Craig S. Engelhardt

Education Reform: Confronting the Secular Ideal Craig S. Engelhardt

Education Reform challenges "secular education" as a failed educational paradigm and proposes an alternate paradigm with far-reaching potential. It reveals how secular schools have insufficient resources to support the public's educational interests. Further, it reveals how religious schools, within a plural public education system, have the superior capacity to nurture citizens with the moral, intellectual, and civic qualities of good citizenship. The fulcrum upon which Engelhardt's argument rests is the recognition that beliefs and values of a religious nature not only provide motivating frameworks for individual life, but also, they naturally provide core sources of meaning, understanding, and motivation for education. Whereas secular schools avoid these ideological resources, they potentially suffuse the curriculum, climate, and community of "religious" schools to increase their educational success. Thus, this book argues that the move to a plural public education system, in which families are free to choose publicly supportive "religious" schools, will advance the educational interests of America. The argument of this book is developed in three parts. The first entails a multi-chapter analysis of education history to discern the relationship between religion and the public's education goals. By tracing ways in which "religion" is a key resource for curricular meaning, parent buy-in, rational thought, individual morality, public unity, and academic inspiration, it correlates school secularization with many of our education problems. Part two engages criticisms that may arise from the proposal to reform the secular education model¬-such as concerns regarding autonomy, skills of deliberation, equity, and public cohesion. Finally, part three illumines superior ways in which religious schools can address the public's educational concerns. It ends by proposing ideas and principles to guide the development of an American plural public education system that allows the public to draw from the strengths of religious schools without secularizing them in the process.