If we don’t teach religion in schools, Americans will never understand the rest of the world - Quartz

In the first week of my undergraduate course on world religions, I give students a “fill-in-the blank” sheet relating to eight major religions.

Students can give any response they want to the prompts, “Muslims are…” “Christians are…” et cetera. Responses are anonymous and students are encouraged to be as candid as they want. These data give me a baseline for the religious literacy of my students and allow me to tailor my lessons to whatever information (or misinformation) they already know. Their responses are often wildly inaccurate. My students have responded that Hindus make a pilgrimage to Mecca, that Daoists worship Winnie the Pooh, and that Judaism is an odd sect within Christianity.

My students are not dumb. In the United States, the level of religious literacy displayed in this exercise is par for the course.

[,,,]
There is an assumption that studying world religion is like studying poetry—a garnish used to round out the “serious” subjects of a college education. But religious literacy is serious because religion is not a discrete and ahistorical phenomenon.

Religious beliefs and practices are embedded in the fabric of human culture, and religious literacy goes beyond the ability to appreciate Dante or Shakespeare. Religious ideas affect politics, economics, and law. Without knowledge of the world’s religions, students will not understand the traditions and values of their neighbors and coworkers. They will be ill-equipped to compete in a global marketplace. Most critically, they will have no framework with which to assess claims about religion made by politicians and the media.

If we don’t teach religion in schools, Americans will never understand the rest of the world - Quartz