Addition to my bibliography posted on the 14th.

I know I started with body image, but I believe that I moved to religious tolerance because it hits closer to home and is more politically charged. I come from a community that is ultra conservative and family oriented. The people who live there will defend their friends and family to the ends of the Earth, but if you're different or an outsider than it's a different story. I can't tell you how many articles and links I've seen on Facebook of people back home posting against President Obama -- he's not a citizen, or he's Islamic, etc. I see these posts, and I think to myself, why would it be so bad if he was Islamic, do people not realize what a beautiful religion that is? No, I don't think they know anything about Islam except what they hear on Fox News. It is sickening to me. I would not consider myself a scholar on other religions, and often I'm sad by how little I know, but I think that there are many people who know nothing and think they know all that they need too. If we are going to have a better world and a better global political climate, we're going to have to learn.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my project yet, but I want to promote religious curiosity. I want people to learn more. They don't need to be searching for a new religion. They can keep what they have; but as a humankind, we need to try to understand each other better for the good all and for the good of the individual.

What I found in my research is that religion is an extremely important part of people's lives and can cause a lot of disturbance. It is also a touchy subject, which is why most people avoid it. Like I said earlier, it is politically charged and everyone gets up in arms about it frequently. But I also learned that education can lead to increased tolerance. This made me happy and this is what I want to focus on. There are a lot of negative things in society and in our classes theoretical discussions, but I want to focus on the good and on change. I'm really excited to move forward.

If you would like to see the other research I did for the original deadline, please see the annotated bibliography posted on the 14th of October.

Austin, J. Susan. "Religion in Elementary School Social Studies: A Vehicle for Attitudinal

Change." Religious Education. no. 5 (1976): 474-487.

This study tested whether introducing curriculum in religious study in social studies classes would increase religious tolerance or not. It was effective and it did increase tolerance and decreased ethnocentrism. Sadly, I don’t think doing something this extensive would work these days. This was written in ’74. If someone did this now, it would like cause an uproar about keeping church and state separate. But it does link education to tolerance, which is an extremely important partnership

Engebretson, Kathleen. "Foundational Issues in Educating Young People for Understanding and

Appreciation of the Religions in Their Communities." Catholic Education. no. 1 (2012): 49-64..

She talked about important aspects of religious teaching that teachers should be aware of. It is difficult to teach students about other religions and tolerance if they belief their own religion to be far superior, if they are fundamental in their religion and therefore staunch believers, if the teacher doesn’t know how to broach the difficulties of history and what some religions have been a part of in the past, and where critical reasoning and judgment have a place in religious study. Religion is a hot topic, so in order to make a good difference teachers must be prepared for everything. I want to be prepared for everything.

Rosenberg, Morris. Society and the Adolescent Self-image. 1st ed. Middletown, Connecticut:

Wesleyan University Press, 1989. 64-81 Chapter 4: The Dissonant Religious Context. Print.

This chapter explored the effects of adolescents who grew up in communities of their religious peers vs. adolescents who grew up in communities where the majority was a different religion. They discovered that “children raised in a dissonant religious context have lower self-esteem than those raised in a consonant context, and that the more dissonant the context, the smaller the proportion who accept themselves.” I like this chapter because religion is a really important; well it is to me anyway. Coming from a childhood where I was in the extreme minority, I definitely think it is a factor in how kids see themselves and their social status with peers.

Schweitzer, Friedrich. "Religious individualization: new challenges to education for

tolerance." British Journal of Religious Education. no. 1 (2007): 89-100.

Though this paper is written about adolescents in Germany, it is super applicable to the United States too. He explored the common religious view of individualism. This is a more personalized form of religion where a young person make a distinction between their own faith and the faith taught by institutions. They may have a denomination and go to Church for the camaraderie of other people, but come to their own conclusions separate from the religion. Many of these youths claim to be very tolerant of other religions, but this paper finds this answer to be superficial. They are tolerant of various Christian denominations but have misguided assumptions about other religions like Islam. Friedrich proposes education as a way to help young people learn how to respect other religions. I loved this article and what it pointed out about the problems of moral relativism. I think everyone, secular, individualistic, or whole-heartedly institutional, should learn about other religions. “I am convinced that religious differences are an important dimension of many tensions and conflicts that are related to intolerance because religion and religious divisions are part of cultures deep structures.”

Wagner, Paul A., and Lillian Benavente-McEnergy. "Genuine Religious Tolerance: Is It a Thing

of the Past in Public Schools?." Interchange: A Quarterly Review of Education. no. 3 (2008): 327-349.

“Increasing numbers of people in North America today think society is approaching a perilous chasm with regards to religious tolerance… The purpose here is to show that tolerance in the search for truth, any truth – including the religious – and respect for self expression are good things.” These authors are proponents of truth; they don’t believe that religion should be pushed at schools, but it should also not be avoided. Avoiding religion completely, avoids a huge part of our culture and hinders students by stunting what they are allowed to be curious about. I believe that this is absolutely true, and I hate how some people fight on the side of ‘political correctness’. Teachers should not preach at school, but students should be allowed to explore their own spirituality and the beliefs of others.