Video: Teaching and Learning about Sikhism with Simran Jeet Singh: A Lunchtime Conversation for Educators

October 12, 2022

Simran Jeet Singh holds his book "The Light We Give."

On September 29, 2022, writer and human rights activist Simran Jeet Singh, MTS '08, discussed his new book, The Light We Give, and his ongoing work as a public scholar and educator on Sikhism and religious pluralism. Other event participants discussed the intersections between Singh’s work, public understanding about Sikhism, and Religion and Public Life approaches to teaching and learning about religion. This discussion focused on educators working with students from 7th grade through college.

Full Transcript:

Teaching and Learning about Sikhism: A Lunchtime Conversation for Educators

[MUSIC PLAYING]

SPEAKER 1: Harvard Divinity School.

SPEAKER 2: Teaching and learning about Sikhism, September 29, 2022.

ANNA MUDD: So Hello again everyone, and welcome. My name is Anna Mudd. I'm here at Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School, where our mission is to promote the public understanding of religion in service of a just world at peace.

And I have the distinct privilege here at the RPL to work with educators in service of that mission, designing resources and professional development opportunities to enhance religious literacy in the classroom.

And today, we have the wonderful honor of connecting many of those educators with Dr. Simran Jeet Singh. So Dr. Singh is the executive director of the Religion and Society program at the Aspen Institute. He is an equality fellow with the Open Society Foundations, senior advisor on equity and inclusion for YSC Consulting, and a visiting professor at Union Seminary.

He's a regular contributor to The Washington Post, CNN, and Time Magazine, and writes a monthly column for Religion News Service. He's also the author of a bestselling children's book. And today, I hope you'll join me in congratulating him on the publication of his most recent book, The Light We Give, which as you can see, is filled with my sticky notes. [LAUGHS]

And it's just an incredibly powerful and moving memoir about engaging Sikh wisdom in service of a life committed to justice, connection, and love. So we are just so pleased to have you with us, Simran.

We have an audience of educators, ostensibly the idea. And I think many will be interested both in your larger work in the service of justice and inclusion, as well as maybe-- many may be interested in either starting or enhancing the ways in which they're teaching about culture and history in their classrooms, whether that be a world religions class, a humanities class, a social science class.

So lots of different places to dig in. A little bit about our format. So someone is going to offer some introductory grounding comments. Then I'm going to use facilitator's privilege to ask a few of my own opening questions. And then we're hoping to have a generous amount of time for questions from the audience to get of those different points of entry.

So very excited for this lunchtime conversation. I hope folks are having lunch for the general ambience. It's a nice way to connect. But welcome, again, Simran. We're just so thrilled to have you with us today.

SIMRAN JEET SINGH: Hi, everyone. Thank you, Anna, for the introduction. It's always a pleasure to speak with educators. I think two things that I want to note before even starting. One is as an alum of Harvard Divinity School, especially meaningful to be here with you all today. And I even wear my Harvard Crimson turban in honor.

And the other thing that's really striking as I'm preparing for this is for me, education has always been my theory of change in this world. And I'm happy to speak about why, and I will. But the strange thing about reflecting on this conversation is I knew from childhood that education is what I wanted to do.

Religious literacy as in a term that occurred to me or that I encountered until much, much later actually. Even after finishing at Harvard and after finishing my PhD, I first started hearing about the concept of religious literacy. And it's one of those things where you do it from your gut for so much of your life, out of need, out of community need.

And I'll share a little bit more on that in a moment. But you don't realize until other people put it forward and give you language for it that this is what you've been doing and what you've been needing. So I'm really grateful for the religious literacy program because it's serving a really important need in our society and especially in our country today.

By background, I was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. And we were one of the only turbaned Sikh families in all of South Texas at the time. My parents had moved there in the '70s. I was born in 1984.

So it was a very-- I mean you might say it was a strange upbringing in that it was unique. It was different from what most of my classmates and friends experienced on a day-to-day basis. And in many ways, it was very normal.

And that's really important to me, too, that it's easy to step in here and look at someone who's different and say, oh, your life was just filled with terrible things that happened to you. And part of what I want to explore today is, how do we move beyond these flattening narratives that end up-- even if they're sympathetic, they can have dehumanizing impacts, too.

And so what are the other ways of telling our stories that can enrich and really bring to life the human dynamism that we each carry. I'll tell you that for the first, I would say, 15, 16 years of my life, never encountered any resource or any curricular approach to indicating that there was any awareness that my community existed.

And looking back on that now, of course, we have conversations culturally about representation and its power. But also, I think what I want to think about today is the flip of that. What is the cost of our stories not being told? What is the cost of not hearing one another's voices? And effectively, what is the cost of not knowing one another?

If we're talking about cultural and religious literacy, there's a real question of why? What's the urgency, and what's the need? And I can speak from a position of experience, my own lived experience as a Sikh growing up in this country, that the cultural ignorance of not just my community but many others has real serious violent consequences.

And I'll give you two examples, both of which, in a way, are extreme in that they aren't necessarily representative of what everyone experiences. But they speak to the need and illustrate, I think, the real importance of doing this work and doing it in the classroom.

So the first real touchpoint that I want to share with you all, my life growing up, very good in many ways, as I shared, and littered with encounters with racism as well. Both are true. And so in 2001, when school had just started, I was a senior in high school. Racism was not new to me.

But at the beginning of the school year, a major incident happens. Far away from Texas, starting in New York, and it is a terrorist attack. And September 11, I hear whispers about this in the morning. We run to our high school teachers' classroom. We watch the towers come down. We don't speak for probably half an hour.

Many of you probably have similar stories where you hear about it. You can remember what it felt like and what it looked like. And I mean, we were just, as 18-year-olds, just dumbstruck. What is happening to our country? We'd never experienced an attack on our soil.

And I mean, up until that point, it probably felt-- I mean, it felt to me that we were always safe, there was no threat, we were not vulnerable. I mean, there was never any question about what would our lives look like under attack. And then now, all of a sudden, we felt attacked. We felt fear.

And about half an hour into watching the news and the towers come down with my classmates, we heard that there was a primary suspect. And they show an image of a man I'd never heard of before, never seen before. They said his name was Osama bin Laden. And then they showed his picture.

And my heart just sank. It was a man who was wearing a turban, who had a beard, who had brown skin just like me. And I knew in that moment that life would not be the same. And it wasn't. We went home that day. We went home early. My mom picked us up from school, my brothers and me.

The death threats started coming that day. In the day times that followed, we would listen to and watch the news, trying to understand what had happened to our country. And in the evenings, we would gather on the phone and listen to conference calls, where Sikhs would tell us about what was happening to them.

And what we learned was there was an incredibly violent racist backlash that targeted anyone who was perceived to be the terrorist, to be the enemy of America, who would be seen as being affiliated with the perpetrators.

And what I learned in this moment was that I could see myself as one way. I could see myself as trying to live in to the best of my values as a Sikh. And other people could see me entirely differently. They could see me as hateful and misogynistic and violent and anti-American.

And to a degree, up until that point, I could ignore what other people thought about me. I was taught to just turn the other cheek and let it go, and it's their ignorance. And I'd wonder what life would be like if we didn't have so much ignorance.

But in this moment, I learned something different, which is other people's ignorance can have drastic consequences on our lives and our safety. And I watched life after life, friend after friend, I mean, just ruined by our cultural ignorance.

The first hate crime murder after 9/11 was a Sikh man in Mesa, Arizona. The person who murdered him saw him-- I mean, the words he used in his statements to the police and to witnesses included him saying he was going after ragheads, Iranians, Middle Easterners, Arabs.

I mean, so many indicators that this person had a very racialized understanding of who the enemy was. And he saw a man who looked very much like me and said, that's the guy that I want to kill. That's the guy who's against our country.

And so it became clear to me in this moment that not knowing one another really had severe consequences. And I wanted to be part of the change in this country to really start telling each other our stories. And so I went on track to become what I, at the time, just described as a storyteller. I just wanted us to know one another. And education was the best way I knew how to do that.

So I went through college, focused on religion and race and literature and aspects like that. I went on to Harvard Divinity School and did my master's there. Still, a focus on South Asian religions but with an eye towards education and social justice. And then I went on to do my PhD at Columbia in South Asian religions.

And one other experience I had while at Columbia that really opened up my eyes to the need of this work happened a few years later, 2012. A white supremacist walks into a Sikh place of worship in Wisconsin and massacres the congregation.

And again, this person is motivated by hate. And we can see what his ignorance and hate has to bear on these communities who didn't know this person. They didn't have a relationship. It's not like he actually hated them as people. He hated the idea of them and didn't want them on the face of this Earth.

And again, we see what cultural ignorance fuels, what are the consequences when we don't one another, what's the risk of not having our stories known and heard. And part of what I want to say here is for so many people living on the margins, they're simultaneously rendered invisible.

And we don't know who they are. We never learn about them. Our schools don't teach us. I mean, where would we learn? And yet at the same time, they're hyper visible. They stand out to us wherever we go and whatever we do.

And I mean, that's true for me as I walk down the street. Nobody knows who I am, but they think they know when they see me based on their assumptions and their stereotypes.

Now, when this massacre occurred in Wisconsin, in the few moments that followed, there was another painful realization because the news anchors started referring to the attack as an attack on a mosque, as Sikhs being an offshoot of Hinduism, as Sikhs being a sect of Islam.

I mean, it was very clear to me that despite having been in this country for more than a century, despite comprising the world's fifth largest religion, even those who are cultural storytellers, our news leaders, even they had no clue who we were.

And to me, it was just like a slap in the face. Of course, this is true, of course, nothing has changed in the last 10 years. And it's probably time for me to step forward. And instead of being so focused on the preparation for education, I should just start getting into it and getting educating. And that's really what pushed me in many ways to move into this work full force.

And there's two notes I want to share here about that. One is as we got into this work, we started to understand, as a community, that it's not just about telling your own story and being willing to do that. There's also a power dynamic here.

Who gets to tell their own stories? How do we get opportunities to share about who we are? What are the barriers to entry? And what are the gates that we need to open? And who are the gatekeepers so that we can have those opportunities? And that, to me, had not occurred to me before.

Of course, that's how the world works, but I hadn't thought about this particular issue in that way. So that was a surprise and a challenge that we started to think about very seriously.

And the second is we started to understand that there is a particular challenge around educating around religion. And I started to notice this at first with journalists and then with educators. I started to work with journalists. I would do a lot of writing and sourcing on issues related to the community and religion, more generally.

And as I became friends with journalists, I learned that one of their hesitations was they just didn't want to get it wrong. Religion is too sensitive. It's too volatile. People can get offended. What if we mess up? And I said, well, what if there were resources that could help you?

And one of the resources we developed and saw a great impact with was an educator's guide-- sorry, a journalist guide to covering Sikhism. And we saw a big ramp-up in coverage just with this resource. We wrote it with the Sikh Coalition and with the Religion News Foundation.

And since then, we adapted it as an educator's guide for teachers, who said this same thing, we would love to, we just don't know where to start. And so we can support that. And so that's been another really powerful recognition here that some of the challenges we face are very human.

We have fears, we have challenges, we don't know everything. And I think that's something that is hard to admit in our culture today. And so creating a culture, where we can learn and grow and have that growth mindset, and then also supporting one another with resources, I think, that's a really important way to go.

So this is just a quick overview of who I am, how I got here. You can hear the sirens here in New York City. So that's evidence that-- [LAUGHS] I'm really here where I say I am. This is just an overview of how I got to this place with regard to understanding religious literacy as a social justice issue, as-- I mean, in many ways, for my community, as an issue of survival.

It can be the difference between life and death and really understanding, education, and awareness as a mechanism for positive change, cultural change, cultural growth, and individual growth. I think that's a really important driver for why I do what I do here.

ANNA MUDD: Fantastic. Thank you so much, Simran, for that incredibly critical and urgent argument for the work that so many on this call are doing and also for a lot of that framing around the questions of storytelling and power. So my first two questions, I think, get at some of those themes and frameworks that you raised.

And I first wanted to ask about this intersection of teaching about race and religion. So a large part of the light we give is, in many ways, your lived experience at this intersection of religion and racialized identity. And in chapter 5, you say, it became clear, you live this, and you also study it. And you narrate that story as well.

You say, it became clear that we can't understand American racism without understanding its religious roots. And you give three reasons why there. I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit about those reasons and how you see teaching about race and racism as deeply connected to teaching about religion and vice versa.

SIMRAN JEET SINGH: Yeah, absolutely. I love the question. There is so much to say here. So I want to make sure I'm starting in the right place. But I guess, maybe the right place is my lived experience. Let me start here. So often, when I talk about Islamophobia-- and as a scholar in LA, I teach about Islam and Buddhism and other traditions.

When I talk about Islamophobia, people will say, well, how can Islamophobia be racism? Islam is not a race. And I understand the point. It's not always a good faith argument. So let's start there. But also, it indicates an oversimplified view of what racism is and how it functions.

And what I can share with you, based on my lived experience, is I am absolutely racialized in this country. And a large part of that has to do with my religious identity. When I walk down the street and people look at me, the first thoughts that typically come to their mind are on the basis of their racial stereotypes.

Terrorist, al-Qaeda, Isis. I know that's what they're thinking because so many of them say that to me. That's part of it. And so the challenge, I think, in terms of connecting religion and race is that so often, our modes of analysis are isolated into, well, what is going on here? Is it this issue? Is that issue?

And part of what we've learned through some of the stellar work of ethnic studies and racial justice scholars is that our identities are intersectional. And one way of saying that is to say, well, we have multiple identities. Another way of saying that is to say, hey, just because you see yourself in a certain way doesn't mean everyone else sees you that way.

And that to me, that realization after the terrorist attacks in 9/11 really opened up my eyes to understanding the perceptions that people have based on whatever biases they carry. We don't really control those. And so that's one aspect of the intersection of race and religion that I think is really important for us to understand with this country.

A second has to do with the way in which American racism has been constructed through religious actors and institutions. And the place to begin, I think, is at the very foundation of America, when the European colonizers first came to this country.

The justification that they carried came through the church, the papal bull from the Pope that said essentially, anyone who is not Christian can be converted and colonized. You have the right to their land. Essentially saying, these people aren't human enough for them to claim their own land.

You're better than them, you're more human than them. And it creates a real basis of supremacy. The better-and-worse model is supremacy. And we can call it that. And so understanding that as we're talking about supremacist institutions in this country, they're not just on the basis of race and ethnicity.

Yes, whiteness is an important element of that but so is Christianity. And until we take that seriously, we won't really be able to get at the root of the problem. You really have to dig in and understand that.

And in a similar note here that I think is really important for us to get is it's not just the historical foundation, it's also how it's been perpetuated over the years. And we can look at many examples that we learn about in our schools or we see on the news, and we don't really do a good job of connecting the dots necessarily.

But looking at, for example, the role that interpretations of the Bible played in the formation of the KKK, I mean, that's race and religion coming together. I mean, literally, these people are riding around on their horses with white cloths on their heads, Bible in their hands, burning crosses. I mean, what's going on here? It's race and religion together.

And our unwillingness to see that or at least our attempts to look away from that are really hurting us because until we really understand the problem, we're not going to be able to address it.

ANNA MUDD: Thank you so much for that critical articulation and just for the large body of public education and scholarship going even deeper into these issues. I'm going to ask one more question, and then we do have some questions in the chat box.

But related question, which is switching gears slightly, so almost every educator we work with has tremendous constraints on their time and conflict coverage. They're often covering, in one day or in even less time, an incredibly complex tradition topic.

And in those situations, one of the things that we tend to encourage educators to think about as a guiding pedagogical principle is, what fundamental assumptions do you want to disrupt with your students about this topic, about this tradition?

Whether it's a dominant cultural assumption, whether it's assumptions that students are bringing into the classroom, that's sort of a core habit of mind in our teaching. To show you, I found these. It's so core, we even have a disruptor assumptions bracelets.

[LAUGHS]

So on that note, I wanted to ask you just to say a few words about, what are some of-- and you talk a great deal about this in some ways in your book. But what are some of the central or primary misunderstandings about Sikh tradition that you would hope educators in the room here or more broadly, might be disrupting or challenging with their students when engaging with this topic?

SIMRAN JEET SINGH: Yeah. I love the question, and I love the bracelet. I'm all about that. And part of what we learn in education is the approach of scaffolding.

So one of the big frustrations I had as a student, who grew up in the public schools of Texas and then went on to higher level education, was we learned narratives that made sense to us as kids. And then as we got older, the rug was pulled out from underneath us.

Columbus is a hero who really saved this country. And then you get to college, and you start studying history. And you're like, oh, my god, what did this person do to all these other people? It's ridiculous the way that we set our kids up for real shock.

And religion is an even more difficult one because when I was teaching Islamic studies in Texas after getting my PhD, my students would come into the classroom. And they literally would only know about Islam on the basis of what they saw in film and TV.

No one would talk to them about it. There was nowhere to learn. And so they knew, many of them, most of them, that what they had in their heads was biased and problematic. But they didn't know what to do with that.

And so part of what I think about in terms of education and religion, in general, is not just the disruption, but actually, how do we start, so we get to a place, when these kids are 18 years old, they're not getting a slap in the face as if-- I mean, as if they're entering into an entirely new world that they didn't know about before--

I mean, it's too late at that point when they're 18. They're adults. We need to begin earlier. And so scaffolding, to me, is an approach that's really important. Introduce early. Start at the early childhood levels. I have two girls, a four-year-old and a six-year-old.

And we are constantly trying to introduce them to different cultures and traditions, and not just religion but different ways of life that are different from theirs. And that is part of how you cultivate that empathetic worldview and also the openness to difference rather than a fear of difference.

And I think as people get older, then you can start working against some of the frameworks that society teaches them that are problematic or incorrect. And when it comes to religion and when it comes to Sikhism, in particular, there are a few that I would really advocate for.

The first is if one is to recognize that this is one of the major world religions, this is probably the most underrepresented in literature and in the academy, then this will be easier to follow. But essentially, most textbooks on religion, most of us who have studied religion have never encountered Sikhism in our classes.

Even if you look at major volumes like from Houston Smith or, I don't know, Karen Armstrong, they'll talk about every other religion. But Sikhism is always left out. And then what happens is-- and I've studied this and written about this-- is when Sikhism is included, it's a very outdated, outmoded, orientalist view of what Sikhism is.

And so the standard narrative is Sikhism emerges in a context where Islam and Hinduism are coming together in early modern South Asia. That's true. It comes from a reformer, who was born into a Hindu family, who essentially said, let's mix these two religions together, so everyone can get along.

And what's funny about this is, well, one, the model of syncretism that so many scholars and religion use to advocate for is no longer a way that we think about religion because of all-- I mean, all the problems of syncretism. So that's something we still accept when it comes to Sikhism.

And the other challenge here is if you actually get to know the tradition, all the elements that you would expect from a major world religion are there. It has its own unique founder, its own unique scripture, its own unique belief system, its own unique ceremonies, its own unique community centers.

I mean, the actual intention and under self understanding of the tradition is completely different from the scholarly presentation of it. And that becomes a real challenge for educators because even when I was in high school, my teachers would say, OK, I don't know what to do about Sikhism, like, would you do it, which is, of course, not where you want to be as an educator.

But it was fine, and it was fair. And I was open to it. But what we would find is what I would share would be at variance, with what she would find in her books, and then who do you believe? Do you believe someone who is a practitioner but a 15-year-old? That's hard. And of course, there is internal bias there, too, like this is my version of this tradition.

Or do you believe the textbook? And of course, educators are inclined to believe the textbooks. But in my view, so many of these textbooks are problematic. And so I think one place to begin is really to interrogate the standard narratives of Sikhism and to really look at, well, what's the latest here? What are the scholars saying now?

And I think what you'll find consistently is a new representation, which is part of what I'm trying to share here, that Sikhism is an independent religion, stands on its own, has its own all of these different elements. And this is the self understanding of the community too. So that's one.

And then the other one that I'd want to jump to is something I referred to earlier, which is when the Sikh community is presented and with all the best intentions, it typically is presented in the context of hate violence. And that's an important story to tell, especially in the modern American context.

But one of the challenges then becomes, as I was saying before, it is perpetuating a victim narrative, which makes sense to a degree. This community is marginalized, is targeted, is attacked over and over again. And there's so much more to these people than who they are or than who we present them to be in that context.

And so my gentle request would be, sure, do that, share those stories. They're important. But maybe also build in, well, how did the community respond? And give them back some of their agency and show their resilience in those stories that you share.

I think that's really important for us as educators to think about, this is not-- these people aren't just what happens to them. They're also what they do and how they live. And there are some really important elements of Sikh philosophy that I think are built into their responses.

And I think there are all sorts of other kinds of stories that you can find in American history and in the modern day, in which Sikh's figure into significantly that are not just tied to the hate that we endure.

ANNA MUDD: Fantastic. Thank you so much. Well, we have quite a rich stack over here in the Q&A. So I'm actually, Simran, going to invite you to take a look as well. We'll have time to get to quite a few of these. Why don't you start where we left? Decide where you want to dive in.

SIMRAN JEET SINGH: Oh, thank you. I see a message from Ben, who is asking a question that I think about a lot, which is, when speaking and teaching about Sikhism and sharing your lived experiences, how do you avoid the trap of being tokenized by people who aren't Sikh, by non-Sikhs?

How do you navigate non-Sikhs using your perspectives and experiences as a stand-in for the spectrum of Sikh experiences and voices? And it's such a good question because tokenization is real. It happens often and I think for a very human reason.

We don't know what we don't know. And when we encounter someone who is willing to tell us something, then we take that at face value. And that makes sense. And one of the challenges for me is not just-- it's not just my lived experience. It's also that I am a scholar of religion whose training has focused in on the historical formation of the Sikh community.

And so in this country, where Sikhs are not here in big numbers-- we're about 500,000 in the US and even smaller in terms of visibility. In this country, it is often the case that I am the first Sikh that someone has a conversation with, at least about their tradition.

And I'm a scholar of the faith. And so people will think and say, oh, well, this guy is telling me the real truth. And one of the challenges and it was a big challenge for me in writing my book about Sikh philosophy is as a scholar, one of the things I learned about religion-- and I know this is a big component of the approach that Harvard takes religious literacy.

One of the things I've learned is Sikhism is not just one thing. What I present in this book is-- I mean, it's my interpretation of Sikhism. It's my lived experience of Sikhism. And I'm very intentional throughout the book and whenever I speak about sharing that.

But part of the challenge then is even when you do that, you can't control how much other exposure people have through other channels.

And so even when I say, I'm not speaking on behalf of all Sikhs, I'm not centralizing Sikhism in my representation of it, I'm not saying Sikhism believes x, y, z, I say, I believe as a Sikh, x, y, z, even then, other people might take that as a representative statement of what all Sikhs believe. And that's a really hard one to control.

And so the answer is I do my best. I try to be conscious of it. I recognize there's also a power dynamic here in terms of me also now having a platform to tell the stories. And so part of my solution is, what can I do to ensure that other Sikh stories and voices are heard so that we get a full spectrum of opinions and interpretations and experiences.

And then we can-- I think, that's really the best way of getting to a place where tokenization is behind us and authentic representation orientation is in front of us. So thank you, Ben. Appreciate that.

ANNA MUDD: A phrase we sometimes offer to teachers dealing with the question of contested authenticity is that diverse devotional representations of a tradition are authentic but not exclusive to get out of that exclusivist sort of binary paradigm and recognize that multiplicity.

I was going to let that Matthew's comment because I know we've heard this from multiple educators. Matthew asks, how do you combat the parent the adult in the room who may not want to engage in interfaith education in fear of their children students being indoctrinated or converting?

I run an interfaith youth organization and run into parents and houses of worship that will be tentative to engage in fear of their youth changing religions due to our programming occurring at the identity development stage.

SIMRAN JEET SINGH: Yeah, it's a good question. And I know you have some wisdom to share here, too. So I'd love to hear your two cents. I will say-- I will say briefly. And Matthew, I know you do, too. So I appreciate the question. And I'm glad we're uplifting it because I know it's a concern for many educators.

Part of what we can do-- I'm speaking for a moment as a parent who went last night to his daughter's curriculum night for first grade and met with the teacher. And they talk through their approach and what they're doing and why they're doing it.

And I think just that transparency. I mean, they weren't talking about religion. They were talking about writing and math and kindness and values.

But the transparency from the teacher-- I mean, my wife and I walked away last night feeling so reassured, knowing that there was so much more to what our daughter was getting than what she told us at dinner at night, which is nothing. Like nothing, what did you do? Nothing. Who did you play with? No one. [LAUGHS] That's sort of the standard experience.

And so the transparency of, hey, we're talking about religion, but we're doing it in this way. We're doing it for these reasons. I think that goes a long way. From a parent's perspective-- and I've seen this as an educator, too-- when you place the trust and confidence in your students, for me, it's college and graduate students, so I'm not dealing as much with parents.

But even when you do it with younger students and their families and trust that they can receive what you have to say in terms of your approach and to say, we're not here to privilege a particular religion, we're not here to push a certain religion, we're not here to say that some are better than others, we're just here to help your kids understand the world and how it works and the kinds of things that they will encounter as they get older, I mean, I love that.

I mean, of course, that's what I want for my kids. And I want that in terms of history and math and other kinds of people skills. And this is one of them. And so last thing I'll say-- and then I'd love to hear from you on this, too, if you're open to it.

As I mentioned in my opening comments, religion is tricky for a lot of people. We are becoming more comfortable in this country talking about race, talking about gender, talking about sexual orientation. But religion is not yet off limits, right? We keep it in timeout. We avoid it when we can.

And I get it. I understand why. But we're suffering because of our inability to understand one another. And religion is such a salient part of people's identities. It's such a big force in the world. And we're really depriving our kids when we're not sharing it.

I understand that I'm preaching to the choir a little bit here. But being able to communicate that to parents, who are resistant, and to show them what is the value, what is the upside, how is this going to serve your kids as they get older and move into the world, I think that's the best way to get them on board.

ANNA MUDD: Absolutely. And Simran and I would just really echo a lot of what you said. So typically, what we talk about is just an incredible level of transparency and an explicit articulation of the how and the why. And entering into this content is just non-negotiable and a critical piece of the curriculum arc and of the pedagogy.

And that includes not only couching the how and the why in a broader historical legal context but the teacher really articulating how this relates to their own pedagogical theory of change, what they understand to be the purpose of education.

Professor Moore often talks about that this can often be linked to the mission statement of the school, that if you go back to that mission statement, you're very often going to find articulated values that are then expressed within the stated goals of religious literacy frameworks.

And particularly, to spend careful time reviewing the concept of distinguishing between devotional and nondevotional study of religion, which can sound like a truism, it can sound very clear, but there always has to be this presumption of an assumption that learning about religion is in some ways, devotional, whether that's implicit, whether that's not on the surface.

And just to invite folks into the rich world history complexities of the academic study of religion, many of folks, for whom, this is their first introduction. And it's incredibly inspiring and exciting. And that level of articulation and transparency enriches any curricular module to give a real clear sense to students and parents.

This is why-- this is how this deeply connects, to my understanding, of purpose of education and what we're all doing here. We also have-- we have at least one teacher in our network who teaches-- hold an optional parent night, where parents can come, I think, once a month and do sort of a sped-up version of the curriculum that their students are doing for a month.

So there's full transparency to alleviate anxiety. I know that's not-- everyone has the bandwidth to do that. But inviting parents into the learning process is also incredibly powerful. And I was going-- a similar about the how question, also, was going to bring in Alison's question.

And maybe, specifically, Simran, you can speak to the guide that you put together that you mentioned. So she says, good morning from California. Your comment and revelation around gatekeepers stood out to me. Your movement to create educators' guides is highly inspiring. And the current space I work in guidebooks are considered optional.

How can we encourage, especially gatekeepers, that these guidebooks are necessary mandatory? In essence, how do you recommend we influence without formal authority?

SIMRAN JEET SINGH: It's a great question. And I think part of the challenge here is teachers are overworked and underpaid. And are we really-- are we really right to ask them to do more work? I mean, that's a really hard ask. And there are so many-- even if we do ask them to do more work, there are so many competing issues that need improvement.

And how do we prioritize this one? And so to me, your question, Alison, at the end of it, how do we bear this influence without formal authority, is the real question, right? It doesn't really work to take a top-down approach and legislate the teachers need to do this and that and whatever because you don't really get-- I don't think it's an effective strategy in terms of actually getting to that point.

And also, even if you did, the teachers wouldn't have the resources or the willingness to execute on it. And so what's a different approach, and what has worked on my side? And this has been true in the education space and in the media space, which is, let's go back to this premise and this truth that teachers are overworked and underpaid.

If instead of giving them more work to do, we instead say, hey, let us help you, let us give you some resources that'll make your job easier and help you achieve your goals, that creates a different kind of dynamic. And what I found is so often in life, the entry points are not as formal as we think they are. It's actually through a relationship.

And so building a relationship through educator networks, creating some friends and saying, hey, I'm here to help you, I'm here to serve you, we have a shared mission in helping our kids. Part of your mission is to do this, I know it's outside of your range of expertise. I happen to have some resources for you.

I mean we've been doing that. The organization that I work for in this capacity is the Sikh Coalition. We have developed so many strong relationships with educators who have used our materials and have said, thank you for the lesson plans. Thank you for the reading list.

I mean, over and over again, it's just taking work off the plate of these educators who would love to do this if they had the time to do it. But where would they have time? They just don't. And so I really think the informal networks are the way in. Really going from teacher group to teacher group.

And of course, that's a painful way to get anything done. It's a more of a grassroots approach. But I think, what you'll find and what I've found is as you start connecting in and people of goodwill, who appreciate what you're doing, will plug you into the next network and the next network.

And so that's what I found to be a more effective strategy than going from the top down. Anna, what have you seen on your side?

ANNA MUDD: Yeah. I echo a lot of that, especially the necessity of framing of taking something off the plate versus putting something on is just critical. And not only because teachers are overworked and underpaid, but it's essential to the core of our argument about religious literacy, is that it's already there. Teachers are already teaching it.

When I was teaching the Massachusetts eighth grade world history standards, it was probably 80% content that was explicitly engaging with these questions. But that as teachers, I was in the classroom now, as I engage with teachers, I feel just incredibly often unprepared. And there's a lot of anxiety in how they address it.

So often, it's addressing what's already present in the curriculum. It's making visible that which is perhaps a little bit more latent, even than the explicit content. But it's already there, and it doesn't need to be a huge shift. It can be again, surfacing, making visible, asking different questions with different habits of mind.

It can be small interventions that introduce different levels of complexity. And then you're asking different questions about religion, asking that religion question differently in your life.

I will say also, just a small pragmatic piece, something we've really encouraged with our professional development, especially the more fulsome summer institutes, is to have teachers come as a pair or cohort, just because there's so much more power there and less loneliness.

Again, the experience I had as a teacher, you go to a conference, wherever it may be, you get really jazzed about it. Then you come back to your home institution and sometimes, the enthusiasm isn't there. And that can be for any topic, let alone one that can be as fraught as religion.

So when teachers come in as a cohort, as a pair, who are mutually excited about this and have some energy to do a little bit of peer-to-peer engagement, peer-to-peer training, often that forces, again, as you said, those informal networks within a district or a school, really create more shifts than when it's just isolated teachers and then going home to a district with folks.

It's a lot. It's a big lift [LAUGHS] sometimes, to get this kind of awareness and new frameworks in there. So I think I was going to try and use my third question. Might be kind of fun to end on a little bit here. We can see if there's others we can get to.

But yeah, Simran, one of the things you and I messaged about was that I was very interested that, especially in the first couple chapters of your book, in your young life, there's a fair amount of humor present. Jokes, sometimes with proximity to violence, sometimes not.

But it's very present. And it really stood out to me because I know a good number of teachers in our educator networks use the work of comedians, use comedy, very specifically to sort of offer complexity and humanization to communities that are often seen as one dimension or one dimensional or stereotype.

And there's a very-- and it's not-- comedy in kids is great, but there's something very particular, I think, that comedy can do in that space. And so I was just curious if you had any thoughts about that and the role that humor plays in your work as a storyteller and an educator.

SIMRAN JEET SINGH: Yeah. Thank you. Of everything, that's probably the most important thing you could say about the book. Trying to be funny was a big goal. In fact, my editor, for a long time, edited Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side Gallery. And one of the reasons I agreed to work with him was because I thought he could make me funnier, which he did. So thanks to him.

Yeah. This point about humor, to some degree, it's a strategy. And to some degree, it's just who I am and, I think, part of my experience growing up. And I think people who live on the margins, in any capacity, could perhaps identify with this.

Part of the way you learn to survive the challenges you endure daily is to learn not to take them so seriously and to deal with them with some levity, whether it's someone saying something to you on the street and you trying to think of something funny to say back or if you have some friends, who you like joke about. For me, it was my brothers so often.

And so in some way, you could call it a survival tactic. In some way, it's just when you're writing about yourself, you want your voice to be authentic and to represent who you really are. And I'm not someone who's always serious and really heavy.

The lightness is really part of my daily life, and I wanted that to come through. And I'm glad you noticed it because that was really important to me.

Another reason for humor in the classroom at the age level I teach is a way to keep kids awake. [LAUGHS] You've got to try all the tactics. As teachers now, we are performers as much as we are anything. And so keeping them on their toes and making sure they're having a good time is really important to me pedagogically.

But to your question about, what does it do functionally in terms of disrupting stereotypes? On the surface level, yeah, absolutely, one of the elements is to say, yeah, I am this guy who talks about racism and talks about religion, which people expect to be really heavy and tense topics. And I'm also a guy who can joke around and who likes pop culture and who like sports.

And that's getting back to this point about not flattening one another and not falling into the trap of stereotypes, like showing the fullness of who we are. That's the fullness of who I am. And so that's a really important, I think, instrument for pushing against some of these tropes that are so easy to fall into.

And the other part of it that I think really speaks to me in terms of humor as an instrument is-- the original vision for this book was, let me write a introduction to Sikhism. And it would just be facts and information. And as over the last five years, especially, we've learned that facts and information don't necessarily move people.

Science doesn't even move people. It doesn't change people's minds. And so what is it that can actually help open people up rather than shutting them down? And humor does two things in this regard. Humor opens you up interpersonally by saying like, hey, I'm a human being. You're a human being. Let's hang out. We don't need to be so serious and at each other's throats.

But it does something else sometimes. And that is humor can show how ridiculous some of our assumptions are, sometimes in ways that don't come across when you say it flatly or plainly. So for someone to tell me to go back to where I came from and for me to yell something angrily back at them, what happens? Nothing. We just walk away being angry.

But instead, if I can turn that into some joke about where I came from being Texas or New York or the restaurant I wad just heading, whatever it is, it creates a different kind of openness. But also that person's like, oh, I thought that guy was from another country. And maybe, I'm doing something wrong here. It just creates a different opening.

And so the disruption that can happen through humor, in a way that undercuts dichotomies or hypocrisies in ways that helps people self reflect and be like, wait, why is this funny? Or what was I coming into this conversation with thinking? And what am I walking away with? That has a different kind of progressive move. And I think that can be really powerful.

ANNA MUDD: Absolutely. I was hoping we get to hear your Texas drawl

SIMRAN JEET SINGH: Oh, my god. I did it for the audiobook. And it's the one thing that I'm uncomfortable about. And I hadn't done it in like 20 years.

ANNA MUDD: No pressure, no pressure.

[LAUGHING]

I think we have time for one more. I was thinking, maybe Pamela's comment here. She says, Simran, love your book The Light We Give, which gives me so much hope and guidance navigating life with a transgendered kid.

As a parent and educator, I agree it's important to allow college-aged adult students an opportunity to tell their stories, perhaps by giving them multiple project-based assignments. They can connect with and interview people in Sikh community. I found that our cultural ignorance is because students may not know someone in a particular community. It's easy to turn a blind eye and continue in your bubble.

What projects have you asked students to do in your classes? How do you make Sikhism more visible so that students see our shared humanness across religions?

SIMRAN JEET SINGH: Thank you. Thank you, Pamela. I appreciate all of that. One of my favorite assignments-- I mean, this is like anthropology 101-- it's I just make people go out and meet people. And it's easier to do at the college or graduate level. But

I'll say we've been reading books telling us about what-- right now, I'm teaching a course on Buddhist history. So I'll say we've been reading about Buddhists and what everyone has to say about Buddhists. But what do Buddhist actually have to say? Go out and talk to one or two and report back.

And what I find is consistently, my students will go in with the intention of asking them about their beliefs. That's our bias societally, we want to know what people believe. And that's what's different. But it turns into a conversation about life, like their views on life, how they live, and what else animates them.

And what they'll learn usually is like, for most of these people, so much of their lives are driven by their perspectives. But also they go beyond just the sort of categories that we put them in. And I think, that, to me, to your point initially, Anna, about disrupting people's assumptions, that's a big one.

Being able to see that these religions are not just lived on a page and then are monolithic across communities but really, every person has their own way of living in to their faith, I love that exercise. And I think it's something that can be done at every level.

I'm thinking of my six-year-old now, like she would get it. She doesn't necessarily have all the same assumptions we do. But she has some based on what she's learned about religion and race and gender so far. So yeah, I think it's a really simple exercise but one that can really push forward and against some of our assumptions. Thank you.

The other point that I'll make to your other question about making Sikhism more visible is one thing I love to do. And I do this across the traditions that I teach, is to show how, in history, which I do and I cover-- and I'll talk about the founders of whatever faith I'm teaching and principles, et cetera-- we'll also spend time talking about modern expressions.

And this will include people who claim themselves as faith inspired but also people who identify as Sikh or Muslim or Hindu or whatever and are also just like actors or pop stars or poets. And I mean, there are tons of them all around us. And helping students see that gives them a different perspective into what these religions look like in real life.

ANNA MUDD: Absolutely. That was my last question I didn't get to. Are there any-- Simran, are there any folks in that sphere you want to name-check?

SIMRAN JEET SINGH: Oh, so many--

ANNA MUDD: Activists, culture makers, folks that people could bring into their curriculum, introduce students to that really brings in that contemporary internally diverse element.

SIMRAN JEET SINGH: Yeah. I mean, Gurinder Chadha's film my views in the classroom. That's Bend it Like Beckham. I mean, it's one of those that's just a good movie. And it happens to be about a Sikh family. I really love it. And I'm also a soccer fan, so that's a nice bonus for me.

Ms. Marvel, the new series on Disney Plus, talks a lot about partition, which is a central experience of many South Asians and especially Sikhs.

And there's a really cool Sikh musician who's featured on there, named Raaginder Singh. And so that's been a cool thing for me to expose my kids to and just be like, hey, look at the different kinds of things that are showing up within religion.

And then poetry has actually been-- I think there's a long tradition of writing and poetry. In our community, but Rupi Kaur, Harman Kaur, in literature, Jaspreet Singh, Valerie Kaur's new book, which is she's also a Harvard alum.

Yeah, there's so much out there. So yeah, I'm happy to point people towards more resources and expressions that sort of speak to Sikh experiences around the world.

ANNA MUDD: Phenomenal. Well, we are right at the hour. What fantastic timing. Simran, tremendous gratitude. I learned so much. I think this was a really rich conversation. Thank you, everyone, who joined. These were fantastic questions.

And I haven't been keeping track of the chat. But hopefully, our colleagues have been putting in some links to some of the resources that have been referenced. So Simran, did you put the guide in the chat?

SIMRAN JEET SINGH: I wasn't able to send it to all the people in the chat. I don't think I have the privilege to do that. But if you don't mind dropping it here, I think, it might be useful for educators.

ANNA MUDD: Yeah, absolutely. We'll do that. And put in over at the RLP, we have some new modules for educators, case studies, and self-paced learning opportunities and also opportunities to sign up for our newsletter.

So I think with that, we'll again, say just tremendous gratitude, Simran. It was lovely. Thank you for the lunchtime chat and just for your tremendous work as a public scholar.

SIMRAN JEET SINGH: My pleasure. Great to be here with you. Thank you, Anna. Thank you to the whole team. Appreciate it.

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SPEAKER 2: Sponsor, Religion and Public Life.