Enlightened Heterogeneity: Religious Education Facing the Challenges of Educational Inequity

Does religious education contribute to injustice? At the least, religious education operates in a socio-political context shaped by inequality. Educational inequity is a phenomenon that affects society and schools. It is thus a matter for religious pedagogy, which is concerned with the equal dignity of all in their freedom, in the light of the theology of the image of God. Religious education has to take place normatively in the light of freedom towards freedom. This paper aims to show that in religious education, demands for educational equity have dramatically increased in the face of growing heterogeneity. The struggle for identity and justice in the intersectionality of various aspects points to the complexity of the challenges. However, it is evident that religious education cannot override social conditions. Moreover, from a praxeological perspective, religious education contributes to educational inequity and hegemonic orders of difference through mechanisms such as essentialization and othering, and thus runs the risk of becoming aporetic. The concept of Enlightened Heterogeneity developed here counteracts this, correlating identity and justice intersectionally while self-reflexively reflecting on one’s own practices.

Building Culturally Responsive Schools

Public education in the United States is built on an unstable foundation of educational inequity. Educational achievement gaps, disproportionate discipline, and fiscal disinvestment all affect the socioemotional health of youth in schools. School reform efforts must include building the socioemotional well-being of students while also targeting systems-level change. Further, a comprehensive approach that attacks multiple problems of practice simultaneously as symptoms of a systemic problem is needed. In a culturally responsive school, personnel hold in constant an awareness the existence of educational inequity; they intentionally work toward for systems level change and support the needs of the whole child. This chapter presents a comprehensive method of facilitating systems level change that is holistically addressing the school context while also supporting the whole child. Building on the five tenets of the whole child approach, the chapter provides practical recommendations for implementation while building a culturally responsive school.