Sohn: Teaching world history means world, not America

Heaven forbid that we learn about different religions and their place in history – let alone their place in current events.

That seems especially true of Islam. Much in Tennessee and Georgia news over past weeks was a story about a conservative Tennessee state legislator proposing a law that would prevent public schools from teaching anything about religious principles until students reach 10th grade. A few years ago, that would have been seen as a liberal view – the separation of church and state, as in state Board of Education. After all, think of all the pregame prayers that have taken heat in years past.

But this latest controversy is not about praying; it’s about teaching world history.

The brouhaha began in Maury County after a fervor erupted from evangelical parents over what they perceive as an inappropriate focus on Islam in history and social studies courses in middle schools.

School district officials in Middle Tennessee rightfully noted that world history is hard to teach without giving students some basic understanding of religions. After all, one of the key reasons for the founding of this country was freedom of religion.

Jan Hanvey, the Maury County Public Schools middle school supervisor, told a Columbia, Tenn., reporter that telling students about the Five Pillars of Islam is a one-day segment of the seventh-grade curriculum.

“It’s part of history,” Hanvey said. “Children need to know the ‘why,’ and they need to be able to learn and know where to find the facts, instead of going by what they hear or what they see on the Internet.”

Students also study Buddhism and Hinduism, the former social studies teacher noted.

Other teachers and Tennessee education officials also have argued that courses are appropriate and based on secular fact. They acknowledge that students may learn the five pillars of Islam or read from religious texts but say the information is used to show historical context about the influence religious had on regions of the world. (After all, how do we teach about the Crusades without understanding the Christian influence behind those conquests?)

But the politically conservative Daily Caller writes: “However, it appears that Tennessee students don’t study Christianity per se. There is not, for example, one class day dedicated to the basic Jesus story.”

The Daily Caller, a news and opinion website based in Washington, D.C., was founded by Tucker Carlson, a libertarian conservative political pundit, and Neil Patel, former adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney.

The lawmaker who would ban teaching about how religious principles influence history, Rep. Sheila Butt, R-Columbia, and a Sunday School teacher, says the line between history and religious doctrine shouldn’t be hard to navigate.

“If you’re teaching the Middle East, then of course you’re going to mention the religion that was prevalent in that area,” Butt said. “But to teach the doctrine is another thing. It’s just a bill about balancing the teaching of religion in education.”

Butt said she thought students in middle school weren’t able to assess or analyze information about religion, or other subjects, in the same way as a high school student, according to a story by the Tennessean.

Well, by all means then, let’s dumb down middle school some more. Let’s not teach the basics of algebra either. After all, the Muslim world brought us algebra (complete with its Arabic name), along with ‘One Thousand and One Nights,’ and the beginnings of the Renaissance.

We have to call this what it is: Islamophobia, xenophobia, bigotry and wrongheaded.

Locally, Chattanooga religious groups recently sponsored two acclaimed scholars of Christianity and Islam to debate whether the Bible and the Quran are books of peace. The question of the debate was which holy book shows the God of peace and which book shows the God of war?

Short answer? They both do. It is up to each of us as readers, believers and students to be our own best translators and to know that we all come from one creator and we all live on this one earth – no matter how we describe that creation or what we call the creator.

Kudos to Tennessee educators (Georgia educators, too) who’ve written and adopted an excellent outline for teaching seventh grade “World History and Geography: The Middle Ages to the Exploration of the Americas.” These lesson standards do more than teach about Columbus, which was the standard for decades previously. See the new lesson outlines here (and be sure to scroll up to the 6th-grade plan to see that it deals a lot with Christianity’s influence): http://tinyurl.com/pdyg9tc.

Both the Islamic faith and the Christian faith – along with other religious, social and political influences – shaped not only the Middle Ages and the explorations that led to America, but also who we all are today.

Learning this is not just seventh-grade education – it’s also what our nation’s underpinnings and overall belief systems are all about. Shame on us for not teaching this for the past 50 years.