Many college students are interested in spirituality and the “big questions” about life’s meaning and values, but many professors seem not to know how to respond to that interest.
According to a 2004 study of more than 112,000 first-year students at 236 institutions by the Higher Education Research Institute, incoming freshmen “place great value on their college enhancing their self-understanding, helping them develop personal values, and encouraging their expression of spirituality.” Yet when the researchers queried a sample of college juniors, 62 percent reported that their professors never encouraged discussions of spirituality or religion, and more than half said their professors never provided opportunities to discuss the meaning of life.
My own conversations with faculty members reveal that they often are not sure what is appropriate. Where is the boundary between church and state? When might a professor unwittingly appear to be pressuring students toward a particular religious or spiritual stance? How does he or she avoid taking on the role of counselor or pastor?
I recently studied general-education introductory courses in religion (including religious studies, Biblical studies, and theology), at a variety of public, private nonsectarian, and religiously affiliated colleges across the country. I gathered survey data from 533 classes, and more-extensive qualitative data from 66 classes whose teachers had been recommended by their department chairs as “highly effective.” And I found a group of professors who are managing issues of spirituality and belief with considerable skill, using pedagogical strategies that can be useful to faculty members in many other fields.
One might immediately object that religion classes are different. Aren’t those professors indoctrinating students, conducting a version of Sunday school, or allowing wallows of feeling in the classroom? I found the opposite. Religious studies has had to fight such stereotypes to gain a foothold in academe. The religion-faculty members with whom I have worked are, if anything, more careful than other humanities professors I’ve known about observing appropriate boundaries between inviting students to consider new ideas and pressuring them to accept a particular position. I have found powerful learning in religion classes.
Through my research, I have also found that students begin classes with misconceptions. Sometimes they believe that the class will resemble religious instruction in their mosque, Sunday school, or temple. They tend to think that religion is purely a matter of feeling, impervious to reason and evidence, and that critical thinking is dangerous or evil when applied to their own beliefs. They also often assume that the beliefs of their religious communities are right and others automatically wrong, and that religious thinking is a matter of personal preference and no valid arguments can be made for one position over another. Or they expect that students will be obliged to agree with the teacher’s point of view or think that a student’s duty is to evangelize his or her classmates. Instead of avoiding all those issues, highly effective religion-faculty members deal with them, using a number of strategies that can be applied across disciplines.
The first strategy is to clarify with students that the course is an academic enterprise, not religious instruction. One faculty member who teaches Islam, Judaism, and Christianity at an institution affiliated with a Protestant denomination, wrote, “I was more likely in many instances to argue for the attractiveness of Judaism or Islam over the Christian tradition.”
Although effective faculty members are careful to distinguish the academic environment from religious instruction, they also deliberately ask students to confront the “big questions.” But instead of giving answers, they help students develop tools to deal with those questions.
Such tools are what people broadly call “critical thinking": the use of evidence and reason to reach conclusions and to formulate and critique arguments, as well as continuing analysis of the cultural, historic, economic, sociological, political, ideological, and other aspects of religious beliefs, texts, and practices. Effective faculty members also welcome multiple perspectives, are open to new ideas and viewpoints, and are able to distance themselves from their own backgrounds and beliefs.
Yet, at the same time, they recognize that critical-thinking tools are themselves values, not absolutes. To acknowledge their classrooms as value-laden sites, they often delineate the territory of critical thinking from other territories students may inhabit — those in which nonrational methods such as prayer, mystical visions, ritual, or authority may be viewed as valid ways of knowing.
Some professors I studied keep their own spiritual journeys entirely private, or share them with students only in private spaces. But other faculty members, especially in religiously affiliated institutions, discuss with students in class their own beliefs that the worlds of prayer, vision, and communal faith are not inimical to the world of critical thinking; that the worlds can be integrated; and that critical thinking does not necessarily lead to an atheistic stance but could deepen and enrich any spiritual journey.
In addition, faculty members structure assignments and discussions so that students have a chance to bring critical thinking directly into relationship with their own experiences and beliefs. The professors accomplish that through:
Explicit instructions that lead students into a discipline-based approach to their views. For example, one professor at a public university asks students to visit a religious site unfamiliar to them. The faculty member does not allow students simply to emote about how strange everything is, merely to contrast superficial aspects of their own religion with the unfamiliar religion, or to ask tourist-style questions. Instead, the professor carefully guides students through a specific process of inquiry.
First, students are to note what aspects of the religious situation surprise them or make them feel uncomfortable. Then they are to explore the sources of their own reactions and biases. Finally, they are to frame questions that allow them to bring together course material, their own knowledge, and the new situation.
For example, a Hindu student attending a Catholic mass reported that he was puzzled by the refrain “the Word of the Lord.” He asked what people really mean by that phrase and compared the refrain to certain practices in his own religious tradition. He used one of the class’s theoretical readings to explore how religious “truths” are shaped by communal belief and how language functions in that process. He concluded that Catholicism and Hinduism, despite many differences, share some similarities in the ways language and community are used to shape belief.
Class discussions based on questions. One faculty member in the theology department of a Catholic university, for example, teaches a course titled “Ultimate Questions.” With each chapter of the text, she distributes a set of such questions to be discussed within small groups in the class — for example, “Do the criticisms of Freud and Marx apply to the religions you know?” The phrasing of her question lets students separate religions they are familiar with from what they personally believe; thus they can self-reveal to whatever extent is comfortable for them. Effective professors invite student questions for communal inquiry, not for some “right” answer.
Student autobiographies — and teaching students to apply theoretical frames to their personal experiences. A professor at a religiously affiliated college asks students to answer for themselves in a journal questions like: “You cannot eliminate old age, sickness, and death, but perhaps you have the capacity to do something which would alleviate the suffering in your own life and even make you happy. What could you do on your own to improve your life in this way?” The question invites students to speculate what one perhaps could do, leaving students to self-reveal to the extent that they wish. The faculty member then teaches Buddhism as one way of answering that question.
Through such pedagogical strategies, faculty members create an environment in which many students experience transforming growth and change. Among all 533 classes I studied, about two-thirds of the students reported progress on “analyzing and critically evaluating ideas.” About three-fourths of the students reported progress in developing their own values.
Beyond gaining critical-thinking strategies, students also learn to consider the historical and rhetorical contexts of sacred texts. They learn to question and to conduct research to answer their questions. They gain knowledge about viewpoints not their own, becoming less judgmental and more open-minded. And they discover new avenues for approaching their beliefs. At a private, nonsectarian college, a student wrote, “Although, when all is said and done, I’m still an agnostic ... with the breadth of work we’ve read on understanding of God ... particularly with the two female/feminist theologians we’ve read, I’ve found new ideas and metaphors that help me clarify my thinking.”
My study suggests to colleges and to faculty members at all types of institutions: There are ways to encourage students’ integration of critical thinking with their own big questions. Those ways can and will help them find their values and nurture their spiritual journeys in a world that increasingly needs their leadership.
Barbara E. Walvoord is an emerita professor of English at the University of Notre Dame. Her book Teaching and Learning in College Introductory Religion Courses was published this year by Blackwell.
http://chronicle.com Section: Commentary Volume 54, Issue 49, Page A22