Description
Book SynopsisThe essays in this volume offer a groundbreaking comparative analysis of religious education, and state policies towards religious education in seven different countries and in the European Union as a whole. They pose a crucial question: can religious education contribute to a shared public sphere and foster solidarity across different ethnic and religious communities? In many traditional societies and even in what are largely secular European societies, our place in creation, the meaning of good and evil, and the definition of the good life, virtue, and moral action, are all primarily addressed in religious terms. It is in fact hard to come to grips with these issues without recourse to religious language, traditions, and frames of reference. Yet, religious languages and identities divide as much as unite, and provide a site of contestation and strife as much as a sense of peace and belonging Not surprisingly, different countries approach religious education in dramatically different
Trade ReviewThis is an important collection of essays that juxtaposes religious education in countries rarely ever juxtaposed in this fashion. More than showcasing different countries, the juxtaposition offers significant, and at times even startling, insights about religious education as a particularly contested site, which in turn reveals the fluidity of identity across different facets of belonging, and community that dont always fit easily together. An impressive work that should be read by anyone interested in how education centrally features in current debates about law, religion, and politics. * Anver M. Emon, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto *
The authors also move past description to suggest a way beyond the separation of sacred and secular spheres: education for knowledge about one another for the purpose of common action in 'shared civil life.' * L. J. Alderink, CHOICE *
Table of ContentsContributors ; Preface ; Introduction: Living Together Differently, Education, and the Challenge of Deep Pluralism - Adam Seligman ; 1. Teaching Religion in the European Union: A Legal Overview - Silvio Ferrari ; 2. Religion and Ethical Education in Divided Societies: The Case of Cyprus - Dilek Latif ; 3. Teaching Religion in Bulgarian Schools; Historical Experience and Post-Atheist Developments -Maria Schnitter & Daniela Kalkandjieva ; 4. The Vanishing State: Religious Education and Intolerance in French Jewish Schools - Kimberly Arkin ; 5. The Crises of Liberal Citizenship: Religion and Education in Israel - Shlomo Fischer ; 6. Secularism(s), Islam, and Education in Turkey: Towards E Pluribus Unum? - Ahmet Kuru ; 7. Walking the Tightrope: Prospects for Civil Education and Multiculturalism in <"Ketuanon Melayu>" Malaysia - Joseph Liow ; 8. Educating Citizens in America: The Paradoxes of Difference and Democracy - Ashley Berner and James D. Hunter ; 9. Afterword - Adam Seligman ; Index
