I conduct 'research' in a meandering, intuitive way. As a result, I often find myself traveling down unexpected pathways. Sill, I have specific goals for this project, and was lucky earlier this week to stumble upon research by Elizabeth Van Der Leigh and Lauren Fitzgerald (complete citation below). In an article directed at Writing Program Administrators, Van Der Leigh and Fitzgerald refer to Virginia Chapell's idea that one of the tasks of writing instruction could (or should) be to help students "articulate their commitments". The authors concur and suggest that students require opportunities to apply their newly-aquired analytical skills to "the supposedly private aspects of their lives". In doing so they become engaged with, as opposed to estranged from, their past. Encouraging students to use their 'religious literacy', Chappell notes, can result in in a more "active citizenship". Van Der Leigh and Fitgerald suggest the following three guidelings for writing departments to follow (paraphrased):
1. Establish boundaries for the function of religious belief in writing programs that emphasize the academic purposes of doing so.
2. Students and instructors must agree to neither attempt to convert nor to denigrate religious belief.
3. Students and instructors must agree that remaining silent on religious matters is also acceptable.
These suggestions strike me as useful for the ESL classroom. Thoughts?
Chappell, Virginia. "Teaching - and Living - in the Meantime." The Academy and the Possibility of Belief: Essays on Intellectual and Spiritual Life. Eds. Mary Louise Buley- Meissner, Mary McCaslin Thompson, and Elizabeth Bachrach Tan. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000. 39-63
Van Der Leigh, Elizabeth and Lauren Fitgerald. "What in God's Name? Administering the Conflicts of Religious Beliefs in Writing Programs." WPA: Writing Program Administration. Vol. 31 Nos. 1-2. Fall/Winter 2007.
2 comments:
I have more to say than fits in this box, so I will post a series of comments.
comment 1:
I think Van Der Leigh and Fitzgerald are on the right track with their suggestion of a mutually respected boundary between religious belief and academic purpose.
Faith includes the mind and goes beyond it.
When people live a life aligned with the purification teachings of their
culture, often including diet, meditation, right action, code of
conduct, and practices, a spiritual experience unfolds that comes from
within. Although it’s not measured, it’s real. In his book Personal Knowledge physicist and chemist Michael Polanyi points out that “heuristic knowledge is irreversible,” meaning that once we experience it, we know, and we can never go back to the state of
pre-experience. Experience changes us, and the knower is involved in a personal way in every act of understanding. So there is no such thing as “objective.” Is this really so different from faith?
Polanyi has written a few books, one called Science, Faith and Society. I have not read them and can’t speak to them, but I understand his ideas move around a false split that has been made between fact and value, science and humanity. Might be worth adding his work to the “reading list.”
Comment 2:
Comment 2
Muslim students are traditional, but faith is more than practicing
blindly formulas from the past. It must be connected with the living
tradition, and it has an inner wellspring. Otherwise it is blind
obedience.
The most powerful science also comes from this place—awe of the rules
or extent of creation, recognition of some cosmic arrangement that is
so much huger that human endeavours. For examples:
-- the response of the space walkers to the sight of earth from space(—Buzz Aldrin)
--Albert Schweitzer’s commitment to using his medical knowledge to help
disenfranchised and needy, and advance social justice
--Albert Einstein’s deep horror, regret and guilt at seeing that his scientific work had
resulted in the atom bomb exploding Nagasaki and Hiroshima
--the connection of physics and mysticism at the heart of particle theory,
string theory, sub-atomic particles, where energy and matter interface at
e=mc2
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