01.30.10
This week in class….
My Freshmen have now received the Survey Project assignment — that’s their big project for the first half of the term. They’ll have to create surveys to measure what are the best sources of information about the Vietnam War based on how much college students know about it. Meanwhile, I’m still wrestling with them about using the materials in the textbook more effectively: If the author groups a set of texts together under the title, “First Wave of Major Works,” how can you find out what he means by this: when does the wave begin and end, what makes the works major, what are the historical issues connecting these texts, etc.
For this week, they will have to read a much more academic article: one with an experiment, results, charts, hypotheses, etc. I’m curious how they’ll do.
My religion/lit class has been looking at the role of biography for religious traditions. We spend Thursday’s class discussing the issue, but I think we didn’t back far enough away from the specific texts to get a good theoretical perspective on how biography works for religion. I tried to pose the question of what biographies DO — how they FUNCTION — for religious traditions, but wasn’t fully able to pull the discussion away from the specific narratives we’ve been looking at (Abraham, Moses, Jesus).
We still have the Qur’an, the Life of the Buddha and the Platform Sutra to work through, so maybe in three weeks they’ll be able to speak more theoretically. And they get their first writing assignment this week as well: compare the passages on Noah in the Qur’an and Genesis. So that should help as well.
01.23.10
My class on World Scriptures–Week 1
I’m teaching two sections of a class that I’ve named “Literary Aspects of World Scriptures.” Oddly, out of 60 students, none of them are listed as religion majors on my roster. Hmmm….
Thursday saw some good discussion about reading practices. We read the Abraham story on Tuesday, and on Thursday we compared it to the biography of Moses and to the Exodus/Passover narrative. Because we live in the Bible belt and because we were starting the course with Hebrew readings, I raised the question of how much we, as 21st-century readers in a Christianized American culture, are adding into the text, and how much we aren’t paying attention to.
My students picked up on the notion that we tend to spiritualize these stories (as the Christian church has always done) at the expense of some of their historical aspects. That is, we acknowledge the historicity of these events even as we wrestle with the fact that they are not OUR histories, except insofar as we graft ourselves into that history by faith.
My hope is that we can recognize how much our own context as readers influences how we read the texts. Once we leave behind the Judeo-Christian world in 2 weeks, we’re not going to be able to rely on what we’ve heard growing up!
01.13.10
Update on Texas curriculum debates
Texas debates the way history will be taught – Yahoo! News.
Glad to hear this:
Early quibbles over how much prominence to give civil rights leaders such as Cesar Chavez and Thurgood Marshall, and the inclusion of Christmas seem to have been smoothed over. Board Chairman Gail Lowe said at the start of the hearing that Chavez and Christmas will not be removed from the standards.
But board members are still crafting dozens of amendments to be raised for consideration before the tentative vote, expected Thursday. The 15-member board won’t adopt final standards until March.
I’m also glad to hear testimony like this:
In early testimony, the board was urged to include more examples of influential Mexican Americans in the nation’s history and to further acknowledge Sikhism as a major world religion.
Fifteen-year old Harsimran Singh, who attends Round Rock High School, said the lack of understanding about his religion is “dehumanizing” and implored the board to require more discussion of the religion that mandates he wear a turban.
“I would like other people to know that I’m not Osama bin Laden,” Singh said. “I know a little bit about Christianity, I would like other people to know about my religion as well.”
And I’m surprised to hear that this even needs to be debated:
He’ll also ask the board to reconsider mentioning makeup entrepreneur Mary Kay Ash of Addison, Texas, more often than Christopher Columbus in the curriculum standard. At present Ash is mentioned twice; Columbus once.
Why is Ash mentioned twice?
As for the issues surrounding the ways religion is mentioned in the classroom: There needs to be a balance in acknowledging the presence and contributions of religious belief to our nation’s history without promoting one religion as preferable to others. Even from a Christian perspective, I believe we should separate Christianity as historical fact from Christianity as state-promoted religion — just as we might do in discussing the role of Judaism and Buddhism in the lives and contributions of European and Asian immigrants.
12.13.09
What my freshmen think.
Based on their final papers–which had to discuss the relationship between science and religion–here’s what I learned about how my students see the world:
- There is very little common ground for religion and science to meet. This idea comes from both sides: the religious students and the non-religious students simply don’t see any way for the two perspectives to meet.
- College is full of political correctness, especially when religious beliefs are being ignored/rejected/laughed at. (These kids are Freshman: how much of this have they experienced in their first 15 weeks of university???)
- Global warming has been officially discredited. (Apparently they are referring to the recent exposure of scientist’s e-mail, which by the time I was grading the papers had been shown to be mostly a non-issue.)
- Religion is really a matter of personal belief and not of actual truths. (Yes, many of the texts we read talked about it this way. But the students who went this route didn’t really question whether the texts were correct in describing religion that way.)
- The Bible truly disproves evolution, etc. (On the other hand, one student claimed that science had proven the Bible, the date of Adam & Eve, the Star of Bethlehem, etc.)
It was an interesting set of papers. I had to set aside my own beliefs and simply look at whether the students were making bona fide arguments (as opposed to simply summarizing texts), whether they were using the texts fairly, and whether they were thinking very deeply about the issues.
Interesting, indeed.
I wonder what I’ll learn from my Spring course on world scriptures?
11.26.09
Thanksgiving break attendance numbers
Well, I had only four students in the first class and five in the second.
On the other hand, we had great conversations. The second class even talked about the reading for the entire hour–even though I was going to let them out after 30 minutes. Who am I to stop a great conversation? What’s more impressive: They were talking about Paul Tillich and Sandra Cisneros and really wrestling with their ideas–great work for Freshmen on the day before vacation!
11.22.09
What is the unit of transnationalism?
In our Americanist Reading Group, we’ve read excerpts from two recent books about transnational approaches to American literature, and both books have been criticized for making much ado about nothing.
The first book we read (authors shall remain nameless to protect the guilty) turned every mention of a place outside the USA into an example of transnationalism. Logically speaking, then, any book that references Christianity becomes transnational! The second book was more about the transnational imagination, as it dealt with how British authors use America in their texts — but not necessarily with any “actual” U.S. context.
Given how easily these authors apply the term transnationalism any instance of political boundary crossing, I have to wonder: What is the minimal amount of contact with a foreign culture that can reasonably be considered grounds for a discussion of transnationalism?
That is, What is the unit for transnational studies?
10.03.09
What are these kids watching nowadays?
The other day, while teaching Salman Rushdie’s story “Chekov and Zulu,” I was shocked–SHOCKED!!!–to discover that none of the students in my class knew anything about Star Trek: not the original show, not any of the movies, not any of the related TV shows.
It boggles my mind.
It’s also odd to me that I react to their lack of knowledge about this piece of pop culture in the same way I would react if they had said they had never read Romeo and Juliet. At what point did Star Trek become something we simply expect everyone to know?
09.23.09
Update: Discrimination found at Philly swim club
I posted on this news story when it broke a few months back:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32977870/ns/us_news-race_and_ethnicity/
A state panel has found probable cause of racial discrimination at a suburban Philadelphia swim club that asked a day camp group of mostly black and Hispanic children not to return, a ruling the club’s lawyer blamed late Tuesday on the “media firestorm” that followed the incident.
The Valley Club in predominantly white Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania, has denied there was any racial motive behind its actions June 29, when children from Creative Steps Inc. day camp went to the club and their payment for swimming was refunded without explanation. The club has maintained that there were too many children for the number of lifeguards on duty and that many of the children who were at the club couldn’t swim.
[...] The state report also noted that other large groups that came to the swim club did not generate the same reaction. For example, a plumbing company has held an annual party at the club that draws about 100 to 125 people each year, about five to 10 of them black, the report said. It found that far more children were in the pool for those parties, yet no club members threatened to quit and guests did not report “inappropriate or rude comments” from club members.
09.19.09
Update on the Texas Curriculum Debate
Interesting proposal here about moving Chavez from a list of model citizens to a list of influential people–but then, if the model citizens aren’t also influential, how do we know who they are? Also, check out the final paragraph. Are students being asked to identify significant politicians from all perspectives, or just from the Right? (Keep in mind, this is Texas we’re talking about….)
Texas activists: Chavez, Marshall must be taught
Supporters argued that Chavez shouldn’t be taken out of fifth grade classes as suggested because he greatly improved conditions for Hispanic farm workers. Critics said he lacked the stature and impact to be listed next to the likes of Benjamin Franklin.
Lowe said the board would likely side with some teachers and other groups that said Chavez should be moved from a list of model citizens, which includes Franklin, to a list of people who contributed to society, such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr.
A member of the advisory panel also criticized Marshall’s inclusion, saying he wasn’t a strong enough figure in the civil right movement to merit stronger reference.
“To say that Marshall is not a strong enough example … is an insult to his legacy,” said Banks, the NAACP spokesman.
In the draft proposal discussed Thursday, Marshall’s inclusion was added to an eighth-grade history course and remained in first-grade social studies.
Among proposed changes are to require students to identify “significant” conservatives of the 21st century, such as Newt Gingrich, and deleting references to Christmas and Rosh Hashanah. Lowe said Thursday the holidays would likely remain in the final plan.
09.13.09
How’s the semester going?
Well, my comp students have their first assignments due on Wednesday, so we’ll see how well I prepared them for this! They had to perform a rhetorical analysis of the selections we read from either Crevecoeur or Tocqueville. Their proposals looked good for the most part, so I’m optimistic. And of course I need to recall this is their first formal college writing, so anything intelligent they say will be a success. But I realize how quickly this assignment has come upon them and how complex the texts are–and I don’t want them getting frustrated by the difficulty level this early in the term.
Interestingly, it’s been political science week in my classes. My comp classes have read Tocqueville and Machiavelli on democracy, along with Locke’s discussion of civil society and Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration; my lit class read parts of Rousseau’s Social Contract alongside Voltaire’s Candide. So I’ve been swimming in ideas about what democracy and equality and freedom and human nature are and how they should be implemented in government etc. How do freedom and equality work together, and is democracy more dependent on one than the other? Is good government based on nature or is it constructed against nature? Hmmmm…..
The lit class is reading Montesquieu’s Persian Letters and Diderot’s Supplement later this week. Very interesting texts. This is the first time that I’ve explored Enlightenment literature from the standpoint of how it views and used non-Western cultures, and it’s probably the first time I’ve really found the era interesting and not just annoying (Molière excepted–he’s always been the bright spot of the period for me). Discovering all these conflicts about what human nature is and whether Europe is really civilized makes the period so much more fascinating to me–who knew?!
