The eight-week course titled Religious Diversity and Education offered online at Oklahoma State University was crucial in furthering my understanding of religion in schools and education systems. Throughout the course, my ideas and beliefs have been challenged. I have been encouraged to dig deeper into these concepts and cultivate new understandings and build upon existing ones. At the core of the curriculum lies an overarching question: what is religion’s place in public education systems? To understand the question, it is important to build a background. At the beginning of the course, I began learning about religion and its role in education. Growing up in a small, rural, primarily Christian community in south central Pennsylvania, I had pondered these questions, but not …show more content…
Well, to a point, the same. Yes, teachers and other education-related employees can get into trouble for sharing too much about their personal lives with students, especially if it’s disruptive to class or the learning process, but they’re able to speak pretty freely about many things, as long as they don’t cross the line of discriminatory or immoral. At the end of the day, I think humans will be humans. Humans are opinionated, some much more than others. I personally think it’s one of the most important aspects of life, the sharing of opinions, because that is where the important conversations can be had. The problem lies in reception. Society, namely the strongly opinioned proponents, can struggle with listening more than they speak, and that is the key to trouble in many areas, and especially pertinent to public education and religion. Moving forward, past this class and my previous experiences regarding education and religion, I’ll remember to listen twice as much as I speak. I think if more of society followed this rule, there would be far less disagreement, discrimination, and all other evil things the tongue of man can