For the Civic Good: The Liberal Case for Teaching Religion in the Public Schools

Chapter 4. Misrecognition and Nonrecognition: A Caution for Religion Courses

49 Chapter 4 Misrecognition and Nonrecognition A Caution for Religion Courses Staying on the surface in Tearville-­Tapscott and Ridge reinforces a default moral message that God rewards virtue and punishes sin and also provides recognition to the values and beliefs of the dominant Christian community. In turn, the schools gain credibility with the religiously Christian segments of the community . Recognition of the community’s values, consequently, is a valuable—­ perhaps even essential—­ function of the school. In their different ways, Ridge and Tearville-­Tapscott both employ their Bible courses, in part, to provide public recognition to the community.A significant challenge for these districts,then, is to provide the desired recognition to the visibly dominant Christian community while affording equal recognition to other elements of their constituency. Problems arise for public education when the recognition of one group comes at the cost of the misrecognition or nonrecognition of another. Misrecognition is the assignment of people to a different and stigmatized group. Nonrecognition occurs when others are viewed as instruments for our own ends and are denied recognition on their own terms. Charles Taylor explains what is at stake for democracies when equal recognition is denied. Equal recognition is not just the appropriate model for a healthy democratic society .Its refusal can inflict damage on those who are denied it....The projection of an inferior or demeaning image on another can actually distort and oppress, to the extent that the image is internalized.1 50 / FOR THE CIVIC GOOD Misrecognition is frequently the byproduct of totalizing a single religious tradition , that is, by treating one’s own faith tradition as the apex of human experience or as the sum of all other experiences.Totalizing occurs when one tradition is taught as the only acceptable tradition and other traditions are dismissed as inferior or interpreted only through its light. Within a private religious school this is allowed, perhaps even expected in some contexts. Such misrecognition, however, can have serious consequences when permitted in public-­ school settings , particularly if it supports the devaluing of minority members of the community . Misrecognition: The Atheist in the Classroom A common example of misrecognition occurs when a person is assigned an inferior or stigmatized status because of some irrelevant attribute, such as skin color or gender. However, another kind of misrecognition occurs when a person ’s belief is stigmatized or marked as inferior, or when pressure is exerted to accept an alien belief, or when a person is manipulated in order to change his or her core belief. Aaron Milsap recalls to us a particular student, whom he affectionately refers to as “our atheist.” This student told him after one class that she had been diagnosed with a brain tumor.“Two days later,” Milsap recollects,“we’re talking about the people who had taken the ark and God had placed tumors.” This story, which spans from 1 Samuel 5.1 to 1 Samuel 7.2, concerns the misfortunes that fell upon the Philistines after they captured the Ark of the Covenant from Israel and brought it to their own city. In this account, God countered this seizure by inflicting the Philistines with a disease, variously translated as boils or tumors. (Milsap chooses to read it as “tumors.”) The Philistines suffered this plague until they returned the ark to Israel, which they did after a great deal of consideration. This story is not usually part of the Ridge County syllabus, but in this case Milsap veered from the curriculum for a specific purpose. The reason he told that story was so that“they would see what would happen if you went and did something immoral, or against God’s will or God’s wishes. And I think that the Old Testament brings a lot of that out.” He then reported that one student Misrecognition and Nonrecognition / 51 asked: “Does God still punish today?” As Mr. Milsap recalls, his student with the tumor laughed: “She said,‘I guess I had better start believing.’” In that instant , the work of the class shifted from a presentation of an ancient narrative, which might have implications for modern circumstances, to consideration of the existential condition of the students. Milsap’s atheist student later visited him after class. He recalled that meeting in the following way. You see I had some explaining to do to that young lady. I had some one-­ on-­ one conversation with her later. Because she...