Despite the holiday season’s calls for joy and peace, religious strife continues in many places. While the United States has a great deal of litigation and controversy over religion’s place in public life, it has largely avoided violence. Yet our society often seems unprepared to talk constructively about this contentious topic, especially in schools.

According to the IDEALS survey of college students on 122 U.S. campuses, conducted by researchers at North Carolina State University, Ohio State University and the nonprofit Interfaith America, just 32% of students said they had developed the skills “to interact with people of diverse beliefs.” Although almost three-quarters of students spent time learning about people of different races, ethnicities or countries, less than half of them reported learning about various religions. Most students received “C” grades or below on the survey’s religious literacy quiz.

Objective education about the world’s religions has the potential to foster tolerance and understanding, and various research groups provide guidelines for religious literacy education. Yet the study of religion may be hindered by hesitation about what is and isn’t legal in public classrooms – a topic I write about often as a professor of law and education, with a particular interest in these fields’ relationships to religion.

Other countries also face challenges in deciding what kind of religion-related instruction can or can’t be legally taught in public schools, and each deals with the question in different ways.

Though there have been many Supreme........

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