butswana

What do you think of this?

<a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,44743,00.html" target="_blank">http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,44743,00.html</a>

The only way to keep it neutral is to teach it as myth. Some folks wouldn't like that.

Bookman

If done properly, education about the bible from a scholarly perspective would be a good thing, IMO. The article didn't raise any red flags for me.

FWIW, Shelby county is the county which includes Memphis, TN (as the by-line indicates). I would have real reservations about the results if this were proposed in one of Tennessee's more rural areas, but Shelby is about as urbanized as we Tennesseans get.

Bookman

butswana

Yeah, I didn't see a problem either. But, as we all know, someone will have a problem. Some group will try to get it twisted to reflect thier beliefs, and the whole thing will get thrown out.

Oresta

While the current proposal seems a reasonable approach to a significant work of literature, it is this earlier proposal by the same body of educators that raises a red flag.

What sort of oversight would these educators, if they are the same who passed the earlier attempt, give to to the classroom practices of this course?

However, if I were a resident of that township, I would want to see the course of study added with some reservations and a watchful eye. As a teacher, I would want some guidance from my board as to how to handle students who would use class discussion to witness. As a principal, I would want to know what kind of support I would get from my board if I backed a parent's complaint that the teacher was using his/her position to further a sectarian belief.

My own similar experience in a Detroit Public high school in a world literature course was a postive one. We had a unit on Hebrew literature that included sections of the OT and the Torah. The German unit included a psalm by Martin Luther and the Spanish unit Lope de Vega's "A Song of the Virgin Mother". None of us became Jews or Catholics or Lutherans as a consequence of appreciating beautiful stuff. After all, we did also read some Voltaire and Jefferson.

Bookman

Very reasoned approach, Orestra. We're in agreement.

I chuckled at the use of the word township, though. The "township" in question is the city of
Memphis, the 18th largest city in the US -- about 2/3 the size of Detroit.

Bookman

Oresta

My apologies, Bookman. Living in Detroit, I should be especially sensitive to misperceptions about one's home town.

To contimue this thread, I had an email discussion on it with Buffman this a.m. We discussed how potentially devisive this course will be. I said that if I were assigned to teach this tar baby, I'd include comparative versions of creation, the flood, etc. I'd also be sure the students knew the definitions of "metaphor" and "literary device".

MOJO-JOJO

Oooooooo...don't call Memphis our "home town", that's a whole different world over there in West Tennessee. We are sophisticated Suh-tha-nahs heyah in the Music City. Memphians are more like wiley Riverboat gamblers and flim-flammers from the Delta region. And they STILL hate us cause WE got the football team

Rosiel

Yes...Memphis is a totally different place than the rest of the state. I'm going to college there (originally from a little town east of Nashville). I saw a little blurb of this on the news a couple of weeks ago and wound up writing a short paper on it for my rhetoric class. I don't have the text on me at the moment, but the gist was that I don't really think it's a good idea to begin with, but that if it had to go through, it should be a comparative religion class instead of focusing only on the bible.

(btw, hi everyone! I've been lurking for a pretty good while, but I felt like I should probably reply to this one, since I'm living there )

Oresta

Welcome,Rosiel!

Oresta

MOJO-JOJO, my apologies. <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />