Founding Separation

In my current classes I have students who report that they are Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, Catholic (many protestant students don't know that Catholics are Christian), Agnostic, Hindu, Atheist, Wiccan, New Age, and assorted mix-mashes of the above. So, to me, the idea that religious observances should be instituted by schools is bizarre at best. The argument that the "founding fathers" were all Christian and created a Christian nation is a simple distortion of history. Jefferson was a Deist; Paine was an avowed and fervent atheist. And it was Jefferson, in his Virginia Statue of Religious Freedom that set the standard of non-interference of state and government in "their opinion in matters of religion."

It would seem to me that parents of Mormons, for example, wouldn't want a Jehovah's witness teacher witnessing to them at school. Or Baptists, Methodists, or Scientologists for that matter. There is so much fervent diversity of view and biblical interpretation just in protestant Christianity that merely pitting this separation of Church and State issue as one of Christianity against all is impossibly simplistic.

Does that mean we never discuss religion? Of course not. World History would be impossible to understand without a knowledge of religion. US History too is rooted in European Christianity. But it is also the revolutionary tolerance of religion and the abhorrence of the power of the Church of England, when coupled with the state, that drove the taproot of the new nation beyond the inheritance of Europe.

In my high school we had a "Bible as Literature" class. The literary aspect of the Bible and its influence on culture and arts and letters in the US was supposed to allow an end run around the issue of separation of church and state. But, in reality, my German congregational teacher had only one viewpoint, German congregationalist. And although she never punished or coerced us from skepticism and disagreement, there was no question that she was using the class as a congregationalist Sunday school.

In the final analysis I am completely perplexed about those that are fighting to put religion and conversion back into the schools. There is no question in my mind that they will be the first ones to complain and go running to the courts when the prayers aren't their prayers, when the beliefs aren't their beliefs, and when the science teacher spends a good deal of class time covering intelligent design and demonstrating why it is not science.

The movement to have church and state again clasp hands isn't revolutionary. It is counter-revolutionary. It is counter to probably the greatest advance in freedom that the American Revolution had to offer. Let's just not go there. For our own sakes.

Speaking and Listening

It's more like a barely controlled circus than an effective communication of knowledge. Partners have worked on researching some of the major conflicts of the Cold War. A "War," by the way, that seems as distant and irrelevant and obscure to them as intricacies of the Peloponnesian wars. The research part seemed to go quite well. Students were focused and used resources well to find information. The flaw, for some, was simply writing down information that they found without understanding it. And then the big mistake, not asking any questions about the information.

Presentations by both partners begins chronologically, starting with the establishment of communist governments in Eastern Europe from 1945-48. Huh? What date was that? Wait, start over. Can you say that again? 1940 what? Huh? It's so clear how important presentation skills become.

The difficulty that most students have listening and notetaking is major hurdle to learning and knowledge. Admittedly, it isn't always the most important way to learn. But, boy, is it a critical skill. Even if not taking notes, students should be able to listen, or participate in a discussion in a way that would lead to good notes. Just remembering the vital points of a conversation is often unbelievably difficult. Getting those points into good notes is even more difficult.

It's clear we need to spend much more time on process skills than just on content. Yet, it's always a race to complete the content. At the end of the day, when students have notes of the chronology of the main conflicts of the Cold War, it is clear they don't understand most of them, and are at a loss about how those events fit into the larger picture of the Cold War. It's an introduction, but we're going to have to use this information in multiple ways before the solid understanding will set in. I'm convinced that if these students were more skilled at presenting, listening, and notetaking that we would be much further along. How to present a topic seems so straightforward, until you see in the flesh how truly confusing and complex it can be. There are so many ways a presentation can go wrong.

On to "Presenting 101."