Law, Education, and The Place of Religion in Public Schools: International Perspectives. Edited by Charles Russo

Abstract

When it comes to the challenges posed by emerging religious trends in education today, it turns out that countries around the world are much more alike than different. This is one of the central lessons of Law, Education, and The Place of Religion in Public Schools edited by Charles Russo. Malaysia, Turkey, Mexico, and Poland may have long had a single dominant faith receiving educational preference, but immigration and secularization have forced them to confront growing religious diversity in their schools. The United States and Canada may have had rich religious diversity from their very beginnings, but today many revanchist believers continue to seek restoration of privileges their faiths once enjoyed in public schooling. The race to maintain civility against religious conflict resulting from globalization, and the shift to rationalism emerging from the Enlightenment shows no signs of slowing down, and much evidence of speeding up. When it comes to the legal solutions adopted to respond to these educational challenges, though, it turns out that nations remain much more different than alike. Professor Russo’s threefold categorization of legal regimes in his concluding chapter hardly does justice to the wild diversity of approaches evident in the preceding chapters. Herein lies this book’s great strength and contribution to the existing comparative literature on education and religion. While previous compendiums about religion and public schooling have been North American and Euro-centric, this volume contains seventeen case studies covering nations from five continents. If other collections limited themselves to the restricted palette of Titian, here we have a color wheel reminiscent of Kandinsky.