Religion Law And Education

This text presents a comparative, cross-cultural analysis of the legal status of religion in public education in eighteen different nations while offering recommendations for the future improvement of religious education in public schools. Offering rich, analytical insights from a range of renowned scholars with expertise in law, education, and religion, this volume provides detailed consideration of legal complexities impacting the place of religion and religious education in public education. The volume pays attention to issues of national and international relevance including the separation of the church and state; public funding of religious education; the accommodation of students’ devotional needs; and compulsory religious education. The volume thus highlights the increasingly complex interplay of religion, law, and education in diverse educational settings and cultures across developing and developed nations. Providing a valuable contribution to the field of religious secondary education research, this volume will be of interest to researchers, academics, and educators with an interest in religion and law, international and comparative education, and those involved with educational policy at all levels. Those more broadly interested in moral and values education will also benefit from the discussions the book contains.

This volume examines the legal status of religion in education, both public and non-public, in the United States and seven other nations. It will stimulate further interest, research, and debate on comparative analyses on the role of religion in schools at a time when the place of religion is of vital interest in most parts of the world. This interdisciplinary volume includes chapters by leading academicians and is designed to serve as a resource for researchers and educational practitioners, providing readers with an enhanced awareness of strategies for addressing the role of religion in rapidly diversifying educational settings. There is currently a paucity of books devoted solely to the topic written for interdisciplinary and international audiences involving educators and lawyers, and this book will clarify the legal complexities and technical language among the law, education, and religion.

This book provides an encompassing analysis of the position of religion in education in several countries across the globe. It first analyzes the complexities surrounding the position of freedom of religion in education systems and the need to respect, protect, and promote the religious (or non-religious) beliefs of all those involved and participating in education. Various themes are analyzed, including: the religious distinctiveness of private schools; the protection of religious and belief diversity in education; the protection of parental rights and religious freedoms; the protection of children's rights and religious freedoms; and managing the dissemination of religious knowledge in public schools. Also provided are important case studies explaining the various approaches pertaining to the reconciliation of law and state, religion and education, and secularism and diversity that exist in the world. The more encyclopedic approach used here provides insights, through the country case studies, into the contemporary issues surrounding religious and non-religious schools in the selected jurisdictions. [Subject: Human Rights Law, Religion and Education, Public Education]

Explains what the law is on common religious liberty and church-state questions in the public school context. Covers: prayer in the schools; teaching about religion; use of classroom space for student-initiated religious activities; holiday observances; released time programs; physical facilities; dual enrollment; distribution of Gideon bibles or religious literature; scientific creationism; curriculum content; secular humanism; compulsory attendance and religious holidays; dress codes; vaccination requirements; and teachers' rights and responsibilities.

What is the role of religion(s) in a human rights culture and in human rights education? How do human rights and religion relate in the context of public education? And what can religious education at public schools contribute to human rights education? These are the core questions addressed by this book. Stimulating deliberations, illuminating analyses and promising conceptual perspectives are offered by renowned experts from ten countries and diverse academic disciplines.

Religion is a prominent legal force despite the premise constructed and promoted by Western constitutionalism that it must be separated from the State in democracies. Education constitutes an area of human life that leaves ample scope for the expression of religious identity and shapes the citizens of the future. It is also the place of origin of a considerable number of normative conflicts involving religious identity that arise today in multicultural settings. The book deals with the interplay of law and religion in education through the versatility of religious law and legal pluralism, as well as religion’s possible adaptation and reconciliation with modernity, in order to consider and reflect on normative conflicts. It adopts the angle of the constitutional dimension of religion narrated in a comparative perspective and critically reflects on regulatory attempts by the State and the international community to promote new ways of living together.

This publication is a compilation of studies on religious instruction in state schools. As Europe goes through a "social revolution" with the influence of the church and religious instruction in state schools being opened to discussion, this book describes the diversity between states and analyzes the legislative basis of religious instruction in various countries. The comparative analyses will be of value to researchers in educational research and to educational policymakers.

Aimed at those interested in the vital relationship between international human rights law and domestic policy. This work provides a set of source documents concerning the legal and political history of religious education in a multicultural environment and especially in Ontario, Canada's largest province.