Religious Fundamentalism and American Education
The Battle for the Public Schools
Alternative formats available from:
Description
For the past twenty-five years, 'ultra-fundamentalist' Christians have put increasing pressure on American public education to conform exclusively with their own philosophy and vision of education and culture. Eugene Provenzo considers and addresses the impact that the fundamentalist movement has had on such issues as censorship, textbook content, Creationism versus Evolution, the family and education, school prayer, and the state regulation of Christian schools.
In exploring both sides of the debate, however, the author concludes that many fundamentalists' concerns are justified, due to a basic inconsistency between the rights guaranteed under the First Amendment and the position that many public schools have legally assumed.
Eugene F. Provenzo is Professor in the School of Education at the University of Miami, Coral Gables.
Reviews
"The general positions of contemporary religious fundamentalists have been widely publicized. What is of special value in this book is that those positions (along with responses to them by humanists, the courts, and others) have been categorized, summarized, and amply illuminated by citations from and references to a literature produced by the fundamentalist press that is not readily available. " — Arthur Brown, Wayne State University