As liberal democracies include increasingly diverse and multifaceted populations, the longstanding debate about the role of the state in religious education and the place of religion in public life seems imperative now more than ever. The maintenance of religious schools and the planning of religious education curricula raise a profound challenge. Too much state supervision can be conceived as interference in religious freedom and as a confinement of the right to cultural liberty. Too little supervision can be seen as neglecting the development of the liberal values required to live and work in a democratic society and as abandoning those who within their communities wish to attain a more rigorous education for citizenship and democracy. This book draws together leading educationalists, philosophers, theologians, and social scientists to explore issues, problems, and tensions concerning religious education in a variety of international settings. The contributors explore the possibilities and limitations of religious education in preparing citizens in multicultural and multi-religious democratic societies.

As liberal democracies include increasingly diverse and multifaceted populations, the longstanding debate about the role of the state in religious education and the place of religion in public life seems imperative now more than ever. The maintenance of religious schools and the planning of religious education curricula raise a profound challenge. Too much state supervision can be conceived as interference in religious freedom and as a confinement of the right to cultural liberty. Too little supervision can be seen as neglecting the development of the liberal values required to live and work in a democratic society and as abandoning those who within their communities wish to attain a more rigorous education for citizenship and democracy. This book draws together leading educationalists, philosophers, theologians, and social scientists to explore issues, problems, and tensions concerning religious education in a variety of international settings. The contributors explore the possibilities and limitations of religious education in preparing citizens in multicultural and multi-religious democratic societies.

At one level, this book examines the inventory of global issues, dimensions, and debates discussed by educators, curriculum practitioners, and researchers in two U.S. journals, Social Education and The Social Studies, since 1990. At another level, the study explores the conceptualizations, metaphors, and frames through which the global is rendered. The texts analyzed in this qualitative study are regardded as a disocurse community unified by a common focus on how to conceive and educate about globalization. For the scholars and practitioners in social studies education and global education, the book illuminates how the ways in which globalization is informed and imagined constrain or expand the possibilities for human agency to influence the very course of globalization, making the limits of the political imagination more visible and thus open for critique. By illustrating how representations of globalization are carriers of different ontological presuppositions and ideological assumptions, the book highlights the relationships, identities, and ethics that has been legitimized about globalization and the skills, content, and values that has been rendered as essential in global education.