Jon Stewart and Religious Literacy

New on The Revealer, published by NYU’s Center for Religion and Media –

“We Don’t Need No Education!” — Jon Stewart talks to Boston University
Religious Studies Chair Steve Prothero about religious literacy. Prothero
apparently thinks it’d be a good idea for American students, and even
American politicians.

Doesn’t this dude know we’re living in the space age? How could understanding the difference between a Sunni and a Shia possibly effect our modern world? Watch the show to find out. Or, better yet, buy the book.

Schooling As “Sincere Ignorance and Conscientious Stupidity”

Isn’t it pretty much irrelevant to reform educational methods, once you ignore the real elephant in the civic classroom? Can true education of any kind exist within the framework of legal compulsion to attend and perform, or does the choice of non-choice define everything after that, limit it to mere schooling and not education?

Seems to me many points of “the moral compass” such as respect, initiative, not to mention the vaunted democratic “values of equality and individual rights” are much harder to teach captives than free citizens. It might be flat impossible. How can you “educate” kids to volunteer their own service by REQUIRING it of them? Animal trick training is far short of developing human compassion, respect, love, character and good citizenship among real live autonomous boys and girls.

Does compulsion teach any kind of tolerance other than tolerance of authority?