BLOG 6: Religious literacies within the classroom?

In this blog I will be talking about Skerrett’s article Religious literacies in a secular literacy classroom. In this article Skerrett observed how a teacher engaged her students “Christian religious literacies”, engaged in their own religious literacies, and what were the outcomes? But does religion belong in the average classroom?

Skerrett states that students were able to include religious literacies to analyze and understand secular litereature and produceing academic writings. However, I have a rather different opinion on using religion in the classroom. While Skerrett mentions the way religious literacies can benefit the classroom, I do not agree. Skerrett talks about previously bringing in religious texts to increase literacy competancy, I feel as if this does not benefit students present day. Bringing religion into a classroom is problematic and has no real place in an secular classroom. As teachers we want our students to feel comfortable in the classroom and we want our classrooms to serve as a safe space for ALL students. Following this, each of our students will be vastly different from each other in numerous aspects, beliefs, cultures, ways of learning, height, etc. In education we tend not to say phrases like “mom and dad” we try and change them to family, “bring this paper home to your family”. I believe we should refrain from talking about religion in classrooms for the same reason, many students will have different beliefs and while Skerrett speciifcally focuses on Christianity I don’t see any real benefits in bringing it into a secular classroom.

An claim made in favor of this was to have students see themselves in curriculum, many students have different beliefs this would be problematic. Student’s are able to see themselves in a variety of ways, such as cultural readings. Overall I do not think religion should be in schools, unless it is specifically a religion class or catholic school, etc.

Skerrett, A. (2014). Religious literacies in a secular literacy classroom. Reading Research Quarterly, 49(2), 233-250.