Bellah, Robert home page for Robert Bellah

Cultural Identity and Modernization
A lecture at the Centennial Symposium, Institute for Japanese Culture and Classics Kokugakuin University, 1983

Why do we need a Public Affairs Mission? The Moral Crisis in American Public Life
a lecture given at Southwest Missouri State University, October 17, 1995

The True Scholar
An article posted on the web site for the American Association of University Professors.

At Home and Not At Home: Religious Pluralism and Religious Truth

Finding the Church: Post Traditional Discipleship

Individualism and the Crisis of Civic Membership

Taming the Savage Market

with Christopher Adams
Strong Institutions, Good City

Becker, Penny Edgell

Congregations Adapting to Changes in Work and Family a paper prepared for the New England Religious Discussion Society, September, 1999

Work, Family, and Religious Involvement for Men and Women: "Family Values" or
the Modern Family? a paper contrasting the participation levels between men and women in religious environments, March 2000

Bartkowski, John

Religious Civility, Civil Society, and
Charitable Choice: Faith–Based Poverty
Relief in the Post–Welfare Era
with co-investigator Helen A. Regis

"Charitable Choice" and the Feasibility of Faith-Based Welfare Reform in Mississippi
with Helen A. Regis

Breaking Walls, Raising Fences: Masculinity, Intimacy, and Accountability Among the Promise Keepers

Ammerman, Nancy

Doing Good in American Communities: Congregations and Service Organizations Working Together
A research report written by Nancy T. Ammerman from the Organizing Religious Work project.

New life for denominationalism
Reprinted with permission from The Christian Century (2000).

Golden Rule Christianity: Lived Religion in the American Mainstream
Reprinted from LIVED RELIGION IN AMERICA (Buy it now) edited by David Hall (1997), published by Princeton University Press.

Organized Religion in a Voluntaristic Society
1996 Presidential Address in Sociology of Religion, 1997 (available online and in .pdf format)

Telling Congregational Stories
The 1993 H. Paul Douglass lecture, in Review of Religious Research

Waco, Federal Law Enforcement, and Scholars of Religion
Reprinted from ARMAGEDDON IN WACO (Buy it now) published by the University of Chicago, copyright© 1995 by The University of Chicago.

Report to the Justice and Treasury Departments regarding law enforcement interaction with the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, September 3, 1993

Schoolgirl arrested for refusing to study with non-English pupils Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-410150/Schoolgirl-arrested-refus

A teenage schoolgirl was arrested by police for racism after refusing to sit with a group of Asian students because some of them did not speak English.

Codie Stott's family claim she was forced to spend three-and-a-half hours in a police cell after she was reported by her teachers.

See also
English schoolgirl sues Scottish council over 'racist bullying'

The 14-year-old - who was released without charge - said it had been a simple matter of commonsense and accused the school and police of an over-the-top reaction.

The incident happened in the same local education authority where a ten-year-old boy was prosecuted earlier this year for calling a schoolfriend racist names in the playground, a move branded by a judge "political correctness gone mad."

Codie was attending a GCSE science class at Harrop Fold High School in Worsley, Greater Manchester, when the incident happened.

The teenager had not been in school the day before due to a hospital appointment and had missed the start of a project, so the teacher allocated her a group to sit with.

"She said I had to sit there with five Asian pupils," said Codie yesterday.

"Only one could speak English, so she had to tell that one what to do so she could explain in their language. Then she sat me with them and said 'Discuss'."

According to Codie, the five - four boys and a girl - then began talking in a language she didn't understand, thought to be Urdu, so she went to speak to the teacher.

"I said 'I'm not being funny, but can I change groups because I can't understand them?' But she started shouting and screaming, saying 'It's racist, you're going to get done by the police'."

Codie said she went outside to calm down where another teacher found her and, after speaking to her class teacher, put her in isolation for the rest of the day.

A complaint was made to a police officer based full-time at the school, and more than a week after the incident on September 26 she was taken to Swinton police station and placed under arrest.

"They told me to take my laces out of my shoes and remove my jewellery, and I had my fingerprints and photograph taken," said Codie. "It was awful."

After questioning on suspicion of committing a section five racial public order offence, her mother Nicola says she was placed in a bare cell for three-and-a-half hours then released without charge.

She only returned to lessons this week and has been put in a different science class.

Yesterday Miss Stott, 37, a cleaner, said: "Codie was not being racist." "The reaction from the school and police is totally over the top and I am furious my daughter had to go through this trauma when all she was saying was common sense. "

"She'd have been better off not saying anything and getting into trouble for not being able to do the work."

Miss Stott, who is separated from Codie and her 18-year-old brother Ashley's father, lives with her partner Keith Seanor, a 36-year-old cable layer, in Walkden.

School insiders acknowledge that at least three of the students Codie refused to sit with had recently arrived in this country and spoke little English.

But they say her comments afterwards raised further concerns, for example allegedly referring to the students as "blacks" - something she denied yesterday.

The school is now investigating exactly what happened before deciding what action - if any - to take against Codie.

Headteacher Dr Antony Edkins said: "An allegation of a serious nature was made concerning a racially motivated remark by one student towards a group of Asian students new to the school and new to the country."

"We aim to ensure a caring and tolerant attitude towards people and pupils of all ethnic backgrounds and will not stand for racism in any form."

Fewer than two per cent of pupils at Harrop Fold come from an ethnic minority.

It had the worst GCSE results in the entire Salford LEA last year with just 15 per cent of pupils achieving five good passes including English and maths, a third of the national average.

Since being placed in special measures, Ofsted inspectors say it has improved, not least as a result of Dr Edkins's "outstanding" leadership.

Salford was at the centre of a storm last April after a ten-year-old boy was hauled before a court for allegedly calling an 11-year-old mixed race pupil a 'Paki' and 'Bin Laden' in a playground argument at a primary school in Irlam.

When the case came before District Judge Jonathan Finestein he said the decision to prosecute showed "how stupid the whole system is getting".

But was himself fiercely attacked by teaching union leaders for "feeding a pernicious agenda" that aided the BNP.

The prosecution was eventually dropped.

Last night Robert Whelan, deputy director of the Civitas think-tank, said: "It's obviously common sense that pupils who don't speak English cause problems for other pupils and for teachers."

"I'm sure this sort of thing happens all the time, but it's a sad reflection on the school if they can't deal with it without involving the police."

"A lot of these arrests don't result in prosecutions - they aim is to frighten us into self-censorship until we watch everything we say."

Greater Manchester Police denied Codie had been kept in a cell but would not comment further.

Teaching College Courses Online vs Face-to-Face

Experiencing a huge demand for college courses taught over the Web and not wanting to be swept aside by competitors from the commercial sector, universities are often pressuring faculty to teach courses online. Many faculty members have never taught online, and therefore wonder what they are getting themselves into. What are the differences between teaching online and teaching face-to-face? What can faculty members expect from the experience of teaching college courses on the Web?

Other faculty members have some experience teaching online, but haven't shared their experiences, nor have they read the literature on distance education. Their knowledge remains fragmentary. Are faculty experiences with teaching online specific to their content areas, or representative of the larger experience of teaching over the Web? This study seeks to integrate the experiences of professors currently teaching online into a qualitative description.

Literature Search

Before embarking on the research, we were aware of and influenced by a number of research-based notions of distance education. The first was that it requires a considerable amount of time to design and develop an online class. The instructor must shift from the role of content provider to content facilitator, gain comfort and proficiency in using the Web as the primary teacher-student link, and learn to teach effectively without the visual control provided by direct eye contact (Williams & Peters 1997).

Moore (1993) suggests that there are three types of interaction necessary for successful distance education: 1) learner-content interaction, 2) learner-instructor interaction, and 3) learner-learner interaction. Distance learning instructors need to ensure that all three forms of interaction are maximized in their course structure.

Peters (1993) criticizes distance education, saying that it reduces education to a kind of industrial production process, lacking the human dimension of group interaction, and even alienating learners from teachers. He compares distance education to a mass-production assembly line process where a division of labor (educators and communications specialists) replaces the more craft-oriented approach of traditional face-to-face education. However, Peters' article predates the current Web-based boom in distance education. His notions, like the computer themes in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, sound slightly like industrial age paranoia toward computers. The personal computer and the Internet have probably been a greater force towards individualization than mass production.

Method

We interviewed 21 instructors who had taught both in the distance and the face-to-face format. The instructors ranged from assistant professors to adjunct professors. Fifteen of the 21 instructors taught in the context of the SUNY Learning Network, a non-profit, grant-funded organization that provides the State Universities of New York (SUNY) with an infrastructure, software, Web space and templates for instructors to create their online course. The Learning Network also provides workshops on developing and teaching online courses, a help desk and other technical support for Web-based distance education. The remaining six informants taught Web-based distance education courses in similarly supported situations at state universities in California and Indiana.

Why Do Students Like Online Learning?

Why do students flock to the online learning environment? With over 4 million students are enrolled in online schools and universities (and that number is growing 30% per year), there are many compelling arguments for attending a cyber classroom (Lewis, 2005).

1.	Students can "attend" a course at anytime, from anywhere. This means that parents can attend to their children, then sit down to class; working students can attend classes no matter what their work schedule might be, folks that travel for business or pleasure can attend class from anywhere in the world that has internet access.
2.	Online learning enables student-centered teaching approaches. Every student has their own way of learning that works best for them. Some learn visually others do better when they "learn by doing."
3.	Course material is accessible 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Students have the ability to read and re read lectures, discussions, explanations and comments. Often spoken material in the classroom passes students by due to a number of distractions, missed classes, tiredness or boredom.
4.	In an online environment, attendance to class is only evident if the student actually participates in classroom discussion. This increases student interaction and the diversity of opinion, because everyone gets a say, not just the most talkative.
5.	Online instructors come with practical knowledge and may be from any location across the globe. This allows students to be exposed to knowledge that can't be learned in books and see how class concepts are applied in real business situations.
6.	Using the internet to attend class, research information and communication with other students teaches skills in using technologies that will be critical to workers in the 21st century business community that works with colleagues globally and across time zones.
7.	Participating online is much less intimidating than "in the classroom." Anonymity provides students a level playing field undisturbed by bias caused by seating arrangement, gender, race and age. Students can also think longer about what they want to say and add their comments when ready. In a traditional class room, the conversation could have gone way past the point where the student wants to comment.
8.	Because online institutions often offer "chat rooms" for informal conversation between students, where student bios and non class discussions can take place, there appears to be a increased bonding and camaraderie over traditional class environments.
9.	The online environment makes instructors more approachable. Students can talk openly with their teachers through online chats, email and in newsgroup discussions, without waiting for office hours that may not be convenient. This option for communication provides enhanced contact between instructors and students.
10.	Online course development allows for a broad spectrum of content. Students can access the school's library from their PC's for research articles, ebook content and other material without worries that the material is already "checked out."
11.	Students often feel that they can actually listen to the comments made by other students. Because everyone gets a chance to contribute, students are less irritated with those that "over contribute" and can ask for clarification of any comments that are unclear.
12.	Over 75% of colleges and universities in the U.S. offer online degree programs, with online degrees as respected as "on the ground" degrees. (Lewis)
13.	Online classrooms also facilitate team learning by providing chatrooms and newsgroups for meetings and joint work. This eliminates the problems of mismatched schedules, finding a meeting location and distributing work for review between meetings.
14.	Students often comment that online learning lets them attend class when fully awake and attend in increments of convenient time block, rather than rigid 2 or 4 hour stretches once or twice a week.
15.	Because there are no geographic barriers to online learning, students can find a diversity of course material that may not be available to them where they live or work. This is especially true for professional training such as medical billing training or purchasing training and for students in remote rural areas that cannot support college or vocational training centers.

While "brick and mortar" institutions will never be eliminated, it's easy to see why a growing number of people are attending class in the cyber world. They may be reasons of accessibility, flexibility or quality, all compelling and contributing to the attractiveness of this mode of learning.