Assignment 2

Transcript_for_Topic_7.pdf

Home >Education homework help >Assignment 2

Session 7: Acknowledging Holidays

When it comes to acknowledging holidays, of course, the three “problem” holidays are Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. Can the religious aspects of the holidays be recognized? That’s the big question.

Can you teach that Thanksgiving is a time when we are to thank God for the blessings that we’ve received? Or, do we have to simply make it about a nostalgic remembrance of the pilgrims, eating turkey, and gathering with family?

Can you teach about the birth of Jesus at Christmas? [Read the rest of the slide]

When it comes to Easter… [Read the slide]

Must you give equal time to all holidays of all the different religions in order to be fair?

If you remember, we looked at this issue of the false assumption about fairness. The false assumption is that fairness means all religions must be given equal time in the classroom. Now no court case has ever said that, and it’s typically born out of our view of “fair” meaning “equal.”

But as we’ve seen, there’s another way of looking at fairness, and that is fairness sometimes means proportional, not equal. And, we have some examples of that.

So, to review: fairness sometimes means proportional, not equal. One example would be… Our system of representation. In Congress, in the Senate, fair means equal. Every state, no matter how large, how small, gets two Senators. Then, in the House of Representatives, there fair means proportional. Representation is based on the population of the state. Another example would be teachers’ pay. A first year teacher is not going to earn as much as a veteran teacher. But they are going to teach the same students, the same amount of things, and use the same textbooks. Frankly, the “rookie” will work harder, probably because they are not as used to teaching. And yet, they are not going to get paid equal to the work. They are going to get paid proportional to the years of service. And finally, just a funny example, would be a buffet line. Everybody pays the same amount of money. Some people eat a lot more than others. We eat proportional to our capacity.

Another concern that teachers often have is what about the problem of some students feeling left out if they’re not a part of that particular holiday celebration because of being part of another religion or no religion at all. So some teachers take the view: ”Well, let’s just pull the drapes and draw the blinds”, and pretend the holiday isn’t happening. We just ignore it. I don’t think that is the appropriate way to handle this issue of the problem of some students feeling left out. Nobody’s faith or non-faith should be denigrated in the classroom. But it really goes back to the issue of “are we teaching accurately about the culture around us?” I mean if this is happening in our communities, then we should be teaching about it so students of all faiths or no faiths understand what these cultural symbols and traditions and ceremonies are all about.

Too often, unfortunately, when we teach about Thanksgiving, we teach it as though it’s some nostalgic remembrance of what happened 300 years ago or more, and how the Pilgrims invited the Indians to share a dinner as a way of thanking them for helping them make it through the first winter. That, frankly, has nothing to do with why we have Thanksgiving today. Yes, it was the first Thanksgiving. And I’ll ask students when I am lecturing at universities in their schools of education, how many of you learned when you were in school that Thanksgiving is a time when we learned about how the Pilgrims invited the Indians to a dinner to thank them. And, of course, all the hands go up. Sadly, that is not why we celebrate Thanksgiving today.

Now, imagine if you were to ask your students: “What’s the world series?” And the way that your students were taught was something like this. The World Series is a nostalgic remembrance of the first World Series in 1903, between the Boston Americans and the Pittsburgh Pirates. And we like to talk about those first teams, and we go over what happened in that first World Series in 1903. And sometimes our teacher even dresses up like an old baseball player. That’s what the World Series is all about; it’s remembering that first competition.

Actually, if we look at the history of Thanksgiving as a nation, the first Thanksgiving was proclaimed by George Washington. Here’s what he said: [Read the slide] No mention of the Pilgrims there. What he was doing was saying we need to thank God for what He’s done recently with our country.

In his famous 1863 proclamation calling on the nation to unify in thanksgiving to God, Abraham Lincoln said: [Read the slide]

[Read the slide] No mention of the Pilgrims there.

So, I would encourage you to break from the more modern tradition in our public schools of simply referring to Thanksgiving as a nostalgic remembrance of the Pilgrims. And instead, teach students that it’s about being thankful to God. Every year the President calls upon the nation to be thankful to God for the blessings we’ve received the previous 12 months. You can even quote Presidential Proclamations as he calls upon the nation to do that. Go to the White House website, type in “Thanksgiving,” print out the Proclamation; read it to students. You can teach students about gratitude, how to be grateful. How to express gratitude by having them make a list of the people to whom they should go and express that gratitude to. You can invite a parent to share about their family Thanksgiving traditions; what it means to them; and what they will be doing. But let’s be accurate in teaching what the holiday is really all about.

I’d like you to think about how you are going to be acknowledging Thanksgiving in your class the next time it comes up. So I want you to take three minutes, and actually jot some notes to yourself about what you can do in your classroom to teach the true meaning of Thanksgiving as proclaimed by the President.

When we look at the topic of Christmas, often the question comes up: “Can students sing Christmas carols in the classroom or at school?” In a previous session, we looked at the music educator’s national conference and their statement in which they said yes it certainly is appropriate to teach what they called “sacred music.” I thought it would be good to take a look at the National P.T.A. statement and what they say about this. They say: [Read the slide] So, if you’re only teaching students purely religious music, then it would be one- sided. But if you mix it up, then certainly as part of our tradition, as part of our culture, you can have students singing religious Christmas carols as well.

I think it is also interesting to note what the Supreme Court has said about singing Christmas carols in public schools. They referred to it indirectly in a case called Lynch v. Donnelly. Now we looked at this before regarding the public display of a nativity scene which they ruled was fine. And in it they said: [Read the slide] I think it is ironic that the Supreme Court assumes religious Christmas carols are being sung in public schools, while school administrators assume, erroneously, that the Supreme Court would be against singing Christmas carols.

Another thing you can do for Christmas is read the Biblical account. You are not reading it for devotional purposes, it’s for cultural understanding and is non- devotional. So much of our culture, especially during the Christmas season, has to do with the birth of Christ. I mean here you have in neighborhoods, you’ve got these little figurines of a man and a woman bending over a little baby and their people’s front yards all over the place. “Students, what’s that all about?” Well, let’s go back and look at that story, because this is a story that has had a huge impact on Western civilization, on our country, and on our community. And whether you’re of this faith or not, you should understand what it’s all about.

Another thing you can do is ask a parent to come in and share what they do for their family traditions related to Christmas.

You can also show and explain a crèche. This is a very traditional part of Christmas celebrations, and it tells the story. It is not a permanent fixture in your classroom. It is a teaching aide. You can bring it in and use it in a way to familiarize students with the story.

I thought I’d show you what one mom has done, and she has been so successful at this. Her kids are long out of elementary school, but she keeps getting invited back by the teachers. She now has 17 different crafts that she has done to create nativity scenes using various objects. And the kids just love it, and then she uses that as not only an arts and crafts demonstration, but also a way to tell the story.

For example, this is a nativity scene made out of soda cans and she has bent the cans so that the openings are the mouths of the various characters standing around the baby Jesus.

This nativity scene is made out of pinecones that she has spray painted white.

This is a nativity scene made out of bottles that she has then put Styrofoam heads on and wrapped with colorful paper.

And these characters are made out of aspirin bottles that she has wrapped with a burlap twine and covered with denim.

You can download a Christmas and Hanukkah Lesson Plan to use with your students.

And when teaching about Christmas, it’s appropriate to teach about the impact of Jesus. After all, why do Christians celebrate his birth? How did his teaching impact the world? What if Jesus had never been born? So these are questions to ask and answer. And to do so through attribution.

You can also teach about the sayings that come from Jesus. For instance, We refer to somebody as a Good Samaritan, or we have Good Samaritan laws. Where do they come from? What is the story of the Good Samaritan? Or His phrase “turn the other cheek, and “Go the extra mile” or we talk about somebody “Giving him the shirt off your back.” Or we say “That guy doesn’t walk on water.” Well, where we get the notion that anybody walks on water? “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” That’s a famous phrase of Jesus’ that was quoted by Abraham Lincoln. Or “Do unto others”--The Golden Rule. These all come from Jesus and certainly can be explained in the context of understanding who this person is and what kind of impact did he have on the world.

So in review, when you teach about Christmas, you can: [Read the slide]

Jot a few notes as to what you might want to do next Christmas.

Also around the Christmas season is the celebration of Hanukkah or the Feast of Dedication. I encourage you to teach this to students and help them to understand an aspect of the culture that is around them. For the Christian students, you can relate it to them through reading John 10:22-39 where it specifically refers to Jesus partaking in the Feast of Dedication or Hanukkah as we now know it. I encourage you to teach the real story. So often, we teach about foods, we teach about music, and we teach about the dradle, but do we actually tell the story? It is a wonderful story about God’s people being faithful to worshipping Him rather than the idol that was set up by the King of Syria, who was at that time ruling over Israel in 167 B.C. The people revolted, kicked the Syrians out, and rededicated the temple. There was an eight-day ceremony and festival following that. So teach that as the real story about God’s faithfulness to his people, their faithfulness to Him, and the fact that even Christians can have some connection to it through the gospel of John. Ask a Jewish parent to share what the holiday means to their family and how they celebrate it.

You can, of course, show and explain the symbolism involved with the holiday. But never let the symbolism overshadow the impact of the story.

Easter is another holiday that many people in America celebrate. But how should you approach it? Well, as we’ve seen about holidays, you can teach all about the religious nature of the holiday as long as it’s done academically and objectively—not devotionally. To help you do this with Easter, one of the things that we’ve done, is we’ve actually created a textbook-style lesson plan. We take the Bible’s account of the death and resurrection of Christ, Chapters 22-24 of Luke; we’ve paraphrased it, and we’ve written it in a textbook style.

We highlight commonly used vocabulary words and terminology in our language, our vernacular. We talk about somebody being a Judas—that’s a traitor—or “your cross to bear”, to be “crucified”, “the kiss of death”, “washing my hands of this”, or “a doubting Thomas”—and so these are terms that they will learn from the story and then we actually do insets that explain where those terms are mentioned in the story.

Then we also help students make cultural connections, whether it’s art or history or literature, social movements—wherever there is a cultural connection that can be made to the story. We help students understand its impact in our history, not just a story that religious people look back to with reverence.

Now Passover is another significant holiday. It happens around the time of Easter and should be explained to students. I would encourage you to read the biblical account in Exodus 11 and 12.

All students should understand the story behind Passover. How the Angel of Death passed over the homes of the Hebrew people.

How that led them eventually through the exodus through the parting of the Red Sea..

How God saved his people from the Egyptians who were chasing after them.

And how that eventually led to Mount Sinai and the giving of the Ten Commandments. And this is significant not only for the Jewish people, but for everyone in western civilization. The Ten Commandments formed the basis of our moral and civic law.

And we honor that at the Supreme Court with engravings like this: like this: and like this: and like this. So it’s had a significant impact on western civilization and on America. And students should understand the story behind the giving of the Ten Commandments and its impact today.

Continuing on in how you recognize Passover, you can ask a parent to come in and share what the holiday means to them and their family. You can show and explain the various symbols and implements used in Passover, and connect it with the Christian students by helping them understand how Jesus celebrated Passover.

Spend a few minutes thinking about how you would teach your students about the importance and significance of Passover.

In summary, remember, holidays are opportunities to teach about our Judeo- Christian history, thought, and values.

That completes Session 7. Now move on to our final session, Session 8.