Faith Ed

A suburban Boston school unwittingly started a firestorm of controversy over a sixth grade field trip. The class was visiting a mosque to learn about world religions when a handful of boys, unnoticed by their teachers, joined the line of worshippers and acted out the motions of the Muslim call to prayer. Suddenly Wellesley's sixth-grade class about the world's religions was under attack. Charges flew that the school exposed the children to Muslims who intended to convert American school children. Veteran education journalist Linda K. Wertheimer spent months with that class and traveling to other communities around the nation listening to voices on all sides of the controversy, including clergy, teachers, children and parents who are Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Sikh, or atheist. In Lumberton, Texas nearly 100 people filled a school board meeting to protest a teacher's dress-up exercise, allowing a girl to try on a burka as part of a lesson on Islam. In Tampa, the head of a Muslim civil rights group spoke to several high school world history classes about Islam, sparking debate about which guest speakers are appropriate. In Wichita, Kansas, a Messianic Jewish family's opposition to a bulletin board display about Islam in an elementary school led to such upheaval that the school had to hire extra security. But in Modesto, a city in the heart of California's Bible Belt, teachers have avoided problems since 2000 when the school system began requiring all high school freshmen to take a world religions course. Students learn how to fight for their own rights and for those of religious minorities who once seemed so alien. Wertheimer's fascinating investigation reveals a public education system struggling to find the right path forward, and offers a promising roadmap for raising a new generation of religiously literate Americans.