practices 83; reference 24; symbolic fulfillment 87 – 8 Jewish history, messianic context 87 Johnny Can’t Read 126 John the XXIII 86 Judeo-Christian assumptions 69

Index  149 Judeo-Christian calendar, scheduling 34 – 5 Judeo-Christian ecclesiastical calendar 34 Judeo-Christian thinking, basis 50 kairos 129 Kierkegaard, Søren 93, 94 knowing, ways 75 knowledge: arbiter 134 – 5; claims 28; disclosure/communication 127; implied divinity 23 – 4 Know-Nothing legislatures 25 Know-Nothing party, impact 25 La’asot, verb (usage) 62 lamb, burnt offering 109 language: curriculum 35 – 8; importance 36; usage 37 – 8 Leah/Rachel, discovery 57 learning 103 learning (Garden of Eden) 104 – 6 learning, Christian tradition 11 Lee v.Weisman 10, 27 Letter from Birmingham Jail 74 LGBT rights 28 life, conceptions 78 Logan, Kimberly 119 Lord of the Rings,The 51 love 111 – 14; call 114; self-discovery 114 loving-kindness 111 Luther, Martin 93 malum (evil) 38 – 9 malus (apple) 38 – 9 Mann, Horace 9, 24, 52; religion, role 26 Mark 10:15, echoes 92 martyr: notions 83; personal fulfillment 87 martyrdom, historico-religious roots 87 MAT8 Writing Test  77 mathematical formulas, repetition 95 mathetes 84 Matrix,The 51 Mawlid al-Nabi, tradition 34 McGuffey Readers 24, 25 meaning-making, sense 64 medieval art, meaning 50 – 1 medieval theology, misunderstanding 6 – 7 Melville, Herman 51 Messiah (Handel) 51 messianic Jewish tradition, connection (movement) 88 methodological field 64

Metlife Survey of the American Teacher, job satisfaction study 130 – 1 Milton 51 Miriam, punishment 112 missionary schools, impact 94 Moby Dick (Melville) 51 monastic cellular organizational patterns 45 monastic schools, shift 23 morality, ideas 43 Moral Stake in Education,The 91 – 2 Morison, Toni  51 Moses 94; God’s interactions 11; non-obedience 112; teaching 103 Mount Moriah 116; Isaac, binding 107; sacrifice 56 – 7 multiculturalism: opportunities 2 – 3; religion, existence 3 mundane action, objective limit 129 Muslim faith 33 – 4 mystical sociology, heading 78 Mystical Sociology:Toward Cosmic Social Theory (Wexler) 5 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 75 nationalism, Scripture 26 National School Supply & Equipment Association (NSSEA) survey 89 national service programs, entry 90 Nation at Risk, A 126 native bodies/souls, Christianizing/ saving 94 Nativist legislatures 25 Neil, A.S. 40 New England Primer readings 24, 25 New Exodus 50 New Testament, teaching 57 – 9 Newtown school shooting, Huckabee religious assertion 1 New York State Regents, constitutionality 27 Noah: ark, building 115 – 16; story 11 – 12, 106, 121 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) 53, 94; advent 121; educational policies 75; education manifestation 12 No Child Left Behind document 126 non-obedience 112 obedience 111 – 14; teacher demand 115 office, term (usage) 37, 44

150 Index Old Testament: focus 101; godly tests/ testing, ubiquity 121; God, perception 14; God, teacher role 112 – 113; practices 119; staged text 61; teaching 57 – 9 ontogenetical constitution 88 organization, technologies 43 Othering 45 – 6 out-of-body experience 127 Paradise Lost (Milton) 51 parousia 133 – 4 Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) 75, 76 Passion of the Christ,The 51 Passover 85 pastoral power, usage 89 Paul, epistolary 134 PedaGod 101 pedagogical innovations, postponing 135 pedagogical questions 106 pedagogy 111 – 18 Pence, Mike 124 – 5 Pentimento, reference 5 People of Illinois v. Board of Education 27 philosophy, infusion 93 pluralizing, work 79 political documents, impact 74 postmodern text 49 post-structuralism, literature (usage) 4 prayer, usage 44 Prince of Egypt,The 51 Promised Land, entry 112 prophesy, signs 125 Protestantism, commonality 25 Protestants 52; conservatives, efforts 131 – 2; families, education 24; partnership, coalescence 131 – 2 proverbs, knowledge 127 public education 126; Christian sediments, denaturalization/ resacralization 8; civilized body 43; history 72; project, involvement 141; religion, embedding 20 public schooling, influence 85 – 6 public schools: classrooms, civic realm 2; teachers, depiction 119; teachers, studies 118; worship, location 34 publishers, ownership 75 Pulp Fiction 51 punishment 111 – 14; banishment, idea 120; imposition 105 – 6; reduction  106

punishment/banishment 55 – 6 punitive teacher accountability measures, adoption 124 – 5 Puritanical asceticism 42 Puritanism, suggestion 40 Puritan schools, basis 93 purpose, intuiting 142 Race to the Top 94; educational policies 75; education manifestation 12 Race to the Top document 126 Ramadan, initiation 33 – 4 Rashi, reading 62 rationality 23 reader, creation 64 reading: fundamental assumptions, revisiting 49; positions 64 Red Sea, armies (drowning) 112 Reformation 22 reform-based accountability movements, impact 130 – 1 reform movement, vanguard 25 reform, term (usage) 53 – 4 religion: chapter/verse, examination 73 – 5; clause, establishment 26 – 7; discussion, reframing 4 – 5; education, relationship 3; embedding 20; emergence 140; engagement, absence 4; etymological considerations 72 – 3; faith, passing down 85; function, analysis 8 – 9; ideology 59; importance 96 – 7; Pearson, influence 75 – 8; reinsertion 28; role 26; role, discussions 45; social studies unit 2; standards 72 – 8 religious affiliations, legacy 36 religious beliefs 78 religious creeds, quarantining 71 religious hermitage, history 73 religious moral codes 41 religious orders 21 – 2 religious right, impact 71 religious roots, deletion 5 religious scholars, impact 102 religious texts: absence 76; reference, absence 69 religious turn 5 – 6 remysticization 128 reorientation, work 78 repetition, cycle (regulation) 43 resacralization: deep structure, relationship 5 – 7; method/theory, perspective 6; requirement 5 – 6 research, resacralization 7, 78 – 9 resonance 85

Index  151 revelation: dual meanings 135; education, relationship 130 – 4; increase 134 – 5; teaching, relationship 124 Revelation, signs 125 revelatory, power 126 – 30 rhetoric 133 – 4 Robinson, John 23; Puritans, accompaniment 24 Roman Catholics, dismay 25 Romanticism, muse 40 Rosh Hashanah, tradition 34 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 40 routinization 126 – 30 R/reality, many-sidedness 65 sacred 129 – 30 sacred/profane divide, creation 6 – 7 sacred-secular divide, notion 12 Sanchez, Claudio 126 – 7 Sarah: Abraham, relationship 110 – 11; reverence, absence 108 savior 130; notions 83; term, usage 91 schooling: auspices 23 – 4; character/ mission, illumination 22; day-to-day operations 28; discussion, reframing 4 – 5; formation 95 – 7; history, roots 21; inherited proximities 71; institutional level 9; model, alternate 25; modern schooling, discourses 79; position 132 – 3; secularization  13 schools: British schools, religion (role) 9 – 10; Christian/Judeo-Christian calendar scheduling 34 – 5; English Sunday schools 23; failing schools, revelations (reconnection) 15; high turnover 86; LGBT rights 28; makeup 32; monastic schools, shift 23; school-endorsed prayer 27; school-related paraphernalia, usage 38; spread 52 – 3; task 41 – 2; utilization, increase 86 Scripture, examples 83 secular educational practices/beliefs 4 secularism 23; concern 128 – 9 secular left, impact 71 secular leftists 132 secular, nature 23 secular public school system, establishment 44 secular schooling 57 – 8 self-assessment, evidence 54 – 5 self-sufficiency 106 semiotic mechanism, impact 58 seriatim, notion 65

Shakespeare, William  51 Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol, fidelity (usage) 77 Shma Israel, love (call) 114 Shuttleworth, Kay 90 – 1 silence, one-minute period 27 sinful state 21 SLANTing, emphasis 119, 128 social efficiency 26 social life, reconstitution 5 – 6 social theory, religion (preeminence) 6 society, formation 96 – 7 Sodom/Gomorrah 103; destruction 108; leveling 112; lives, saving 109; story 11 – 12 Song of Solomon,The (Morison) 51 soul, conceptions 78 space-time, simultaneity 79 Spirit of God 61 – 2 spirituality modes, quarantining 71 Spring Break 44 – 5 Stand and Deliver 92 standardization movement 129 standards: checklists 74; etymology 73 standards movement, inherent religiosity 69 stasis 127 – 8 State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) 75 St. Augustine 97 Steinbeck, John 51 St. Ignatius (writings) 24 Stone v. Graham 27 story, roots 92 Stowe, Harriet Beecher 51 structuralist assumptions 70 – 1 students: accomplishments, measurement 75; engagement 7; helping 90 – 1; saving, element 94 – 5 subjectivity, possibility 7 subject-specific standards 73 subjugation 41 submission 41 supernatural means 127 supersessionist “new religion” 69 Supreme Court decisions, impact 49 surveillance, technologies 43 Synoptics, teaching 61 teachable moment, intent 127 teacher, education: considerations 95 – 7; rethinking 13 – 14; socialization 95 – 6 teachers: apple, giving 39; authority 58; efficacy 130 – 1; evaluation 121;

152 Index God, relationship 118 – 21; heroes 93; identification 120; martyr role 86 – 91; persistence 91 – 2; problems 133; profession, complexity 131; relations 85 – 6; religious beliefs, curricular choices (correlation) 83 – 4; religious identifications 9; resources, provision 88 – 9; role 101; satisfaction 130 – 1; savior, Hollywoodization 13 – 14; savior, role (missionary position) 91 – 5; socialization 76; spiritual beliefs 118; students, relations 85 – 6; teacher-endorsed prayer 27; voice 115 – 16 teacher-student relationships, images 24 teaching: context 83 – 6; direct teaching 102; educational-religious mode 12; Garden of Eden 104 – 6; God, relationship 118 – 21; God tone 116; impossibility 121; Jesus perspective 82; moral ends, relationship 91 – 2; orientation 131; persistence 87; profession, explicit/implicit religiosity 85 – 6; revelation, relationship 124; sacrifice, requirement 87; teaching 84 – 5 Ten Commandments 111; versions, differences 61 Ten Commandments,The 51 testing, ubiquity 120 – 1 textbooks, canonical presentation 58 texts: flattening effect 63; religious import 74 theological histories 69 theological understandings 93 time (enumeration), calendars (usage) 33 – 4 timetable, Foucaultian analysis 43

Tohu, governance 62 tone 111 Torah: creation 62; interpretations 84 Tower of Babel, story 11 – 12, 106 tradition, term (usage) 87 – 8 transcendental consciousness 4 transcendent powers 6 – 7 Tree of Knowledge 56, 104; eating 105; location 106 truth: discursive regimes 9; trope 44 Tyndale House Publishing survey 50 un-Christian child, rhetoric/formal proclamation 41 Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe) 51 United States: academic calendar 33 – 4; Christianity, dominance 4 universal spirit, belief (Pew study) 118 valued knowledge, transmission 8 – 9 values, transmission 35 – 6 Vohu, governance 62 Wadsworth, Benjamin 40 – 1 Wallace, David Foster 96 Wesley, John 41 Western calendar, usage 33 Western culture, myth 50 will of God 41 winter break, naming 34 women, patriarchal tale 38 – 9 wordplay 78 world, creation 7 Yom Kippur 87 Zuckerberg, Mark 132