Academic
Exchange Quarterly Summer 2004
ISSN 1096-1453 Volume 8,
Issue 2
To
cite, use print source rather than this on-line version which may
not reflect print copy format requirements or text lay-out
and pagination.
Down-To-Earth Religious Education
Mary E. Kremer,
O.P., Ph.D.,
Sr.
Mary Kremer, O.P., Ph.D., is an assistant
professor of education whose research
interests include multicultural education, critical pedagogy, and religious
education.
Abstract
Although
multicultural education is often misunderstood and feared, it has been embraced
by many educators as a necessary approach to preparing the next generation for
the complexities of life in the
21ste
21st Century. This study
describes the work of three Catholic secondary religion teachers who inform
their classes with multicultural strategies. Data come from classroom
observations in metropolitan schools in the
Keyword:
Religion
Introduction
Multicultural education is
changing the way teachers approach today’s diverse students. While secular
education is being transformed through a student-centered approach, too
many the majority of Christian religious
educators continue to rely on a traditional didactic, teacher-centered,
doctrinal methodologyapproach.
In contrast, Mmulticultural
education is an approach that moves the focus from teacher to students.;
it honors students’ background experiences; it
promotes multiple perspectives. It poses real world problems and
asks students to respond in a personally meaningful
manner. It seeks transformation through reflection, leading
to new insights and social action. In a word, it is a new paradigm.,
It is a a new
lens through which to view, interpret, and act in life. Such an approach cannot be
brought down from the heavens; it must be down-to-earth.
Purpose of Research
Multicultural
Teaching Classroom Strategies for Religious
Education
While each religious tradition presents its own
canon of beliefs and practices, Multicultural
educators have proposed
numerous instructional
strategies. Of the many
suggestions, I
believe there are four
particularly suited to religious
education. One, Pang (2001) presents specific
multicultural classroom strategies emerge as being particularly appropriate for
religious education. One, the formation of a caring community
as the essential context for teaching
and learning. Two, Banks (1994)
proposes that “teaching
with powerful ideas”
(pp. 59-79) enables students
to remember, organize, and retain knowledge. Three,
Nieto, (2000) asserts that ,
provides an essential context in which students
comfortably pursue the tasks of religious education (Pang, 2001). Within
this community, students begin with their own experiences, beliefs, and values.
A second strategy for faith development is direct
engagement with the scriptures as a source of powerful ideas (Banks, 1994).
A third strategy, social analysis is necessary if
students are to , enables
students to understand the socio-political reality in which they
must function. Four, Bennet
(2003) says that when students participate in
social action, (Neito, 1999). Lastly,
students participate in social action that enables them to they
experience their own ability to bring about social change
(Bennett, 2003).[This paragraph
is unclear. The subtitle suggests that
all religious eduators uses these classroom strategies. The paragraph states that these strategies
are common to multicultural education only.]
. While
these strategies are not exclusively multicultural,
they are common across the
spectrum of multicultural literature.
Gathering
Data
In
search of the essence of multicultural education as practiced by three
Catholic secondary teachers of
religion, I
went to the classrooms of Sr. Bernice, Pat, and Mike.
In this article,
I describe Sr. Bernice’s class as a
community of care, Pat’s classroom as illustrative
of the powerful-ideas
approach, and Mike’s
class as an experience of social analysis and social action.
Creation of Caring Communities
Humanist educators focus on caring as both the message and
method of education. (Noddings, 1992; Rogers and Freiberg, 1994). Pang (2001) bstateselieves
that
caring learning communities serve as the only viable multicultural context in
which to respect the cultural diversity of students while they the students develop
the necessary skills to participate in a democratic society pledged to
create a better world..
Sister Bernice’s Caring Classroom
[A brief
description of the school environment would be helpful
– all- girl, inner city, exclusive, size
of student body, etc.]
Every day, just before lunch, 28 young women walked
through the doors of her Sr. Bernice’s classroom
for 45 minutes of junior level “Peace and Justice.” I sawsee
the pained and silent faces of young women who have experienced too much of
life too soon. These young women are They
were among the 500+ students in an all-female, urban
school, primarily Hispanic and African Americans,
whose stories revealed the plight of young urban
women trying to make sense of a fractured world in which they wereare
often the wounded. In the steady flow
of stories shared throughout the semester I recalled
very few that were without pain, oppression, and struggle.
Sr. Bernice respondeds
to their pain by welcoming them into her classroom, a
space she calls “a “holy
place.” “In this room the hand of God helps us to join
hands.” She
believes her role in the classroom is that of “facilitator of cooperating and
caring,” creating an atmosphere in which her students
feel free to be themselves. .”
She envisions her class as a community of young women who care about one
another and who feel “free to talk about their beliefs, their dreams and their
hopes.” She says, “I like to have openness of mind and heart in my class.” True
to her desire, she frequently beganins
class with a request to her students. “Today I want to ask all of you
to open your hearts, open your ears, open your mind for what you might see,
hear, and understand.” In her classroom, she createds
a climate of openness by being open about herself. In talking about
hunger, she told them about her own continual struggle with food and weight
gain. Nor is she
afraid to let the students know that she too needs affirmation and support from
others. In sharing herself, she offereds
the students a model for classroom discussion, thus inviting them to respond in
kind.
The circle of
care she createds in
her classroom serves as the beginning point to take her students from an inner
circle of care and concern about their own issues to the larger circle of care
for the entire human family. On the topic of Third World Hunger, she began with
a simple question, “Have you ever been hungry, really hungry?”.
Her next question asked, “Imagine
a family in a developing country. Why do they have
so little to eat?” With further
questioning, she walked them from the local and familiar
to the global view(?)
situation(?) with new
awareness.
She
elicited responses from the students that filled all
three panels of the chalkboard and more. Together they created a compelling
picture of poverty and insight into global hunger.
At the end of
the semester, I asked the students if
I might interview them about
their experience in Sr. Bernice’s class. Three students offered to share their
impressions in a group interview during lunch.
interviewed three students from this class.[What were
the criteria for choosing these three students?
Did you choose them?
Did the teacher choose them?
These aspects would most likely affect the students’ responses.]]
One student liked the class “because it brought us closer together
and made us friends.” Another appreciated Sister Bernice’s encouragement to
talk about “the things that are happening to us.” A third student
recognized a
change in her attitude toward people who are different from her:.
“I stereotyped black people and other groups. Now I see how wrong that [was]is..
. . . I want to go out and help the world. I want to be like superwoman.”
Teaching With Powerful Ideas
While
textbooks serve as the primary tool in classrooms, some educators
criticize them for their banality, lowered
reading levels[The opposite is
usually true.], gimmicks
to hold students’ attention, and failure
to engage students in the necessary skills for acquiring knowledge (Sowell,
1996). Banks(1994) asserts that a multicultural
curriculum focuses on powerful ideas that enable students to understand and
transfer knowledge (1994). While
it is assumed that religious education textbooks will
present the doctrine and right practice of a particular faith expression, they
also suffer from the same flaws. and
cultural biasBanks (1994)
asserts that a multicultural curriculum focused on powerful ideas enable
students to understand more deeply and transfer
knowledge gained to real world situations.,
neglectingI believe
that the most powerful text available
to Catholic religious
educators is [Your opinion?]:
Hebrew and Christian scriptures.
Pat Engages Students in Scripture
During the many months I spent in Pat’s
Lacey’s class, I never saw a textbook; ,
but every day I saw a Catholic bBible,
placed prominently in the front of the room, and copies on
almost every student’s desk. because
sShe believes that the most powerful
source material for Christians is Sscripture.
Actual instruction, for Pat, meant that the 17
ninth 9th graders in
this all-female,
white, female suburban
school of 450 students
[Some
demographics? What else? Age for example?] students
“engage in the sScriptures.”
Her methodology wasis a
dialectic process in which she and the students moved
between their own story stories and the storiesy
of their ancestors in faith. In this process, she inviteds
the students to imagine themselves within the context of the bBiblical
story, as though they participated witnessed in
the original event. Through questioning, she helpeds
them analyze the eventwhat is
happening and how the
characters feelings and thoughtsin
the original story must have
thought and felt: What wasis
God saying? Why did God say that? What meaning did it have for those people?
When she was
is satisfied that they hadve
sufficiently entered the dialogue and understood
the event from the inside, she turneds
the focus to their own stories. For example, in studying the healing stories
of the Gospels[Of the New Testament? Old Testament?] ,
she asked them to write about and share with
others their own stories of healing. They shared not
only the events and of the drama, but their
feelings and interpretations of what happened. Back and forth, back
and forth, she guided s them,
between the stories of the bBible
and their stories, between the powerful
stories of sScripture and their
own stories.
lived
experience. [It is confusing for the reader when you mix the
present tense with the past tense in the same paragraph. Try to stick with one.]
Mrs. Lacey’s[Pat?] Pat’s
desire to “engage the students in sScripture”
was effective with the four students
who volunteered
to interview with me.s I
interviewed. One student appreciated her teacher’s approach to sScripture:
“She taught us how to get into the Sscriptures
and how to read it.” Her effort to relate the scripture stories to the
personal lives of the students was caught by aAnother
student who said:,
“She makes you think a lot more, go deeper. She’ll be talking about a topic and
relate it to something that happens in everyday life, so you can understand the
topic more and say, ‘Oh, she’s right.’ She relates it to things that happen to
us.” Another spoke to the helpfulness of the reflective questioning:.
“She gives us meditating questions and wants to know who you are as a person,
where you stand spiritually and religiously.”
Doing Social Analysis
In a
complex world, social analysis enables learners to see themselves in a
particular social situation and to think critically about it (Holland and
Henriot, 1983). Talvacchia (1997) states that social analysis is necessary if
religious education is to be faithful to the prophetic Christian imperative to
promote just relationships.
in society. Social analysis invites learners to become aware of their
a particular situation place
in society, to look at it critically, asking such questions as:
“Who
has the power and who does not? Who decides? Who benefits and who loses?”
In the context of faith formation, three two
additional questions must be asked (Center for Media
Literacy, 2003): “What
do our scriptures and religious traditions have to say about situations like
this? How might things be different and what action would be necessary to
change the situation?” (Center for
Media Literacy, 2003).[Are all
the previous questions from this source?]
Mike’s Critical Approach
The senior Mike’s
senior level honors course in faith formation for 21
white suburban young women
in an all-female suburban school of 850 students[Again
demographics are needed.] iwas
entitled “Church in the It focuseds
on the stories of three groups of indigenous
peoples of North and South American people
who suffered at the hands of Whites. the
invading EuropeansMike used film—their
histories, their cultures and religious beliefs.[These
areas suffered OR are these areas the substance of the course?]
Mike Longo uses film (their
stories: Mission, Eyes on the Prize, and Dances
with Wolves, because “We have to come out of a story,
, because they are not going to
remember concepts. The message is so, so different from what they
[the students] they[The
students?] are hearing [elsewhere] because then
they have to fill in the blanks and say, ‘Well, how come?’”
].
Mike believes
that social analysis is a necessary skill for all Christians in ads
the students through social analysis the process with
a series of questions, which he articulated during one interview.
with me.
1.
What are your experiences? How does your story relate
to the larger human story, particularly [[to]]
those that are suffering in a variety of ways?
2. Do you see yourself as being oppressed in different ways?
3. Can you connect that in some way to the oppression of others?
4.
Where does the Ggospel
speak to [thatyour
experience of oppression]?
[Does that refer
to oppression?]
5.
How can it [the
Gospel] transform lives
and situations?be transforming?[Does the
it refer to the gospel or the experience of oppression?]
6.
What can we do so that our action transforms our lives?Then
it means that you and I have to put [the Gospel] into
action so that it transforms our lives.
Mike
says believes, states
that social
analysis is a necessary skill for all Christians in United States culture today
if there is to be any hope of transformation for society as a whole and for its
individual members.
Four Sstudents
offered to discuss their impressions of Mike’s course with me
in separate interviews during a study period or lunchtime.
Their responses showed that they understood
social analysis. Each
of the students spoke about Mike’s class as an experience of insight
in phrases like “new experience, different from other classes,”
“informative,”
“opens our minds,” “stuff we don’t hear anywhere else.”
he had taught them effectively. One student
spoke of a growing awareness for the need to look more critically at events,
people, and their stories:.
“The whole way the system actually works. It’s phoney. We only get one story, and the
rest of the stories are left out. Now when I see stories, I ask
myself, ‘Is that the true story? ? Or,
it there something else behind it?’” Another student stated that Mike
had taught her “to
continually ask
questions.”
responded
emotionally, .
“I am more aware of how our government will tell us one thing and do another.
Iraq. They said they we were going there
to help, but really they were after the oil fields. It made me feel angry that they are lying to
us. . . . He means that we have to continually ask questions.” [These comments illustrate that students view
governmental actions as deceptive, but they
do not necessarily illustrate critical analysis.]
Social Action Follows Analysis
Social action
is kills
are a natural outgrowth of critical reflection. For Bennett
(2003), social action skills are one of the six goals of multicultural
education. These skills include “the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to
help resolve major problems that threaten the future of the planet and the
well-being of humanity” (p. 34). Nieto’s (2000) model of multicultural
education includes “decision-making and social actions skills as the basis of
the curriculum” (p.343). Wink (2000) says that Freire’s three-step
process-- to name, to
reflect critically, and to act--“problem-posing”
approach (1970)[Are you trying to indicate that Freire
used this term in a 1970 citation? Or are you stating that Wink referred to
Freire’s term? If the latter, all you need
to do is state that Freire as quoted by Wink….] is straightforward enough for the youngest
children. It is a three-step process: to
name, to reflect critically, and to act.
Mike’s
Approach to Social Action, The
Essential Ingredient
Mike contends that social action must be an integral part of
his course for two reasons: The integrity of the discipline [religion] requires
that students be given many opportunities to care for others since “every world
religion has at its core the care for the community.” He also believes that “action
projects give caring and compassionate students a chance to participate in
the struggle to transform society.”respond
to topics discussed in class. Mike offers the students many
opportunities for action throughout the semester. . During
the one semester I attended his class, I noted the Crop Walk in October, the
Oxfam Banquet in November, and the Cross Cultural Crafts sale in December. . Mike
coordinates the events with the school’s administration while
his students carry out these school wide projects. In
addition, he also invites
students to purchase
coffee directly from a Central American cooperative and Christmas cards from
UNICEF.
In interviews with the four young women mentioned
earlier, each one
Each of the students in Mike’s class spoke
about an experience of self-insight and
empowerment. One student said that the class had given her the ability to
respond to global issues with greater confidence. Another student reported, “If
I want the world to change, I have to take responsibility to make those
changes.” A third student said came
to the awareness that “people of other cultures are like us: we
want to care, to be friends. . . . They are just like us but they lack the
advantages we have, so we want to help them.”[When you
correct students’ grammar, you need to do so consistently.]
.”
Conclusion
The
required brevity of this article does not permit a full presentation of all the
data that support my conclusions. While my experience revealed three distinct
educators at work, several common themes emerged.
First, for each of them multiculturalism is a preferred personal perspective
through which to view the world. Second, theirs is a worldview strongly colored
by oppression and discrimination. Third, each believes that a multicultural
approach is an effective way to enable students to realize their potential as
contributing members to society. Fourth, these teachers create their day-to-day
curriculum from the personal experiences of people--their own, those of their
students, and stories from literature and scripture. Fifth, each of the
teachers incorporates some kind of social analysis and social action into the
curriculum. Finally, these teachers share the same goal for all their students:
building a multicultural society based on respect and compassion for others and
encouraging students to participate in
creating a more holy and just society for all in the
human family.
What happened to
the conclusion, in the original you had "five
themes..."
The required
brevity of this article does not permit a full presentation of all the data that
support my conclusions. While my
experience revealed three distinct educators at work, several common themes
emerged from among them. First, for each of them multiculturalism is a
preferred personal perspective through which to view the world. Secondly,
theirs is a worldview strongly colored by oppression and discrimination. Thirdly,
each believes that a multicultural approach is an effective way to enable
students to realize their potential as contributing members to society. Fourthly,
these teachers create their day-to-day curriculum from the personal experiences
of people—their own, those of their students, and stories from literature and
scripture. Fifthly,
each of the teachers incorporates some kind of social analysis and social
action into their curriculum. Sixth
Finally, these teachers
share the same goal for all their students: building a multicultural society
based on personal respect and compassion for others and encouraging students to
work together to create a more holy and just society for all members of the
human family.
CITED
LITERATURE remove uppercase,
see entry #14k
http://rapidintellect.com/AEQweb/rufen1.htm
Banks, J.
(1994). An introduction to multicultural education.
Bennett, C.
(2003). Comprehensive multicultural education (5thth
ed.).
Center for Media Literacy (2003). Framework for Social Analysis. Retrieved March 16, 2003 from http://www.medialit.org/reading_room/article186.html.
Diaz,
C. (Ed.). (2001). Multicultural
education in the 21st
century.
Freire,
P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. (M. B. Ramos, Trans.). New York:
Continuum.
Nieto, S. (2000). Affirming Diversity: The sociopolitical
context of multicultural education. (3rd
ed.).
Noddings, N. (1992). The challenge to care in schools: An alternative approach to education. NY: Teachers College Press.
Pang, V. (2001). Multicultural
education: a caring-centered, reflective approach.
Rogers, C. R.,
Sowell, E. J. (1996). Curriculum: An integrative
introduction.
Talvacchia, K. T.
(1997). A theological framework for multicultural religious education. Horizons,
24(2) 215-229.
Van Manen, M.
(1990). .
Researching lived experience: Human science for an action
sensitive pedagogy.
Wink, J.
(2000). Critical Pedagogy: Notes from the real world (2nd ed.).
remove all
superscript, see entry# 14j http://rapidintellect.com/AEQweb/rufen1.htm
SSP
Submission
Number: 2535
Submission
Title: Down-To-Earth Religious Education
A: 2
B: 2/3
C: 2
D: 3
E: 2/3
F: 2/3
G: 2/3
H: 2/3
Comments:
This
manuscript lacks much of the necessary detail expected
in academic
writing. The author is discussing the observations and interviews from visits
to three secondary classrooms. Yet the
reader has no inkling as to the demographics of these institutions(other
than they are metropolitan U.S. schools)
nor how these three were chosen for the observations. The reader does not know how often the author
observed or under what circumstances.
Student comments were related
but were they
chosen at random? Were these students
handpicked by the teacher? Did they
volunteer for this task? Did they volunteer as extra credit? These questions need to be answered and the
responses might tend to alter the data.
There
are also inconsistencies with the documentation, verb tenses, and error
correction of quoted comments. Furthermore,
references to
Bible and Scripture are usually capitalized words.
The
author is certainly passionate about the focus of these three teachers
in religious education, but the missing ingredients make for a poorly executed
manuscript. Perhaps
this passion can be channeled to rewrite a more academic
piece.
mec
I
enjoyed reading this and highly recommend
for AEQ readers.
Accept
with requested revision.
SSP