Paper short abstract:

In forming minds of their own, the company children keep is important. Teaching religion in Danish public school is marked by efforts to engage deities as cultural ancestors but not as real interlocutors. The paper explores the sociality such simultaneous absence/presence, real/unreal gives on to.

Paper long abstract:

Danish educational debates reveal two understandings of value: one, the foundational values that buttress Danish society, and two, the comparative value of educational programs for Denmark's economy. The cherished goal of cultivating critical thinking such that children manifest 'minds of their own' is thought to bolster both democratic dialogue and market-oriented innovation. Although microhistorial minds are inevitable, educators work to fashion particular manifestations of 'independent' mind by marshalling children into permanent classes that delimit the company they keep, and encouraging them to engage imaginatively with their interiority, with Danish culture/society, the globalized world, nature, and spiritual dimensions of life.

Exploring one aspect of this, I focus on the obligatory teaching of religion, predominantly Evangelical Lutheranism, in Danish public school. In contrast to private Christian schools, where children and deities move easily in each others' company, extending sociality to deities in public school elicits more self-conscious exchange, marked by efforts to engage deities as esteemed cultural ancestors without quickening their spirits. Children are invited to acknowledge the existential depth and moral sway of biblical persons/narratives, but not to engage them as respected interlocutors.

This double insistence on the cultural value of teaching Christianity as the official heritage site of societal values, and the democratic value of cultivating rightful ownership of mind leads to playful ways of dealing with simultaneous absence/presence, esteem/mockery, subordination and insubordination. I argue that the double valence of this exercise may develop proclivities for market-oriented innovation.