Re: [FCARFORUM] Myth, mythology & religion

[QCao009@aol.com]

In a message dated 2/7/04 8:40:19 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
judylce@tampabay.rr.com writes:
Mythology is in the curriculum and in the Holt-Rinehart textbook.  Just so 
you understand my perspective, teaching religion involves teaching morals and 
values which extends far beyond knowing who various characters are. Some 
characters have even influenced our language. For example, to say something was a 
Herculean task, or a Goliath undertaking reflects our absorption of two cultures. 
 Anyway, I appreciate you taking the time to share your viewpoint and it 
helps me better understand the position from which other parents approach the 
subject.
Judy, Thea & Brent:

Thanks to all of you for starting this thread.  Is it the parent's 
responsibility and domaine ?  Is it the school's ?  Is it the substance of our 
curriculum ?  Is it the contextual process and the environment we create that begins 
and encourages learning ?  Why do we have to contend it's one and not the other 
?  Why is eating of the Tree of Knowledge a sacreligious gesture and deemed 
punishable for eternity?

For me it is a shared task.  I teach 2 Survey of World Lit classes each 
semester in addition to 2 classes of Advanced Writing.  More than half of my 
students finished their high school in their countries before they came here.  So 
they have had much more of an in-depth study of classical literature than the 
American middle and high school curriculum affords our students.  Some are 
deeply religious, some spiritual, most are typical college students, who tell me 
that sleep is the number one priority of their daily existence.  A quick in 
class assessment the first day of the semester tells me that the majority of them 
no longer "reads".  And my responsibility is to have them discuss, reflect, 
and write.  So they need to read.  Reading is a starting point.  So we start the 
classical process of any relationship, trying to change each other's 
behavior.  

I assign the reading.  Then each morning, before we start the actual 
discussion, and go to the text, we have a 15 mn pre-reading debate of the issues.  
This is when their use of real language takes over.  I share this with you to 
underline why this is important for me. 

 Any discussion of things which are meaningful and of value for us is a 
discussion of our "knowledge".  Knowledge is what we believe in after each of us 
has thoughtfully and thoroughly studied the subject ...through books, through 
parents, through friends, and hopefully through teachers, counselors, priests 
and even politicians.  In the context of the second language classroom, my 
premise is that my students possess this knowledge, and I bring the knowledge up to 
the surface by allowing it to come out through real language in real time.  
That is a tremendously ambitious undertaking that I cannot even begin, a 
foolhardy journey I cannot even dream of without a degree of FAITH in  my students.  
And that's what allows, in my view, for them to become real...and to feel a 
part of another culture, and a part of new cultures ... through the text, 
through the stories, through the characters.  It always starts for us in that 
magical learning moment with how and what things MEAN to US, and not just what it 
means for me.

Myths, mythology, religion can be looked at from both sides.  Those who 
believe think they are real.  Those who believe a different viewpoint think they 
are superstition.  Debating this issue is a good thing; studying it and acting 
on it allows us to reach even further and  understand much more the duality of 
how the world continues to change, and yet, how the archetypes of our lives 
continue to repeat themselves.  The work of standards, evaluation, and the work 
of teaching and learning are entertwined and  noble work in the sense that 
they help us better ourselves, understand others from a different generation, and 
begin to take tolerance from a passive undertaking into an active 
participation in the world around us.  For some of us, teaching has thus become our 
religion, our quest, our mission.

It is work that ESL and BE teachers do on a daily basis.  It is work that we 
cannot do without understanding and engaging the cultural background of 
parents.  It is the kind of teaching that allows us to envision a different world, a 
world where communications, verbal and non-verbal, spring from the spirit of 
all things.  And most of all, it springs from the spirit of our students and 
their families.  And when we as teachers can feel it, we have indeed found what 
we came for.

Quan

Founder & President, The SCDJ Group
Vice President, University Seminars International
Chief Information Officer, At-Eaze.com
Director, FCAR

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