No Separation: Religion, Race, and Moral Education in US Public Schools

How has the intersection between religious and racial politics shaped the landscape of public education in the United States? How have communities, both past and present, historically resisted covert and overt white Christian supremacy in public education? What lessons can radical pedagogues draw from these movements today?

Our September 2024 episode features Dr. Leslie Ribovich, a scholar of American religion, religion, and education. Her book, Without a Prayer: Religion and Race in New York City Public Schools (NYU Press, 2024), is illuminating reading for anyone seeking to understand the entangled histories — and surprising consequences and reverberations — of the simultaneous legal desegregation and legal secularization of public school classrooms. From the moral codes underwriting racist school discipline policies, to presumptive Protestant norms governing moral education programs, to grassroots community movements to build more equitable and just public education systems, Without a Prayer offers key context to understanding contemporary battles over the future of public education policy. Read an excerpt here.

Leslie Ribovich is currently the Director of the Greenberg Center for Public Life at Trinity College in Hartford, CT, where she is also an Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Law and Public Policy. She is working on a second project about forms of moral and character education in modern U.S. history.

CREDITS

Co-hosts: Tina Pippin and Lucia Hulsether

Editor, Audio Engineer, and composer of outro music: Aliyah Harris

Summer 2024 Intern: Ella Stuccio

Theme music by Lance Haugen and Aviva and the Flying Penguins

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