Conclusions to Forum 2: Schism in the Anglican Church?

I don’t know why both last forum discussions and some of our later class debates ended up revolving around the issue of homosexuality. Apparently, this seems to be a topic that involves deeply rooted feelings and beliefs, all of which seem to easily move people towards debate and confrontation. Taking into account the potential violence that underlies such emotional discussions, I’d like to begin by acknowledging the respectful tone in which all these debates were carried out so far.

Everything started with our second Forum, which was meant do discuss the possible schism in the Anglican Church. Although the key point was the ambiguous proximity between Anglicanism and Catholicism, what seemed to have caught most of the attention was the acceptance of homosexual bishops by the English church. Among the positions expressed in the forum, there were two clear visions that prevailed:

• On the one hand, it is possible to identify a tendency to consider homosexuality as contrary to the Scripts, and thus to understand that accepting homosexual priests is an unavoidable contradiction for any Christian creed. According to this view, homosexuals cannot be integrated within Christianism, but should build themselves their own set of religious values.
  

• The other point of view prevailing in this forum was that, although one may accept homosexuality within Christianism, it’s not possible to introduce this radical change within an established church without creating something new. According to this view, we cannot go on talking about Anglicanism if we accept homosexual priests. For this view, then, schism is logical and expectable.
  

It called my attention that no clear opinion acknowledged the possibility of institutional evolution. Even within such a traditional field like religion, a historical perspective can bring to light the existence of constant change and transformation. As we mentioned in our last L&C III class, the Catholic Church is perhaps the clearer example of this constant transformative inertia that no institution can avoid. We could mention the radical changes that this church underwent in relation to wealth, forgiveness, witchcraft, heresy, slavery, education and even the interpretation of the Bible. To anyone, it is clear that the church that promoted the Inquisition was based on principles and beliefs that radically differ from those hold by the current Catholic Church. But this which is clear for the Roman church because of its long history and tremendously huge institutional apparatus is also clear for any religious institution provided that we look closely at their historical development.

This third point of view is a historical one, which in a way opposes to both views defended in the forum, since it acknowledges that religions can change, sometimes even radically, without necessarily turning into something new or without necessarily finding a problem in opposing to what they had been in the past. This is called evolution. Since religious institutions are at the same time social institutions, it seems logical that they evolve and adjust their values and principles to the changes and the evolution of the societies in which they are immersed.

The computer versus the blackboard

(The English Press, June 1995)

Article sent by Cristina Hoppenthal

The class room is in semi-darkness, illuminated only by computer screens. In front of each computer,  sits a child manipulating a cursor to create shapes as part of a routine maths lesson. The screens show symbols, video images and texts, all designed to national curriculum standards. The computers speak directly to the pupils through headphones, electronically encouraging, correcting or congratulating them. Patrolling the classroom as a “facilitator”, the new name to  describe a teacher.

This scene is fictional, but not as futuristic as it might sound. Some predict that it could be common by 2020. Much of this technology already exists, and politicians want to maintain the momentum of what educators describe as  “the education superhighway”. But is the superhighway, despite  good intentions, a dead end?  Though no one doubts that our children’s survival in the computer jungle of the 21^st century will depend on how conversant they are with computer speak, not everyone feels optimistic about the future in which computers take the place of blackboards. […]

Suspicions about dependency on computer learning are increasing. On one hand, there are those who argue that the computer  revolution will promote a new way of learning which will help Britain to compete with its economic rivals. On the other hand, there are those who say that the technology is being misused, and that countries such as Japan have not introduced it into schools because they want their children to understand the basics first so that they can then use the computer as a tool.

Some worry about their dehumanizing effect as, although computer learning allows a high degree of personal interaction between students, in the end the most important interaction is done with a data base.

Mark Sealey, editor of the English magazine Educational Computing and Technology, states his stance about computer learning. “The most important skills are the high order skills”, he says. “Most of the knowledge will be available electronically so that students will not have to waste time memorizing it. After all, it is not knowing the number of wives Henry VIII had that is important, but asking why he had so many.”

Early Children's Literature and Education (by Cecilia Acosta)

According to the debate that had taken place during the classes of L&C III, I thought it would be interesting to expand the main ideas of the beginnings of Early Children's Literature and Education.

 

“Early Children’s Literature”

 

First, it is necessary to define the term “Children”. According to the “Britannia Dictionary,” “All potential or actual young literates, from the instant they can with joy leaf through a picture book or listen to a story read aloud, to the age of perhaps 14 or 15, may be called children. Thus “children” includes “young people.””

 

“The Discovery of the Child”

 

In the mid-18^th century what may be defined as children’s literature was at last developing. The proper subject matter of children’s literature, apart from informational or didactic works, is children. More broadly, it embraces the whole content of the child’s imaginative world and that of his daily environment, as well as certain ideas and sentiments characteristic of it. The population of this world is made up not only of children themselves but of animated objects, plants, even grammatical and mathematical abstractions; toys, dolls, and puppets; real, chimerical, and invented animals; miniature or magnified humans; spirits or grotesques of wood, water, air, fire, and space; supernatural and fantasy creatures; figures of fairy tale, myth, and legend.

 

Almost at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, children’s literature remained recessive. The chief, though not the only, reason is improbably simple: the child himself, though there, was not seen, that is, as a child. Though he may be nurtured in all tenderness, he is thought of not as himself but as a pre-adult, which is but one of his many forms. His importance lay not in himself but in what Aristotle would have called his final cause: the potential citizen-warrior. A girl child was a seedbed of future citizen-warriors. Hence classical literature either does not see the child at all or misconstrues him. Astyanax and Ascanius, as well as Medea’s two children, are not persons. They are stage props.

 

Sometimes children were even regarded as infrahuman -for Montaigne, they had “neither mental activities nor recognizable body shape.” The year 1658 is a turning point. In that year a Moravian educator, Comenius, published Orbis Sensualium Pictus, a teaching device that was also the first picture book for children. It embodied a novel insight: children’s reading should be of a special order because children are not scaled-down adults. But the conscious, systematic, and successful exploitation of this insight was to wait for almost a century.

 

It is generally felt that, both as a person worthy of special regard and as an idea worthy of serious contemplation, the child began to come into his own in the second half of the 18^th century. His emergence, as well as that of a literature suited to his needs, is linked to many historical forces, among them the development of Enlightenment thought (Rousseau and, before him, John Locke); the rise of the middle class; the beginnings of the emancipation of women (children’s literature, unlike that for grown-ups, is in large measure a distaff product) and Romanticism, with its minor strands of the cult of the child (Wordsworth and others) and of genres making a special appeal to the young (folktales and fairy tales, myths, ballads). Yet, with all these forces working for the child, he still might not have emerged had it not been for a few unpredictable geniuses: William Blake, Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, George MacDonald, Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, Collodi, Hans Christian Andersen.

 

“Early Children’s Education.”

 

If you ask yourself what a school is, many different answers may arise. In one of them, you can include the teacher’s classroom, or the playground, in others the headmaster or even the janitor. But it is almost sure that in all of the answers an irreplaceable element will appear as the nucleus: the classroom.

 

However, the classroom as we see it nowadays must not be taken as something “natural.” It is more that probable that if a traveller of the 15^th Century comes to see our current classrooms, he will not understand what is happening. The following pictures show different classrooms at different time:

 

P 2. A classroom of the actual Germany, as it appears on an engraving published in 1575.

P 3. Engraving of 1592, probably a Latin school, where a teacher and his collaborators can be seen.

P 4. A Lancaster School. It shows 365 students, with monitors standing next to them, in 1831.

P 6. Punishment at schools, 1860.

P 7. School in London, probably a kindergarten in 1906.

 

 “The Global Method,” by Jan Amos Comenius.

 

Comenius (1592- 1670) was a clergyman worried about the universalization of the divine message and the reading of the Bible.

 

Comenius’ central thesis was based on nature. He formulated axioms or principles showing how the role of nature interferes in people’s actions. In this case, a tree grows when its roots are strong and well-built. In the same way, teachers must encourage and give confidence to students basing their foundations on respect and obedience. These are the roots of the learning- teaching process. He supported the notion that the laws of the divine creation may reach their excellence only through the imitation of nature. Comenius’ vision was opposed to the idea of children being punished and he also suggested classrooms should be spacious, attractive and full of life, with coloured pictures hung on the wall, as we see them nowadays.

 

Principles Comenius Observed in Nature Applicable to Education

 

1. Nature observes a suitable time.

2. Nature prepares the material before she begins to give it form.

3. Nature chooses a fit subject to act upon, or first submits one to a suitable treatment in order to make it fit.

4. Nature is not confused in its operations, but in its forward progress advances distinctly from one point to another.

5. In all the operations of nature, development is from within.

6. Nature, in its formative processes, begins with the universal and ends with the particular.

7. Nature makes no leaps, but proceeds step by step.

8. If nature commences anything, it does not leave off until the operation is completed.

9. Nature carefully avoids obstacles and things likely to cause hurt.

 

Bibliography

• Dussel, Inés y Caruso, Marcelo (1999) La Invención del Aula. Santillana.
  
• Britannica Online 
  
• Comenius’ principles 
  

FORUM 3: Homosexuality in Children's Literature

In one of Néstor's comments to Vanesa's post (here), he wondered about the inclusion of such topics as homosexuality in children's literature. This issue is in a way also connected to our second forum discussion, the one about homosexuality, the Anglican church and the risk of a schism (here).

I though it would be interesting to share opinions on this issue. Do you think it right that literature for children cover this controversial topics?

Coping with immigration

Yesterday in our L&C IV class, the topic of immigration cropped up out of a discussion on nationalism. We briefly made reference to the different approaches to the issue of immigration in our country and the crucial role of education in curbing the risks of a social crisis at the end of the 19^th century. This relationship between education and immigration in 19^th-century Argentina had already been discussed this year in one of our L&C III meetings. I had written a post on that occasion, and placed it on If I may say so… Let me invite you all to have a look at it, and to expand on the conversation. Click here.