PAUL MAURICE MARTIN has master’s degrees in religious studies and counseling from the University of Chicago and the University of New Hampshire. His book Original Faith: What Your Life Is Trying to Tell You draws much of its inspiration from his work with children. Paul’s twenty-three year public school career included teaching English as a Second Language and special education as well as elementary school counseling. For more on book and author please visit www.originalfaith.com.

Elementary School Counselors, Secular Values – and Faith

For most of my twenty-three year career in the public schools I worked as an elementary school counselor. There were times when I noticed misconceptions about what I did for a living – sometimes on the part of parents and sometimes things I’d find in the media. Here I’ll discuss one major misconception.

The Myth: Promoting Secular Values

Whether working with children individually, in small groups, in classrooms or as coordinators for programs like peer mediation or character education clubs, elementary school counselors teach values like sharing, respect for the persons and property of others, honesty, trustworthiness and doing your best in school. They are the sort of pro-social, pro-educational values that parents inside or outside of any faith tradition want their children to learn.

If teaching secular values means speaking against any form of religious belief, I never knew a teacher or counselor do this. But I did from time to time find myself working with colleagues who were quite vocal about their Christian beliefs, sometimes with students as well as staff.

If promoting secular values means that we don’t teach belief in God or in Jesus as the Messiah as part of the public school curriculum, that’s certainly true. But this would be unfeasible in the public schools of a pluralistic society. My last school, for example, in Arlington, Virginia, included Hindu and Muslim students, and, no doubt, children of atheists and agnostics. If parents want their children to receive religious instruction along with their education, then they need to send them to religious schools.

The Reality: Honoring and Supporting Faith

Because teaching religion isn’t appropriate in schools with students from a variety of traditions, if the topic of faith came up in my office it was because students brought it up themselves. There were two sorts of situations when this was likely to occur: upon the death of a loved one, or, in a couple cases, when students were facing their own deaths.

It was usually clear from the child’s words or drawings what they believed – usually a simple belief in God and heaven. If I wasn’t sure about the family’s beliefs and I could see that the topic of faith was likely to come up, as when I started meeting with a hospitalized ten year old boy dying from cystic fibrosis, then I’d check with the parents.

I always supported the child and family in the beliefs that helped them at that time, and can’t imagine a school counselor doing otherwise. Our profession neither promotes nor criticizes the religious beliefs of children and families but seeks to support their emotional and behavioral well being.

Then maybe this could be construed as a “secular value?” But it seems to me that doing good to others is a value that is profoundly consistent with the Christian tradition even as it transcends religious and secular divisions.

Don’t miss your chance to win a copy of Paul’s book starting on October 15th.