Religion in the Schools
(A simple opinion piece that gives credit where it is due, asks assistance where it is necessary, and begins at the beginning.)
Imagine, for a moment, that we’re watching the beginning together. The very beginning… of my teaching career, that is. My first lecture begins at 8 AM on the dot, but before I start discussing reading or mathematics, I begin publicly, with my students repeating after me: “Oh Thalia! Come, Muse, come. And you, Truth, daughter of Zeus. Inspire me this morning, and with your guiding hands, keep me from placing my decimal points in error and dotting my Is when I should be crossing my Ts…” That would be weird, to say the least, and highly inappropriate. At a public school it would be plainly illegal (more on that in a moment), and at any hypothetical private school I can imagine where publicly invoking, as a matter of course, various daughters of Zeus would be approved of they would be really wondering why in Tartarus I was appealing to the muse of comedy for inspiration in mathematics and basic writing.
All joking aside, though, the issue of religion in the schools and their curricula is an important, though still sometimes contentious, one. For public schools, the issue of whether or not religion should be formally included in the school day was decided by the courts in the mid to late 20th century. The issue was first dealt with by the Supreme Court in 1962, in a decision known as Engel v. Vitale. In this case, New York’s State Board of Regents had become concerned about moral decline and disciplinary problems in the schools, and were instituting a program of “moral and spiritual training” that included a nondenominational prayer that would be said every morning. The saying of the prayer was approved by lower and state courts, but these decisions were ultimately struck down when the case was appealed to the Supreme Court on the grounds that the policy violated the Establishment Clause. Other cases followed, firmly establishing, in the name of government neutrality, the absence of religious teaching and worship in the public schools’ curriculum plans. (Cline, 2009)
This having been established by the highest court of the land, I would say that it would be very much not in keeping with the principles of our nation to include prayer in the public school day. In order for prayers included in the school day, or officially endorsed by the school, to be in keeping with our official national stance on religion, the saying of them would have to pass a standard known as the Lemon Test. In order to do this, saying prayers in public schools would have to 1) have a clearly secular purpose, 2)have a principle effect that neither advanced nor inhibited religion, and 3)not foster an “excessive government entanglement” with religion. (Mount, 2007) Now, personally, I do not believe that formalized prayer in public schools (while still remaining, in any sense, prayer) could meet any of the three prongs of the Lemon Test, but, for the sake of fairness, I will take a moment now to play the Devil’s Advocate, so to speak, and see if such a policy could possibly meet the Lemon Test’s standards at all. Let’s begin with the last prong of the test, that whatever statute or policy in question “must not foster an excessive government entanglement with religion.” Hypothetically, if a prayer or other spiritual routine could be worked into the curriculum without favoring, in any way, any particular religion or other spiritual# belief system or stance, then it could pass this test. But, the kind of neutrality that is required in order to do this without officially advocating any stance, practice, or category of stances or practices would eliminate any such routine that involved more than simply setting aside a few moments of contemplative free time for the students to use as they would.
This is the traditional “moment of silence” option, without any suggestion that anyone pray. Such a moment is not in any way a formalized prayer, and does not even, in and of itself, acknowledge the necessity of including religion in the school day. If it’s legal, it can’t, which brings us to the next criterion of our test. In order to meet the requirements of the second prong of the Lemon Test, our hypothetical school prayer/spiritual routine would have to neither advance nor inhibit religion. This means it could neither ban nor promote any particular religious practice (or class or religious practices.) Since prayer is a religious practice, prayer would be eliminated by this requirement right from the beginning of our consideration.
And finally, the first prong of out test… in order to not be a violation of the First Amendment, the prayer/practice would have to have a clearly secular purpose. A frequently mentioned motivation for reintroducing religious practice into our public schools is to ameliorate problems with student discipline or with the allegedly declining morality of the student body in general. This (not inherently religious) purpose was the stated reason the defendants in Engel v. Vitale gave for their introduction of a vague prayer into their state’s schools. (Cline, 2009) However, this goal would probably be better accomplished by a more active attempt at character education and the teaching of moral reasoning, two things which can be completely religiously neutral. So, there is no reason why prayer would be necessary to solve problems of moral and/or disciplinary decline.
And so, now, we find ourselves back at the beginning again. The example I gave of a possible in class invocation is obviously inappropriate for the public school environment. It will strike most people as odd, because the names used in it aren’t the ones they’re accustomed to hearing in prayers, but the more familiar prayers are also inappropriate, for reasons grounded in our nation’s most deeply held principles. Outside of their proper context in history or geography lessons: The Lord’s Prayer is as inappropriate as zazen, which is in turn as inappropriate as Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus. None of the above, said or practiced as religious observances, can be a part of the public school curriculum, lest we compromise our cherished national principle of respect for the free practice of religion.
Bibliography
1) spiritual. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Retrieved September 29, 2009, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/spiritual
2)Bulfinch, Thomas (1997) Bulfinch’s Mythology New York, New York; Portland House
3)Cline, Austin (2009) School Prayer retrieved from http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/cs/blcs_sch_prayer_index.htm September 28th 2009
4)Mount, Steve (2007) U.S. Constitution Online retrieved from http://www.usconstitution.net/lemon.html September 28th, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
An Essay on Bloom's Taxonomy
Bloom’s Taxonomy of Cognitive Levels
Bloom’s Taxonomy is a hierarchical classification system of levels of human thought. In this respect (that of being a hierarchical classification system, that is), it is similar to other taxonomical systems, like the classification system for living things used in biology. Although it was originally conceived of in the 1950s (Forehand, 2008), a revised version of the system is widely used in education even today. It is not generally used for classifying individual thoughts into one category or another, though, but instead to plan lessons that are designed to challenge the students at different levels and to encourage the students to think at the higher, as well as just the lower, levels when they are engaging with their class materials.
The author of the system was Benjamin S. Bloom, who seemed to have a lifelong fascination with the nature of thinking. All in all, he authored or co-authored 18 books on the subject. (Forehand, 2008) When his taxonomy system for levels of thinking was first published, the idea was not paid very close attention to. However, the system caught on, and is now one of the most widely applied ideas in education. (Forehand, 2008)
During the 1990s, an updating of the traditional system occurred. This revision was spearheaded by Lorin Anderson, a former student of Bloom’s who wanted to make her teacher’s taxonomic system more relevant to the 21st century student and teacher. The revised system was published in 2001, and includes a few subtle but significant changes. This new system was intended to be a much more broadly applicable and useful tool for planning instruction. (Forehand, 2008)
First, there are the changes in terminology to consider. The original system had six categories (listed here in the order of lowest to highest): Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, Evaluation. The new system also has six categories, but the names of them are all verbs instead of nouns. The revised categories are (in the same order): Remembering, Understanding, Applying, Analyzing, Evaluating, and Creating. (Forehand, 2008) There are also real structural changes, in addition to the terminological change (which essentially amounted to changing the names from noun form to verb form.) In addition to the levels of the top tow tiers of the hierarchy being switched, there was also a second dimension added to what had originally been only a one-dimensional system (Forehand, 2008)
The Revised Taxonomy has, in addition to the hierarchical system of levels of thought, a Revised Taxonomy Table matrix which can be used for planning activities which specifically target desired levels of thought. (Foreman, 2008) Using this chart and the six level hierarchy of thought, one can easily design a lesson plan that is both appropriate for the general average developmental level of the students one is teaching, but which also appeals simultaneously to multiple levels of thought. This would not only accommodate the individual differences in students’ ability and level of development that are bound to occur, but it also would encourage students to learn the higher levels of critical thinking while doing a task that they are already fully capable of with their current level of skill.
For instance, a teacher could prepare a lesson about Aesop’s fable about Mercury and the Woodsman. The story could be read aloud in class, by either the teacher or, if the students are a little older, by a volunteer from the class. Illustrations could be shown (if desired) of the Woodsman, Mercury, the original axe the Woodsman lost in the water, the gold and silver axes Mercury pretended to have found for him (to see if he would be dishonest), and then of the Woodsman receiving all three axes in the end for honestly identifying his ordinary axe as the one he had lost. Then, after the story time presentation was over, there could be a question and answer session to see how well the students understood the story.
The teacher could begin by asking the students to essentially repeat parts of the story, by asking them which events happened after what. They could then move on to asking more complicated questions about what exactly Mercury had been trying to do to the Woodsman, why he was doing this, and why the Woodsman was rewarded in the end. The class could then be broken up into small groups in which they made charts of situations in which it had paid to be honest for them in the past, or of situations in which people had been caught lying and had suffered for it.
The next day, after a recap of the story, the class could break up into the same groups and write short skits with the same themes as the fable. The assignment would be essentially to modernize the story and place it in a context they could relate to their lives. This would require that the students evaluate the themes of the fable while they are planning the plot of their skit, and then create an original work of their own (which they would then ideally present to the rest of the class.)
This example shows how (probably for older elementary aged students) the same lesson could first focus on the more basic levels of thinking, and then push the students to achieve the higher levels to the greatest extent that they are able to. Planning lessons like this, that encourage students to think about content at multiple levels at once, is exactly what Bloom’s Taxonomy is used for (and exactly what the current revised version of the system was intended for.
Bibliography
1) Forehand, Mary (January 12th, 2008) Bloom’s Taxonomy from Emerging Perspectives on Learning, Teaching, and Technology Retrieved from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Bloom%27s_Taxonomy
Bloom’s Taxonomy is a hierarchical classification system of levels of human thought. In this respect (that of being a hierarchical classification system, that is), it is similar to other taxonomical systems, like the classification system for living things used in biology. Although it was originally conceived of in the 1950s (Forehand, 2008), a revised version of the system is widely used in education even today. It is not generally used for classifying individual thoughts into one category or another, though, but instead to plan lessons that are designed to challenge the students at different levels and to encourage the students to think at the higher, as well as just the lower, levels when they are engaging with their class materials.
The author of the system was Benjamin S. Bloom, who seemed to have a lifelong fascination with the nature of thinking. All in all, he authored or co-authored 18 books on the subject. (Forehand, 2008) When his taxonomy system for levels of thinking was first published, the idea was not paid very close attention to. However, the system caught on, and is now one of the most widely applied ideas in education. (Forehand, 2008)
During the 1990s, an updating of the traditional system occurred. This revision was spearheaded by Lorin Anderson, a former student of Bloom’s who wanted to make her teacher’s taxonomic system more relevant to the 21st century student and teacher. The revised system was published in 2001, and includes a few subtle but significant changes. This new system was intended to be a much more broadly applicable and useful tool for planning instruction. (Forehand, 2008)
First, there are the changes in terminology to consider. The original system had six categories (listed here in the order of lowest to highest): Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, Evaluation. The new system also has six categories, but the names of them are all verbs instead of nouns. The revised categories are (in the same order): Remembering, Understanding, Applying, Analyzing, Evaluating, and Creating. (Forehand, 2008) There are also real structural changes, in addition to the terminological change (which essentially amounted to changing the names from noun form to verb form.) In addition to the levels of the top tow tiers of the hierarchy being switched, there was also a second dimension added to what had originally been only a one-dimensional system (Forehand, 2008)
The Revised Taxonomy has, in addition to the hierarchical system of levels of thought, a Revised Taxonomy Table matrix which can be used for planning activities which specifically target desired levels of thought. (Foreman, 2008) Using this chart and the six level hierarchy of thought, one can easily design a lesson plan that is both appropriate for the general average developmental level of the students one is teaching, but which also appeals simultaneously to multiple levels of thought. This would not only accommodate the individual differences in students’ ability and level of development that are bound to occur, but it also would encourage students to learn the higher levels of critical thinking while doing a task that they are already fully capable of with their current level of skill.
For instance, a teacher could prepare a lesson about Aesop’s fable about Mercury and the Woodsman. The story could be read aloud in class, by either the teacher or, if the students are a little older, by a volunteer from the class. Illustrations could be shown (if desired) of the Woodsman, Mercury, the original axe the Woodsman lost in the water, the gold and silver axes Mercury pretended to have found for him (to see if he would be dishonest), and then of the Woodsman receiving all three axes in the end for honestly identifying his ordinary axe as the one he had lost. Then, after the story time presentation was over, there could be a question and answer session to see how well the students understood the story.
The teacher could begin by asking the students to essentially repeat parts of the story, by asking them which events happened after what. They could then move on to asking more complicated questions about what exactly Mercury had been trying to do to the Woodsman, why he was doing this, and why the Woodsman was rewarded in the end. The class could then be broken up into small groups in which they made charts of situations in which it had paid to be honest for them in the past, or of situations in which people had been caught lying and had suffered for it.
The next day, after a recap of the story, the class could break up into the same groups and write short skits with the same themes as the fable. The assignment would be essentially to modernize the story and place it in a context they could relate to their lives. This would require that the students evaluate the themes of the fable while they are planning the plot of their skit, and then create an original work of their own (which they would then ideally present to the rest of the class.)
This example shows how (probably for older elementary aged students) the same lesson could first focus on the more basic levels of thinking, and then push the students to achieve the higher levels to the greatest extent that they are able to. Planning lessons like this, that encourage students to think about content at multiple levels at once, is exactly what Bloom’s Taxonomy is used for (and exactly what the current revised version of the system was intended for.
Bibliography
1) Forehand, Mary (January 12th, 2008) Bloom’s Taxonomy from Emerging Perspectives on Learning, Teaching, and Technology Retrieved from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Bloom%27s_Taxonomy
Introduction
Hello,
This blog is not much more than a place to display things I've written, a portfolio of sorts. Really, I'm getting it because there was no better way to display my writing on my Facebook page.
So, here goes...
This blog is not much more than a place to display things I've written, a portfolio of sorts. Really, I'm getting it because there was no better way to display my writing on my Facebook page.
So, here goes...
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