Teaching: From Moral Dilemma to Religious Education By Gabriel Moran From his book: Religious Education as a Second Language In the previous chapter I have provided a comprehensive description of education. Often when education is defined it is looked ac from the standpoint of the teacher, or more exactly, from the standpoint of the professional schoolteacher. I have tried to avoid this limitation by describing what a community does when it is educating. A group of people who are deserving of the name community reshape life's forms with end (purpose) and without end (termination). The process of education is an interplay of forms rather than the activities of one person. The tendency to confuse education with the teacher's outlook and efforts is not surprising; education and teaching are inextricably related, But I suspect that people say education when they are really talking about what a schoolteacher does because they are uneasy about the idea of teaching itself. Although teaching is not the whole of education, I think that it is the most important test case of whether we understand what education is. People express little or no ambivalence about "learning," and as a result there is prolific discussion about the learning aspects of education. In contrast, there is very little discussion about the nature of teaching. In this chapter I wish to confront the issue as directly as possible. I am not addressing the topics of education, learning, or teacher but only the meaning of the verb "to teach," My focus is narrowly on the question: "What does it mean to teach?" Obviously, such a question presupposes a context, and the answer eventually has to be resituated in t',° context of teacher, learner, and education. But to get at the moral dilemma that people sense in the idea of teaching it will be helpful to concentrate on the act or event of teaching. One can say many things about people who are called teachers, but what exactly does a teacher do when engaging in the act of teaching? The moral dilemma I refer to is evident both in the frequent evasion of a direct discussion of the topic and in the highly ambivalent comments made about teaching whenever it is discussed, An understanding of teaching within the field of religious education is hampered by this failure to get beyond the moral dilemma which people sense in all teaching. My intention in this chapter is to clarify the meaning of "to teach" and indicate how this meaning opens up the area of religious education. These possibilities for religious education will be filled out in the chapters of Part II. We need an adequate meaning of teaching to discuss religious education, while in turn the practice of religious education can throw considerable light on how the modern world has painted itself into a corner with an inadequate meaning of teaching. THE MORAL DILEMMA OF TEACHING In the literature of moral education, there is a common skepticism that anyone can teach morality, justice, or virtue. A dilemma thereby arises regarding the contribution of the teacher. Moral education is placed in the school, but schoolteachers are cautioned against trying to teach morality. Although this discussion in the literature of moral education is not the dilemma I am referring to in this chapter, it is a symptom or illustration of the dilemma. The problem in the first place is not whether one can teach morality but whether one can teach morally. Is it morally desirable to try to teach anything? From numerous examples that could be cited, I choose the following three quotations to illustrate the problem.
These three quotations indicate not only a preference for learning over teaching; they imply that teaching is one of the great obstacles to learning. Carl Rogers pits teaching against learning as if they were contradictories. This quotation is fairly typical of what is found throughout adult education literature where the verb "to teach" is avoided as much as possible on the assumption that it refers to childish dependence. That assumption is clearly at work in the second quotation where Philip Jackson accepts the fact that teaching is a necessity for children. The best one can hope for is to shorten the time in which "students are dutifully servile to their teachers." The most remarkable thing about the Jackson quotation is the author's claim that this thoroughly negative view of the meaning of "to teach" is held by both sides in educational debates. The third quotation makes a similar assumption within a church context. Leonardo Boff thinks it desirable that everyone be a disciple (learner) to all but that no one be a teacher. The context of this strange ideal is indicated in Boff's following sentence about bishops speaking only when called upon. What these three quotations share is an image of teachers and teaching in which one person exercises powerful control over others. Its chief embodiment in the modern world is a classroom. More important than the room is the assumption that the one who is teaching is a powerful adult and that the student is a child or someone who is treated like a, child. Teaching becomes confused with a certain arrangement of power (one of great inequality); in addition, the coercive influence is exercised mainly or exclusively through words. The above three quotations assume this single form of education. I wish to argue that this form of education is not the only form. Indeed, far from providing the prototype to understand teaching, it is the most peculiar and paradoxical kind of teaching. Unless teaching of the kind that is found in classrooms has a wider context of teaching, then classroom teaching can indeed become as negative and coercive as the above quotations suggest. Writers on teaching are presumably aware that one should not equate teaching with classroom instruction. But strangely enough, most writing on teaching gives a preliminary bow to that fact and then proceeds to discuss the activities of the modern professional schoolteacher as the meaning of teaching. For example, at the beginning of Philip Jackson's The Practice of Teaching the author writes: "Among the first things to note is how many kinds of teachers there are. Leaving aside the large number of nonprofessional teachers (most parents, for example), we are still left with an impressive variety of types, the major ones well known. 1'4Within a sentence that is calling attention to the many kinds of teaching, Jackson dismisses without comment most of the teaching in the world. All of these nonprofessionals are not heard of again after this parenthetical reference on page three. If the book's title were The Profession of Schoolteacher instead of The Practice of Teaching this attitude might be justified. But even then the professional schoolteacher may need parents and others for a meaning of teaching that does not issue in the moral dilemma of keeping students "dutifully servile" for even one day. THE MEANING OF THE VERB "TO TEACH" My criticism in the above section is that these writers assume that "to teach" means that powerful people tell powerless people what to think. Is that the meaning of the act of teaching? I cannot deny that the verb "to teach" can have that meaning. In ordinary conversation; many people assume that teaching consists of big people telling little people what to believe. And, in fact, sometimes powerful people know something, convey it in speech, and it is received by powerless or dependent people. On the whole, however, this meaning of teaching is remarkably unimaginative, and it is shocking to see writing on education that simply acquiesces in this meaning. If this is assumed 'to be the whole meaning of "to teach," then it is almost certain to corrupt the relation between teacher and student. This corruption is the reason for the ambivalence expressed about teaching in quotations such as the above, an ambivalence that ranges from mild suspicion to total opposition. Although we must acknowledge a common usage of the day in asking the meaning of any term, that is only the beginning of the search. In chapter 1 I said that we must look to both a history of the term and a geography of its usage. The image connected with teaching has not always been the professional schoolteacher. Teaching has included a wide range of people doing a variety of things in diverse settings with various groups. Furthermore, to this day teaching has retained other and wider meanings than the classroom instruction of children. I have noted that most books on teaching acknowledge this fact only to dismiss it. My intention in this chapter is simply to pay attention to the long past and the wide present of teaching. Etymology is always of some help in tracing the meaning of a term. The root meaning of "to teach" is "to show how." I begin with the fact that "to teach" in the past and in the present means to show someone how to do something. Everyone is in fact familiar with this meaning and ordinary usage recognizes that each human being can and does teach on occasion. In the Boff quotation above, one group (bishops) were denied the act of teaching so that everyone could be a learner. That is one way to make the point but not a very effective way. The way to avoid coercion by one group calling itself "the teachers" is to have everyone engage in teaching. That requires some imagination about how various people teach and the fact that teaching does not only mean making pronouncements of truth, The only way to safeguard learning is to widen the meaning of teaching. Teaching is an act performed by every human being-at the least every human being. It is debatable whether the word should be extended to the non-human world. Like the word "community," "teaching" is a central characteristic of the human animal. The humans are communal animals and teaching animals. However, the line' around the human should not be totally exclusive. Human beings might learn some things about teaching by studying complex non-human animals. The gift of teaching is what complex beings do when they show someone (human or otherwise) how to do something. This description of teaching has no essential connection to children. Teaching can clearly be distinguished from the relation between adults and children. And as to coercive power that may be exercised by adults over children, teaching far from being the same thing is the main alternative. How does one avoid having children be "dutifully servile" to adults? By teaching them. I am not inventing some strange new idea. What I am saying is patent to any intelligent parent. The relation of teaching and learning is a cooperation in power that leads in the direction of mutuality. I would not, therefore, wish to go so far as Peter Elbow, who in discussing the powerful sexual feelings that are present in most serious teaching, writes; "When the sexuality of teaching is more generally felt and admitted, we may finally draw the obvious moral: It is a practice that should only be performed upon the persons of consenting I am doubtful that Elbow really wishes to exclude children from all teaching. However, his statement provides an interesting shift in perspective. If we were to begin with the assumption that teaching is usually a relation between adults, that teaching as a fully realized activity is directed by an adult toward an adult, then we would be more sensitive as to how those who have less power enter into this exchange. We would examine the peculiar position of children in teaching situations rather than just assume it. The problem with most books on teaching is not that they are about children. Rather, it is that the writing is about children of a certain age and in a certain setting. Books on teaching have much to say about thirteen-year-old schoolchildren, but little to say of thirteen-month-old children with their mothers. Children should occupy an important part in any theorizing about teaching, especially children under the age of five years old. The basic meaning of teaching has to be tested out against the very vulnerable, those who may not be able to understand explanations. If one assumes, as so often happens, that to teach means to present documentary evidence to support rational explanations, then most of the human race's teaching simply disappears. But if "to teach" is "to show someone how to do something," then that can include infants, some non-human animals, and people who are severely handicapped. It is these groups that challenge both the theory and practice of teaching. If we were to reflect on the difficulties of teaching infants or people with severe disablements, we might take a more imaginative approach when presenting documentary evidence to planations. If we were attentive to these vulnerable groups, we would notice that "to show someone how to do something" is mostly a nonverbal activity. Showing is done through various gestures and symbols. These means of communication might be called "language," but it is not a verbal language. And the speech that first emerges is not rational support rational ex-discourse. For example, in showing a child how to put food on a spoon, there is little to explain in words although some soothing and encouraging words can be helpful. In teaching a dog to do tricks, words play a small but crucial part; the tone of the command is usually more important than the content of the statement. I would suggest that the most helpful metaphor for the place of speech in teaching is choreography; that is, in most teaching human speech has the modest role of indicating how the body is to move. The learner of dance (bicycle riding, swimming, cooking, sewing, and so forth) receives precise directions. General guidelines or democratic discussions are no help here. The teacher says: Hold your leg this way, raise your arm two inches, press the pedal now, add one clove of garlic after the onions. Human beings use speech for many other reasons than choreographed instruction. Speech can be viewed as the center of bodily life. Insofar as teaching is directed toward the learning of something that the body does, speech can be the object of teaching because speaking is a human activity. In other words, one could ask about the choreographing of speech. There can be teaching in which speech becomes the focal point of the teaching. The great danger as speech comes to center stage is that the rest of bodily life may be neglected. Speech can never replace the body; it draws its power by being situated at the center of bodily life. It is particularly at this point that the moral problem of teaching emerges. When one teaches physical skills to a child there is continuity between the acts of teaching and learning, The teacher and the learner are engaged in one complex activity; they experience success or failure together. Running down the street with a child learning to ride a bicycle has its frustrations, but there is usually no problem about moral consent. The teacher's evidence that the child wishes to learn is the presenting of the body to the teacher and the willingness to try again after failing. The teacher is trying to teach and the teaching is just what the learner is struggling to get. Philip Jackson, employing a distinction of Gilbert Ryle's, notes that there are "task verbs" and "achievement verbs" (kicking vs. scoring; treating vs. healing). Jackson then writes: "Teaching, as luck would have it, has come to be used in both senses."6 I think that luck has little to do with it. Teaching is used in this double sense because in most acts of teaching, the task of teaching and the achievement of the teaching are continuous within one act. It is only when speech begins to be separated from the body that the question can be raised: Is there teaching when there is no learning? Can the teacher be kicking but not scoring? The question often means "can someone be talking and no one listening," the answer to which is obvious enough. Important forms of teaching that concentrate on speech itself as the object of teaching are unavoidable. But before a teacher begins to teach by largely isolating speech, he or she had better ask; Why are these people sitting (standing, lying) in front of me? What kind of license to speak have they given me by their presence? How does anything I say relate to their bodies? The response to such questions involves distinguishing different kinds of speech. The particular basis on which an individual or group appears before a teacher signifies a moral consent to a particular form of discourse. Sometimes this consent is blurred when people are confused about the nature of the institution or the assembly they are in. Sometimes outside pressure on an individual distorts what seems to be the consent; then the moral problem is the pressure rather than the teaching. A well-known speaker in the 1960s used to say; "The only thing you can be sure of when you see children in school is that they prefer that to jail." The situation has not changed dramatically since then; children are still required by law to be in school. Even changing the law would not automatically relieve the pressure. Our society has a problem of what to do with many children who do not wish to be in school and who resist being taught. It is obvious that this creates terrible problems for the professional schoolteacher of the young. But much of the discussion of teaching is really concerned with how one keeps people contented who do not wish to be taught. Sympathizing with the schoolteachers of six- to sixteen-year-olds, we ought to give whatever help we can in dealing with social and political problems of schools for children. However, we do no one any good by neglecting to explore the full meaning of "to teach" and the issue of moral consent that is inherent to acts of teaching in which speech is central. FORMS OF SPEECH IN TEACHING There are innumerable ways to classify forms of speech. For my purpose .in this chapter, I wish to begin with a single, stark contrast of two modes of speech. After that, I will introduce a third form of speech that is on a different level than are the first two. As I have already indicated, speech becomes a moral problem in the act of teaching insofar as speech moves away from a choreographic role and becomes the dance itself. What are the moral limits to speech when a teacher begins to teach in a way that is centered on speech? I wish to describe two ways of speaking that I call homiletic and therapeutic. The two are opposites in many respects, but each has its appropriate setting. The most obvious example of homiletic speech is a church sermon; the best known example of therapeutic speech in the twentieth century is the work of the professional psychotherapist. However, I am using both homiletic and therapeutic as ways of speaking that include more than the minister's pulpit on one side and the psychotherapist's couch on the other side.
In the therapeutic situation, there are likely to be texts buried deeply in the psyche. The individual has in one sense "accepted" the text although he or she may not have freely assented to the belief. A person may carry a burden of guilt because at some level he or she believes that to break a particular rule means that "my mother will no longer love me" or "God will punish me." Conflicts arise in society because of prejudices (pre judgments) that "all Jews are " or "all officials of this institution are my father," therapeutic speech tries to get us to come to terms with our personal and collective conflicts. We need healing within the person and between groups of people. But therapeutic speech has to be a very peculiar form of speech if it is to be effective. It is trying to subvert speech or at least subvert particular texts that are not evident. It cannot go directly at its object as homiletic speech can. Whereas homiletic speech tends to flow in a rushing stream, therapeutic speech often has more silence than sound. It tends toward the minimalist: "Yes, go on." While both the homiletic and therapeutic are personal exchanges, in the homily the preacher does nearly all the talking (except perhaps fur an occasional "amen"), in therapy the client does most of the talking. The process of talking can itself be therapeutic, unearthing hidden texts, allowing them to play in consciousness and gradually bringing them into a healing experience. I am not restricting the meaning of therapeutic to the one image of the psychiatrist listening to the client on the couch in the doctor's office. Professional treatment can involve many techniques, and the treatment of groups just individuals. Therapy can include a more aggressive method in which. the individual screams and shouts or, especially with children, much play and acting out of roles. The individual's treatment may be set in a structural context of family or group therapy. The therapist does not peer into the soul of the one labeled sick but looks for the illness and the potential healing in the pattern of personal interactions. Far from contradicting what I have said about therapeutic speech, all this variety further illustrates the peculiarity of the therapeutic. It always refrains from pronouncing on how the world ought to be; in fact, it is intent on upsetting all pronouncements about everything. Therapeutic speech is speech that is distrustful of speech and therefore keeps calling attention to the roots of speech. Human speech separates the humans from the other animals; speech is a sign of tragic separation. It is also, of course, the source of human greatness. In addition to all forms of professional therapy, I refer to the therapeutic as a way of speaking that is found everywhere, While the homiletic is constantly attacked, the therapeutic is seldom criticized. Unfortunately, to be exempt from nearly all criticism is not the most healthful state to be in. If a writer says that all human relations are either violent or therapeutic, then there is not much choice for those who abhor violence. However, in talking about forms of discourse I am suggesting that other contrasts are possible and important. A number of writers since the 1960s have raised the issue of whether our culture is surfeited with therapeutic speech. Philip Rief was one of the first to enunciate this thesis in The Triumph of the Therapeutic.7 In those situations where people need healing words, the therapeutic is appropriate. One uses speech to soothe, to relieve feelings of anger, guilt, or sorrow. When one goes to a funeral it is customary to say whatever will express affection and sympathy; from peculiar customs like "he (the corpse) looks very natural"-despite being in the casket-to "he (the deceased) was a good man"-despite everyone knowing he was a bit of a scoundrel. In therapeutic speech we temporarily suspend some of our intellectual, aesthetic, and moral standards for the sake of feelings of reconciliation. In therapeutic speech the aim is not achieving an object of choice but reestablishing the ability to choose. Similar to what was said of the homiletic, a school should not be lacking in the therapeutic. A school (the system, the place, the community) can be a place of healing and reconciliation; occasionally it has to be (for example, when there is a student suicide or when the Challenger spaceship blew up before the eyes of millions of schoolchildren). Schools regularly offer therapeutic service in personal counseling. As with the homiletic, the classroom is the specialized setting where therapy is not at center stage. Schoolteachers are often called upon to say soothing things to students, but if that were all the schoolteacher did in the classroom it would not be school teaching or class instruction. What worried Rief and has concerned many critics since is that classrooms turn into "bull sessions" in which everyone shares his or her uninformed opinion.' Everyone politely tolerates everyone else's opinion because it is assumed that there is no right or wrong opinion. It is considered less important that truth be insisted upon than that everyone feel better at the end of the discussion. In summary, therapeutic speech is a peculiar form of speech which undercuts the striving after external goods. At times it is refreshing and liberating; at some moments of life it is an urgent necessity. The danger is in having too much of a good thing, or rather, a good thing in the wrong place. If therapy pervades politics, religion, and academia, then the invaluable resource of speech for human purposes can become clouded. Schools no longer have standards of intellectual excellence; politicians do little except pander to the masses. Almost everyone realizes that it would be immoral for a therapist to preach at a client ("That's terrible; don't ever do that again"). It is seldom noted that a preacher who makes people feel complacent and self-satisfied is also acting immorally Sometimes cases of the latter are not immediately evident. Certain television evangelists, for all of their preaching on sin, punishment, and hell fire, use a therapeutic form of speech. They assert that forces outside the congregation (Jews, Catholics, feminists, gays, or whoever) are the source of evil; the congregants can find salvation simply by saying "Jesus is my savior." The effect is a premature reconciliation that leaves out most of the world. ACADEMIC INSTRUCTION The third form of speech for teaching is not along the spectrum of homiletic/therapeutic. As figure 3 indicates, the academic overlaps the previous two but is not a simple combination of them. The homiletic and the therapeutic mediate communal/ bodily life to the academic which is, so to speak, one step removed from ordinary life. Since the academic is not in immediate contact with life on the street, it is always threatened with vacuity. Indeed, to say that a point is "academic" is for many people a way of dismissing its seriousness or even its reality. Preachers are thought of as irritants but academics are considered irrelevant. Often, one hears schoolteachers join in this disparagement of the academic by contrasting the classroom and "real life." But who defines real life? Business executives, military officers, and cynical politicians? The school setting is a peculiar and artificial world outside ordinary patterns of sleeping, eating, walking, earning money, cleaning house, and putting out the cat. It is not, however, outside the real world. Academic discourse has the important job of examining speech itself in all aspects of reality. The usual place to find academic discourse is in the world of the school. Like the homiletic and therapeutic, the academic is found in more than one institutional setting. Many books, including this one, use an academic form of discourse. Discussions between colleagues and even between friends may get into questioning the meaning of terms arid the presuppositions of arguments. However, academic speech requires a stringent set of conditions that may be difficult to establish outside the school. As I have indicated, the homiletic and therapeutic get into schools (where they do have a legitimate place), but they may absorb the main classroom activity if the academic teacher does not resist or is unclear about an alternative. The confusion of many academics becomes more evident the closer they get to questions of morality. Harold Howe II in an article entitled "Can Schools Teach Values?" writes: "My wife . . . told me as I was preparing to write this article, 'Remember that you can't preach to kids. Either they won't listen, or if they do, they won't believe you.' I am inclined to agree with her.. In my opinion there is a limited return on the direct teaching of ethical principles."' Howe follows the advice of his wife (who is a guidance counselor) and spends most of the essay dealing with warm, personal relations. The amazing thing is that Howe here equates preaching with "the direct teaching of ethical principles." And since he feels that preaching is hopelessly ineffective, the only alternative is warm, personal relations, that is, therapeutic discourse. Both the homiletic and the therapeutic are peculiar forms of speech in which words are attended to at the seeming expense of bodily life. Of course, in these two forms bodily life is not far removed from the discourse; external activity and inner healing are respectively the immediate contexts. Academic speech pushes the paradox one step further. Speech is a given; it occupies not only the center but practically the whole stage. Academic speech neither affirms nor subverts texts; its aim is to talk about the nature of texts and the meaning of particular texts. Thus, it has to turn speech back on itself, creating a contortion of everyday speech. Academic speech is speech about speech. Nothing is more depressing for a person who is speaking academically than to be asked: "But aren't you just talking about words?" If a person is not prepared for academic discourse the question is understandable. Too much of the academic, especially too early in life, can obstruct the release of the power that academic speech contains. Academic speech overlaps both the homiletic and the therapeutic in their relating of text and community. The homilist says: "We must believe and act upon the agreed text"; the therapist says: "We must be freed from a text that dominates us without our choice." The academic teacher says: "Accept no text uncritically; it might be false. Reject no text uncritically; it might be true." Academic life does not require that a community have agreed texts; it does require some knowledge of texts that are part of the community's life. In most Western countries the Bible is a text or texts that form part of the basis for academic inquiry; that is true irrespective of whether there are any practicing Jews or Christians. Similarly, Greek philosophers, Renaissance artists, modern scientists, and British political theorists provide material for academic examination. The fact that much of the literature is affected with sexist, racist, antisemitic, anti-gay attitudes is not a reason for excluding it from schools. The point of academically teaching such literature is not to get students to believe what Plato, Machiavelli, Kant, or Mill believed; the point is to understand what has shaped our lives together, seeing texts in all their power and limitations. Of course, schools tend to set up a "canon" of accepted writers. It is therefore necessary to ask who is doing the deciding today about which writers are important for understanding the past. Academic discourse is highly directive in one way, completely non-directive in another. Academic speech can be as passionate as preaching in its urging of change, but the passion is directed at the words themselves. Beyond linguistic advocacy, academic speech is as non-directive as the speech of the therapist. The peculiar key here is "instruction," a word that calls us back to the body. Instruction is a word used for physical activities. One instructs in swimming, cooking, typing, or kicking a ball. Interestingly, the word returns in the rarified' atmosphere of the academic; the word that commonly follows the adjective "academic" is the noun "instruction." Academic instruction is not democratic group discussion but a use of speech that is precise and directive. What saves academic speech from being authoritarian is that the speech bends back on speech. It does not tell people what to think; it is an invitation to examine their ways of speaking. As a classroom instructor, I ask students to place their words on a table between us; the words include their own personal speech as well as assigned readings. In a classroom, every text except one is subject to criticism. That one agreed-upon text, the agreement signified by walking into the classroom, is a procedural statement. We agree ?,. the value of civility, tolerance, and discourse that is not abusive. My task is to convince them that there are better ways to speak than the ways they now have. What "better" means is, of course, part of what needs discussing and is open to revision from the side of the teacher as well as the student. Since the immediate topic is speech and not the. beliefs of the student, there is always some room for the student to step back. I would not attempt to go directly at either the thoughts or the feelings of a student. The major resources that the academic teacher has for the task are history and geography, Other people have thought about these issues of physics, mathematics, history, or morality. No one's opinion is to be uncritically accepted as the truth; every statement of belief can be improved upon. Neither is a minority view automatically rejected as false; there probably is a kernel of truth in every widely held belief. Academic discourse is neither interested speech (in the sense of self-serving) nor uninterested speech (in the sense of bored detachment). It is disinterested speech insofar as human beings are capable of temporarily suspending their involvements and convictions for the sake of examining assumptions, contexts, and personal blindspots. TEACHING IN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION The distinctions concerning teaching in this chapter make possible a richer discussion of the nature of religious education. The next three chapters are needed to play out the discussion of religious education in U.K. and U.S., in schools and other educational forms, in state schools and religiously affiliated schools, in the school and the classroom. Nonetheless, it might be helpful to draw some conclusions at this point so as to provide a framework for the multi-pole conversation. The distinctions of this chapter are subject to revision in the subsequent chapters, but the following three conclusions are immediate and general applications to the area of religious education.
Christianity began with a preacher and quickly issued in a book that became the basis of later reforms. The Christian church developed the sermon as an art form, and it still dominates Christian discourse, not only in the pulpit but in theology books and in documents of the Vatican or the World Council of Churches. Buddhism, in stark contrast, began with the silent one who was moved by compassion to search for the roots of suffering. Speech is used to get free of the illusions of concepts, selfhood, and speech itself. This contrast of emphasis is not mutual exclusiveness. In practice, Buddhists and Christians use a variety of speech forms that overlap (for example, parable and epigram). Even if we just stay with homiletic/therapeutic as the categories, Buddhists and Christians are not totally different. Christians are not always preaching. They teach by various silent gestures and symbols, as well as by non-homiletic discourse. To confess one's sins belongs with the therapeutic rather than the homiletic. Even more so, a funeral rite, although it may include a homily, is directed toward reconciliation and inward healing. On the Buddhist side, a homiletic dimension is usually present. Storytelling, as I have noted, can be seen as a homiletic form. There have been stories and sayings of the Buddha from the beginning of the religion. And within some parts of Buddhism, the homiletic is quite prominent. In a twentieth-century group such as Won Buddhism, most of the "canonical book" consists of sermons by the founder."' 3. A proper object for the activity of academic instruction is religion; a teacher can (academically) teach religion. One preaches the Christian message, but one academically teaches religion. Religion as used in this context is one step removed from ordinary life. The academic instructor steps back from the practice of Christian, Buddhist, or other religious life so as to examine the discourse of Christians, Buddhists, and others. The question is often asked in religious circles: "Does religion belong in the classroom?" The answer to that question is: Religion was, so to speak, invented for the classroom; that is surely one place that it does belong. Religion is the name for that one level abstraction from the actual ways that religious people live. Religion is the modern name for an academic subject that fits next to economics, sociology, anthropology, and the like. Someone who is going to teach religion has to know the texts of one, and preferably more than one, religious group. At least indirectly, that knowledge presumes entrance into religious activities such as meditation, confession of sins, or reception of communion. I emphasize that one's acquaintance need not be by direct participation in religious practice. A direct experience and personal involvement should not prevent someone from teaching religion; neither should that be a precondition of such teaching. Teaching religion requires that one knows the texts as part of some communal tradition. As is true with reference to all academic instruction, one does not have to agree with the texts or pronounce them true. One only has to agree to the importance of the texts and the value of examining their meaning. And as in history, science, or art, the academic inquiry is suspicious of all canons that establish orthodoxy. A religion teacher in refusing to be orthodox does not become heretical. Academic discourse is simply on a different wave length. I have offered that the proper object of "academically instruct" is "religion." Is it possible to replace "religion" with Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, and so forth? The answer probably varies according to the rough-edged meaning of each of these abstractions. That is, before one asks about teaching Hinduism, one has to wonder whether "Hinduism" is really the name of a discernible object or whether it is shorthand for a great range of things. However, if one takes the example of Christianity, the question is probably a manageable one. Despite the variations within the category and endless debate about Christianity's true form, it is nevertheless intelligible to ask: "Can one teach Christianity?" Insofar as "Christianity" is an abstract term coined by academics, the answer is "yes"; one can instruct in an academic subject named Christianity. Of course, the phrase "teach Christianity" is often understood differently, namely, as Christians teaching Christians how to live Christianly, But this latter meaning actually conflicts with both the idea of academic instruction and "Christianity," the general name for particular ways of being Christian, If Christians wish to teach their own how to live a Christian life, they will need a far more specific form of teaching than someone teaching Christianity. A question that must be addressed in later chapters is whether the teaching of Christianity in an academic setting requires the presence of other objects that end in ity or ism. That is, if there is no comparison to other religions, will teaching Christianity as an example of teaching religion inevitably slide toward preaching the Christian message. Without passing final judgment here, I would just note that maintaining an academic language is usually helped by teaching more than one religion, at least within a department if not always within each course. The topic of religion best fits within an academic department that in most of the English-speaking world today is called "religious studies." I conclude the first part of this book with a comprehensive diagram that opens the discussion of religious education to its many possible settings and languages. There seems to be no good reason for excluding either A or B from the meaning of religious education. And there seems to be good reason for keeping the two as distinct though related within a full meaning of religious education; the two depend on each other, at least indirectly. This religious education has existed only inchoately up to the present but it is needed for the future. The most confusing thing in the above diagram is that school shows up in both A and B. Thus, it will not be enough to refer to the school's part in religious education; further distinctions are needed. Furthermore, within B there are two kinds of schools indicated. Some people seem to think that a religiously affiliated school is incapable of teaching (academically instructing in) religion. But it would seem cavalier to dismiss such schools without even considering what some of them are trying to do. My diagram is not a theory to be imposed on what follows in Part II. It is an interpretive framework for listening to discussions in the English-speaking world about the nature of religious education. NOTES
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