Teaching about Religions in the Social Studies Classroom: The Post-9/11 World and the Post-Truth Age as Superstructures

Abstract

This article is drawn from a set of qualitative interviews and observations with practicing social studies teachers at three school sites, one public, one Catholic, and one Islamic, in a major metropolitan area of the United States of America, as they grapple with what it means to teach about religion in their social studies classrooms given the larger superstructures of American culture. This article analyzes two themes: (1) what it means to teach about religion, and particularly Islam, in the post-9/11 era and (2) what it meant to talk about religion in the post-truth age of the presidency of Donald Trump. Though the two events are unconnected at least at the surface level, they give us an understanding of how world-historical events enter into social studies classrooms in obvious ways, but also and in addition, more subtle and pervasive ones.