Difficult Knowledge and the False Religion(s) of Schooling

• In Event: Roundtable Session 45
  In Roundtable Session: Discursive Complexity and the Messiness of Curriculum Studies: Perversion, Falseness, Unreasonableness, and Anger

Abstract

The objective here is to consider the ways in which conceptions of ‘falseness’ and ‘false religion’ operate rhetorically and pedagogically in schools. Graeme Wood’s recent piece ‘What ISIS Really Wants’ addresses (in flawed ways) the notion of The Islamic State in reply to a number of discursive constructions that have arisen around it, just as it has arisen as a world power, particularly suggestions that the adherents of this particular cause are following a false religion. The work here asks, in the context of education: For what purposes are religions declared “false”? And in what ways might it be useful for certain religious institutions to select from teachings in order to expel ‘false’ or insufficient (or immoral) ‘believers’ and teachers?

Authors

• Kevin Burke, University of Georgia - Athens

• Scott Jarvie, Michigan State University