Academics advocating a rigorous religious curriculum in higher education criticized Harvard University’s recent decision to not add a religion course to its requirements after it had been considering the move.
A preliminary report by the Task Force on General Education at Harvard proposed the school introduce a required religion course based in “Reason and Faith” last October, but by December, the faculty committee changed the category to “Culture and Belief” — which would not be religion-based — according to a Feb. 7 article in the Harvard Crimson.
Faculty members will further discuss the proposal at a meeting next Tuesday and will vote on it on a date not yet determined, said Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesman Robert Mitchell.
BU religion department chairman Stephen Prothero, who recently completed the book Religious Literacy, in which he argues for teaching world religions to public middle school and high school students, criticized the university’s choice to exclude religion from its requirements.
“I think Harvard dropped the ball,” he said, calling it a “scandal” to allow students to graduate without taking religion courses.
“I don’t think colleges like BU and elsewhere should be certifying those students as well-educated if they don’t have the most rudimentary understanding of religion,” Prothero added.
Though he said he still gets emails from parents worried about the practicality of their children’s religion degrees, Prothero said enrollment in religion classes at BU has increased sharply in the past five years. At BU, 843 students are enrolled in religion courses this semester — only about 60 of them are religion majors.
Missouri State University professor John Schmalzbauer, who is scheduled to speak at BU on March 21 about a growing number of schools looking to incorporate religious studies in all disciplines, said Harvard officials who made the original proposal to add a religion requirement are on the right track.
“Current events have meant that you ignore religion at your peril,” he said.
Zachary Bos, director of Boston Atheists, said he was troubled by Harvard’s original proposal.
“Students have the option to study [religion], which is right and proper,” he said, “but to make the study of any single specialized subject mandatory, I think, is improper and unnecessary.”
College of Arts and Sciences sophomore Yael Shapira, who studied Judaism at her high school in Israel, is taking an introductory course on religion and culture and said she would support a religion requirement.
“It definitely expands students’ minds,” said Shapira, who visited a mosque recently for a class assignment. “You can’t have people living in a bubble.”