Religious literacy popular topic with Prospect High students, parents

Students, parents, educators broaden their understanding @KnightsofPHS. World Religion class

John Camardella, the boys basketball coach at Prospect High School, guided the team to the regional finals in March and has steadily built the program into a perennial contender.

However, inside the classroom another passion drives him; teaching religious literacy to students and their parents in an increasingly diverse world.

Since 2009, he has taught a World Religion course offered through the social studies department at Prospect that has become one of the most popular electives in the school. Camardella teaches five sections each day, or 140 students per semester.

In it, they learn about the founding of each religion, and use primary source documents to analyze the historical writings of as many as 10 religions.

The class is so popular among Prospect students, that even their parents want to sit in on the lectures. Consequently, Camardella started offering a free section of the class every three weeks to parents and last year, he drew as many as 50 parents to each class.

Now, he has broadened his quest to promote religious literacy among more educators, and national education leaders are listening.

Just last month, Camardella helped to lead a group of 80 educators on tours of local houses of worship, including the Sikh Religious Society in Palatine, the BAPS Hindu temple in Bartlett, among others.

Their tours were part of a graduate course Camardella designed with the help of two other Northwest Suburban High School District 214 alumni: Seth Brady, a Prospect High School graduate who teaches comparative religions at Naperville Central High School; and Ben Marcus, a Wheeling High School graduate and religious literacy specialist with the Religious Freedom Center in Washington.

"As a result of global events and the increasing diversity of American schools, the need for teacher access to high-quality religious literacy training has never been greater," Camardella said.

He pointed to the National Council for Social Studies, which sets the standard for social studies curriculum across the country. In June, the agency affirmed the addition of religious literacy as an essential part of a well-rounded education.

Specifically, they credited a team of national educators - including Camardella, Brady and Marcus - with setting the framework for high school curricula across the country.

"Knowledge about religion is not only a characteristic of an educated person, but necessary for an effective and engaged citizenship in a diverse nation and world," agency officials stated in a news release in June.

Brady remembers taking a comparative religions course at Prospect during his sophomore year, then taught by Milton McGuiness.

"The course taught me about the worldview of people who might be on the other side of the world - or my next door neighbor," Brady said. "I was riveted from the first day."

Brady now teaches as many as seven sections of World and Comparative Religions classes each year, and he hopes his own students find the course just as riveting.

"Students simply don't forget the experience of being in a church, temple, Gurdwara or synagogue," he said. "These experiences, along with the people they meet, become a student's new frame of reference whenever they hear about a particular religion.

"The combination of deep learning and experiences erase stereotypes and prejudice," he added, "and help students understand someone who they had viewed as 'other' as part of their own community."