In the contentious American context, what should public schools teach about religion? Can they be expected to reconcile democratic politics and religious convictions? Kent Greenawalt pointedly raised the question in the title of his 2007 book, Does God Belong in Public Schools? Like Greenawalt, Emile Lester answers in the affirmative. Following a normative discussion of the considerations that go into his answer, Lester offers a close account of the practice of teaching about religions in public schools through the unique case of the World Religions curriculum as implemented in Modesto, California.

Lester argues that to serve their democratic purpose, public schools should incorporate religion into both the content and the pedagogic aims that they pursue. To do that, schools should represent contemporary communities of faith and their core tenets in their curriculum; moreover, they should teach future citizens to respect religious freedom as a principle, as well as to respect believers of all stripes. Rather than adopt a secularist position, with the pretense of neutrality that in effect breeds ignorance and intolerance, schools should endorse what the author depicts as a balanced stance of teaching robust tolerance, while giving special recognition to conservative Christian beliefs.

When faced with the repeated harassment of gay students, school administrators in Modesto instituted a “Day of Respect” recognizing both discrimination and religious views (rather than the more common “day of silence” and its reactive “day of truth” initiated by students in other districts in response to similar tensions). Even more radically, the school district responded by requiring all students to take a half-semester-long World Religions course, which devoted two weeks to issues of religious tolerance, followed by one week devoted to each of seven major religious traditions.

Lester's research, based on surveys and interviews of students and adults in the district and anchored in normative political theory, suggests that even as some teachers presented a diluted version of the religions discussed, the students exhibited some gains in tolerance. The teachers' efforts to follow the directions given in the substantial training course, and thus avoid controversy, resulted in a “warm and fuzzy” presentation of various religions in many cases (p. 139). As Diana Hess's recent study indicates, the avoidance of controversy can indeed raise certain measures of civic attitudes like tolerance, but this comes at the price of reduced engagement (Controversy in the Classroom: The Democratic Power of Discussion, 2009). Controversially, Lester suggests not only that schools endorse a required World Religions course, but also that they supplement it with elective courses that prioritize Christian conservative views, including intelligent design. As he puts it, public opinion should inform curricular decisions, including those concerned with the teaching of science, as the “democratic [contrary to the scientific] approach contends that when deciding school curriculum, schools must take into account what parents, students, and Americans in general believe and feel” (p. 155).

It is hard to envision a political environment in which this approach would be endorsed and implemented widely in the localized, heterogeneous, standards-restricted, and politics-averse public schools system. But if it were to be endorsed, and if indeed it accrued the sort of civic-democratic benefits that Lester suggests it would, should supporters of democratic education rejoice? Some, those who see the civic mission of schools as their main role, might. But for others, who assume that education is first and foremost meant to advance knowledge and promote students' pursuit of truth through learning, the endorsement of an intelligent design course in a public school—even if as an elective—might pose an insurmountable problem. Inasmuch as the latter would reject the views presented by intelligent design, they would posit that it represents a distortion of our best scientific knowledge: thus, exposing children to these views in school means subverting the single most important goal of school.

Warren Nord argued that when it comes to religion, American education is superficial, illiberal, and unconstitutional (Does God Make a Difference? 2010, 5). However, whereas Nord advances an evenhanded liberal curriculum that treats religion as part of the humanities and, more broadly, the human experience, Lester favors a democratic-civic approach to the teaching of religion that promotes active tolerance and an understanding of the subjective validity of different belief systems. But despite this general theoretical stance, his normative views are centered squarely within the American constitutional context. For example, in his initial interviews, Lester asked students if they agreed with the statement “Students of all religions should be able to wear religious symbols outside of their clothing in public schools.” He notes that “[i]deally, every American should agree with” this statement (p. 115). While it is unclear that even this circumscribed assumption is accurate, there is no question that in other constitutional democracies, the issue is far from settled (Dianne Gereluk, Symbolic Clothing in Schools, 2008). Moreover, while Lester is well versed in the literature on religion in schools, some of his research findings are troublesome in their detachment from other relevant studies performed in schools, ones that look at tolerance, respect, and even bullying outside the realm of religious education. Thus, he describes the (disconcertingly low) percentage of students willing to stand up actively for another student who is discriminated against (or in effect, in the school context, bullied by his or her peers—as in the example on p. 121 of a student being teased in the cafeteria for wearing a yarmulke).

Lester's data is hard to make sense of without some knowledge about bystander students' general reluctance to stand up for bullied peers, as a growing body of research indicates. However, his findings are usually carefully measured and presented, and he expands on the variety of factors that go into the course's positive effects on tolerance and other measures, including a much-welcome emphasis on the importance of preparation and instruction (and not only copying curricular materials) as key factors for other schools that may want to follow in Modesto's path.

The author concludes that the “deeper secret to Modesto's triumph” in implementing the course successfully, and having it endorsed by its diverse and divided community, “was that what liberals and evangelicals wanted was not as far apart as the two sides themselves thought initially” (p. 147). While it seemed at the outset that liberals were hoping to advance tolerance and religious leaders of different persuasions wanted religion to be recognized in the schools, the initial dialogue and deliberation “transformed perceptions by unearthing some common ground” (p. 147). Can such common ground be unearthed within the general public debate on religion and public schools? Despite Lester's optimism, I remain skeptical. Nonetheless, Lester presents a study and a framework on teaching religion in public school that is sensitive to democratic theory, the teaching profession, public attitudes, religious views, and the civic role of schools. If some school administrators are convinced by such studies to consider the role of religion in their curriculum (and if education policies would allow for such transgressions from the incessant focus on reading and math), not only students and teachers but also civil society as a whole could reap the benefits.