This course is an advanced undergraduate seminar in current issues and topics in education. Course will focus on specific issues or research methods in the multidisciplinary field of education. A major research project is required as well as class presentation. Topics change each semester.

This course will examine the roles of religion and spirituality in education from the perspective liberal democratic society in two paradigm cases, Israel and the United States. It will review similarities and differences in the ways each school system conceives and practices such notions as secular and religious, initiation and indoctrination, diversity and inclusion, and public and private. For example, public schools do not offer religious instruction in the United States, due to the constitutional separation of religion and state, whereas religious schools receive state funding in Israel, as they do in many other countries that require no such separation. The course will also consider critiques of these concepts and practices based on gender, race, class, nationality, language, and the search for meaning, as well as similarities and differences between the roles of religious affiliation and nationalism and the influence of extremism in each educational system.

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