‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ Internet Resources

This page is designed for use in conjunction with a two-week lesson plan I designed, but the resources would likely fit in well with most any academic discussion of the play.

Full Text Online

‘No Fear Shakespeare’ Text Online (a note on this: generally speaking, I am philosophically opposed to the use of modern translation when studying Shakespeare because I think it slows the development of the student’s grasp of the older dialect. However, I recognize that there are many academic situations and many students for whom such a text is extremely valuable, so I feel confident in including it here.)

Shakespeare’s Plays in Several Languages (This page contains many of Shakespeare’s plays; you may need to scroll down to get to Shakespeare and to A Midsummer Night’s Dream)

Midsummer Night’s Dream Art

Online Video of Full Theatrical Production

‘Community Learning Network’ Shakespeare Resource Page

Hamlet – Facebook News Feed Edition

IMDB page for 1999 Kevin Kline Film

There are several versions of the play and several parts of adaptations that can be found on YouTube. Here are a few bits:

 

Comments

http://kennedad77.wordpress.com/2008/11/30/religion-in-the-classroom/

 

http://blaine62.wordpress.com/2008/09/21/teacher-pay-and-other-slippery-topics/

 

http://coachk97.wordpress.com/2008/09/23/lack-of-funding-cancels-athletic-season/

 

http://elbridgegirl.wordpress.com/2008/11/27/texting-in-the-classroom/

 

http://vanbeckj.wordpress.com/2008/10/21/those-who-cant-spell-teach/

 

http://makeitepic.wordpress.com/2008/09/23/act-a-crappy-test/

 

http://letsgetquiet.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/everybody-abroad/

 

http://naturalepidemic.wordpress.com/2008/09/13/i-have-a-mission-and-it-must-be-accomplished/

 

http://sierraholmes.wordpress.com/2008/11/10/an-article-and-district-that-breaks-the-mold/

 

http://ghannaml.wordpress.com/2008/09/23/a-bilingual-country/

 

 

Auf Wiedersehen!

            I, for one, am experiencing no great shock at the coming of the end of this semester. Discussing these topics has been quite educational for me; the items that I have taken the space to discuss here have broadened my view of the world and my understanding of the role of religion and education.

            My most popular post was clearly my post on the necessity of religion in education. Those who responded to it made some fine points which ended up aiding me in better understanding the arguments on both sides of this clearly loaded topic. Having attended a Catholic high school I feel that I have a pretty solid understanding of Catholic teaching on most issues, but I lack a nuanced understanding of most other religions (outside of perhaps Judaism). As was noted, it is quite a complex topic. Writing this blog provided an excellent opportunity to learn more about the perspective from which Muslims, Jews, and those of other religions speak from. This is a perspective that I hope to continue to hear from as I continue to teach and to learn.

            A few things I wish I had done more of or done better: Google Reader did not begin supplying me with stories relating to the election that I felt were worth commenting on until about Thanksgiving. I wish that I had had a chance to write something related to that prior to the election. I also wish that I had taken the time to write significantly more about some of my topics, particularly the necessity of religion in education and about some of the posts that related to Muslims. Lastly, I wish I had been able to take better advantage of the Ebsco feed: there were some excellent articles that popped up for me that I didn’t work with because I couldn’t find a very effective direction to take them. I think that RSS technology has significant potential in the classroom and I certainly plan to utilize it in my teaching, I only hope that my students have better luck than I’ve had in the areas that I’ve mentioned.

            To all this who read all the posts: Thanks for reading!

 

Und jetzt zu etwas Völlig Anderem

            In a bit of uncommonly encouraging news given its location of origin, Muslims and Jews are creating a new initiative to work together in furthering education about one another in Israel. Given that these two groups have been at war with one another in one area or another for most of the past 1500 years, particularly since the formation of the state of Israel in 1947, in addition to the tension that has beset the Middle East for the entirety of human history, Muslims and Jews working together is perhaps the most hopeful news heard in quite some time. 

“[A] new initiative sponsored by the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel, Al-Qasimi College in Baka al-Gharbiya, the Nehemia Levtzion Center for Islamic Studies at the Hebrew University, and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation is looking at religion not as a cause of war, but a jumping-off point for peace.

Under the banner “Teaching Islam to Jews and Judaism to Muslims in Israel,” the participating institutions held a public inauguration of their project at Mishkenot Sha’ananim in Jerusalem this week, as they commenced their mission to bring Jews and Muslims together by educating them about the other’s religion and culture.” 

            The Interreligious Coordinating Council is in the beginning stages of this initiative and has as yet decided little. Dr. Kronish said that Muslims learn about Jewish culture in Israel’s schools but that Jews learn very little about Muslims. Kronish is hopeful that the initiative will serve to bring these two religions closer together and help each see the common ground that the two share so that they can be a force for peace in the world.

            In spite of one of the more challenging educational climates in the world, there are many people working for the advancement of peace and religious freedom in the Middle East and seeking to end the various forms of oppression that have marred the region’s history. These people serve as the backbone to any hope for change in the Middle East. The initiative discussed here seems to be carrying out the ideas that I discussed in one of my previous posts, “The Necessity of Religion in Education.” Dr. Kronish, et al, have recognized the importance of learning about the differences between these two religions and are working to use education to unite people.

Jews, Muslims band together to fight ignorance of each other’s religion

Abe Selig

The Jerusalem Post (Jewish World Blog)

November 26, 2008

 

Separation of Church and State

            In this age where polemics have replaced politics and one needs a good set of earplugs to avoid a sound dose of rhetoric when conversing with one’s ideological opponents it seemed to me a good idea to discuss the separation of church and state (conveniently, it also seemed good to one Christopher Merola – who’s townhall.com article appeared in my Google Reader feed).

            Merola opens his discussion with Plymouth Rock and the first Thanksgiving: a group of Puritans seeking the right to express their religion in the way that seemed best to them. Merola then zooms ahead nearly 400 years to our present time where we have disregarded Thomas Jefferson idea of separation of church and state and takes up the position that government is overstepping its constitutional bounds when it limits the religious rights of its citizens:

“The federal government cannot mandate a religious practice, nor can they prohibit religious practice. Unfortunately, in the last few decades we have seen many judicial rulings that demonstrate a desire to uphold the establishment clause of the First Amendment at the expense of the free exercise clause. This is completely contrary to the purpose of the First Amendment and a violation of it as well.”

            There is a bit of untapped irony in Merola’s piece: one of the things that the Separatists (and those that joined in on the colonial fun) did was to start wars with the native population in order to force the Native Americans to become Puritans. It is perhaps not the most couth option to find a new land for the sake of religious freedom and then to seek to strip the prior possessors of their religion.

            That being said, there is much to be said for the importance of the separation of church and state: first, that the separation is bidirectional. The idea is that the state does not place undue restriction on the church and that the church does not seek undue influence within the state. The question here is what is due the church and the state in these situations. (It is further irony that the trend in contemporary American society is to assign more power to the church if one is in favor of the idea of church and to assign more power to the state if one is less in favor of church – the split in ideology is rooted not so much political as religious.)

            This separation is of vital importance in the science classroom but it is equally important in the history classroom: it is imminently important that students be taught a balanced and accurate version of history. The origin of the church-state separation, the historical background of the idea, and, perhaps most importantly, a balanced perspective on the colonizers and colonized is vital to a proper understanding of the United States government, specifically, and the world, generally.

What is the Separation of Church and State?

Christopher Merola

Townhall.com

November 27, 2008 

 

Religiosity and Education

            One of the most important questions in education is that of the efficacy of that very education. This question is addressed by Jeremy E. Uecker in the December 2008 issue of the “Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion:” Uecker analyzes the effect of Catholic, Protestant, non-religious private, home, and public schools on the religiosity of their students. His findings are fascinating:

“Surprisingly, I find very little effect of homeschooling on any aspect of adolescents’ religious lives. Despite the fact that a significant minority of these students are homeschooled for explicitly religious reasons (Bielick, Chandler, and Broughman 2001), there appear to be scant religious benefits to this schooling strategy. On one hand, this may speak to the great diversity of motivations for homeschooling. There are a large number of nonreligious (or at least not extremely religious) homeschool parents, and religious benefits should not be expected from that type of homeschooling situation. But even when I tested for interaction effects between homeschooling and parent religiosity, no positive effects of homeschooling were apparent. These findings, together with the findings for Catholic-school and Protestant-school adolescents, highlight the importance of religious community for cultivating and maintaining adolescent religiosity. Furthermore, if the religiosity of homeschoolers, net of confounding factors, can be interpreted as the religiosity of adolescents absent of any schooling context (which it may not be), this study’s findings could suggest that public schooling is neither detrimental to nor beneficial for adolescent religiosity.” 

            In addition to his results in the area of homeschooling, Uecker also finds that parents have a much more significant role in determining their children’s religiosity than do the schools parents send their children do: put simply, the more religious the parents are, the more religious the child is likely to be. (I highly recommend the reading of this article, Uecker states his findings far more clearly than I am capable of without essentially copying him and his statistics are a bit confusing to me due to my lack of experience in psychological statistics.)

            I do not find Uecker’s findings as surprising as he (or others) might: I spent 12 years in the Catholic education system and during that time I had many friends in public, Protestant and home schools. His findings line up fairly evenly with that which I have observed in my friends and classmates. The idea that parents have the most significant influence on their children’s religiosity is one in which my parents believe quite strongly: they have spent significant time throughout my formative years making sure to pass along many aspects of their religious beliefs as well as seeking to mold their children into people of good character and high moral standing. It comes as no surprise to me that they and those who have followed similar paths have been more successful in achieving those goals than those who have relied on the educational system to be the primary educators in their stead. This seems to me a clear example of one of the key limits on the educational system: it cannot be relied upon to raise children.

Alternative Schooling Strategies and the Religious Lives of American Adolescents

Jeremy E. Uecker

Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion

December 2008, Volume 47, Issue 4

 

MCTE Conference Review

            On Friday, October 2, 2008, I attended the Michigan Council of Teachers of English Conference. I greatly enjoyed the experience and I found it to be quite enlightening in many ways.

            When I first entered the large packed conference room I was filled with a rush of fear. I believe my first reaction was “Holy crap, these people are all English teachers.” This reaction was quickly followed by “Why the heck did I decide to spend a whole day surrounded by English teachers.” I was filled with angst that one of the teachers might at any moment hand me a worksheet and force me to answer meaningless questions about great pieces of literature. (Fortunately, this did not happen.)

            Barry Lane served as the conference’s keynote speaker. Lane served as a cross between visual coffee and a comedian, while looking (and sometimes acting) like a lost tourist. His energy was impressive and his schtick was entertaining enough to make the hour pass by in a timely fashion.

            The rest of the day was made up of various breakout sessions, of which I attended five. I greatly enjoyed Dr. David Hammontree’s (Jackson Community College) session on the orle of political and civic literacy in the classroom. He spent a significant amount of time discussing the upcoming election and talking about the trend towards political buzzwords (‘hope for America,’ ‘change we can believe in,’ etc.). He also discussed encouraging students to engage the key ‘why’ questions of civics in our classrooms (Why do I think this, why do I feel this way, etc.). He also talked about the importance of creating cognitive dissonance in the classroom.

            I also attended sessions on literature circles and on Middle Eastern Literature. The literature circles session was quite interesting – the moderator was extremely energetic and very excited about teaching and students. She presented some excellent on ideas on expanding students literary boundaries and helping them to derive more pleasure from school. The Middle Eastern Lit session was given by three graduate students at Western Michigan University. They presented some excellent ideas from a project they did for a class – the project was creating a very lengthy lesson plan to teach several Middle Eastern novels. It was quite educational to hear about the books themselves, the stories of some of the authors, and to hear about what ideas they had for teaching the books.

            The final session I attended was given by Michael Martin of Northern Michigan University. Mr. Martin discussed the concept of “Whiteness” and how students view themselves in the black/white context and how African American Literature ties in. He spent a good part of the first session discussing the guilt that many white people feel for slavery and how unfortunate this is. He also discussed tying these themes into Zora Neal Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God.” I enjoyed hearing from and talking with Mr. Martin the most of all the sessions – they ideas that he discussed were entrenched within things that I’ve been thinking about a great deal recently and it was interesting and helpful to hear his ideas and his commentary.

            I look forward to future MCTE Conferences and future educational idea exchange.

 

Fundamentalism and Textbooks

            The bane of discussing religion (or politics) in an educational setting is dealing with fundamentalists. (For a definition of fundamentalists, I will turn to Richard Dawkins, the noted Atheist. Dawkins calls fundamentalist those who are impervious to opposition to their beliefs in the face of reasonable arguments and empirical evidence.) Christians bear the brunt of this accusation and rightly so as many Christians refer by it to themselves. Fundamentalism is problematic for educators because it makes all other arguments out as illegitimate thus killing discussion and making meaningful progress nigh on impossible. The problem is exacerbated by the seeming strength of character that fundamentalism possesses: the utter refusal to change one’s mind.

            While there are numerous articles on the problems with fundamentalist Christians in education (evolution, sex ed, etc.), Eric Dexheimer of the Austin American Statesman recently wrote on a textbook crisis in California that engaged a somewhat less common form of fundamentalism: Hindu fundamentalism. During a periodic review of middle school textbooks, some conflict arose over the discussion of Indian culture and religion. The textbooks contained some errors in the discussion; however, much of the debate was somewhat less scholastically motivated. The Vedic Foundation, a fundamentalist organization, proposed sweeping changes to the text discussing their religion.

            ‘The California textbooks…asserted that India’s scriptures and caste system discriminated against women and lower classes. The Vedic Foundation contended the depiction focused too much on the negative — arguing, for example, that castes no longer played a major role in India because they had been officially outlawed. “Which is laughable to anyone who grew up in India,” Mandavilli said.’

            Dexheimer goes on to discuss a letter on the subject written by Harvard Professor Michael Witzel, who described the proposed changes as ‘more ideological than factual.’ Witzel goes on to discuss the Vedic Foundation’s view of Hinduism as “very narrow,” comparing it to Southern Baptists purporting to represent all of Christianity.

            A key question in this debate is the extent of the sovereignty of educators. To what degree do groups such as the Vedic Foundation (or even groups such as Opus Dei or the Lambeth Conference) have the right to influence the way in which the group that they represent is discussed and to what degree do reasonable argumentation, empirical evidence, and conventional history carry the day? As the postmodern era revisits and redefines history (see colonialism), what stops other self-identified minorities from demanding their share at the table of egalitarianism?

            I propose that it is the right of the school board to act as a governing body ought: to review the complaints brought to the table and to rule on them with justice and integrity. As the group vested with the mandate to make decisions on schools it is their right and duty to do what is best.  While there may be discussion and debate among outside groups the school board must hold up fairness and objectivity.

Barsana Dham foundation played key role in California textbook debate

Eric Dexheimer

Austin American-Statesman

September 28, 208

 

The Necessity of Religion in Education

            Stephen C. Ainlay makes some excellent points in his discussion of the role of educating students about religion in his October 11 editorial featured in the Albany (NY) Times Union. Ainlay, the president of Union College in Schenectady, NY, discussed the importance of being aware of many religious traditions in a globalized society.

‘Religious fluency is crucial in an interconnected world. Companies like IBM have moved beyond global competition to global collaboration with their “integrated networks.” Connections between peoples and cultures are more frequent than ever before. To succeed as global citizens, we must develop a breadth and depth of knowledge about religious beliefs, traditions, rituals and worldviews other than our own. At one level, this is about etiquette. Even in America, it is easy to offend people by not acknowledging, or by acknowledging when one shouldn’t, the observance of religious holidays or rituals. It’s also about increasing the odds of success in interpersonal encounters. Success in the global market requires an awareness of family life, social institutions, dietary restrictions, attire and holidays – aspects all affected by religion.’

            Ainlay goes on to discuss the importance of being aware of other’s traditions as an important part of respecting them as human beings. These two points (the importance of knowledge of religion as a path to success and as a fundamental aspect of respecting and honoring fellow students and fellow humans) bring in to focus the argument that teaching religion in schools is not only necessary but also essential to the purpose of education. Practically speaking, teaching religion in a public school is a frightening proposition – it is certainly harrowing enough in a private religious school. Students who are learning to engage their ability to reason often have incomplete and improperly formed opinions and the danger for ineffective teaching creating a hostile (or even violent) response certainly cannot be set aside easily. That being said, I will attempt to counter the argument from the perspective of the educator: students need desperately to learn how to reason for themselves in addition to their need to be aware of world cultures and religions. Not meaning to be flippant, but if teachers are afraid of negative response to their teaching then how do they expect to survive in education? The proposition laid forth is a challenging one but if it is theoretically necessary then the onus is on the educator to rise to the challenge.

Education and Religious Fluency

Stephen C. Ainlay

Times Union

October 11, 2008

 

The Muslims are learning from Papists!

            I’m always quite curious to hear unusual examples of the role of (private) religious, and particularly Catholic, schools in educating students who are outside of the targeted demographic (i.e. non-Catholics, non-Christians, etc.). Thus, it was with some intrigue that I read Katrin Bennhold’s September 29 article in the New York Times: “French Muslims find Haven in Catholic Schools.”

            Bennhold discusses the intolerance that Muslims have run up against in French public school administrations in contrast to the welcoming they receive in the nation’s Catholic schools:

“In France, which has only four Muslim schools, some of the country’s 8,847 Roman Catholic schools have become refuges for Muslims seeking what an overburdened, secularist public sector often lacks: spirituality, an environment in which good manners count alongside mathematics, and higher academic standards.”

          Bennhold goes on to discuss the secularization of French public schools and the role of the burka in the classroom. On secularization, she discusses the removal of religion from school and the rise of ‘laïcité,’ a form of secularism viewed as a religion by many in France. This way of thinking runs counter to both Catholic and Muslim religiosity which pits the two as strange bedfellows in an odd conflict between church and state.

          In Bennhold’s discussion of the burka she brings to the fore various points of view debating its legitimacy and the role of choice in wearing it. The state does not allow public school students to wear the burka because it is a religious symbol and sexist, while the Catholic schools tolerate it but encourage their students to better understand it and to not wear it if they feel they’ve moved outside of it.

            It is well worth mentioning that the in exchange for teaching the national curriculum and allowing students of any religions to attend, the French government pays Catholic school teacher salaries and provides a per-student subsidy. In spite of this, that Catholic schools have had success in drawing Muslim students quite interesting and unusual. I find encouraging the relationship between members of a key entity in ‘Western Civilization’ and French Muslims. The relationship signals hope in the era of division in which we live.

            This story also brings to the fore the question of free speech in conflict: how do we as educators foster students finding their voice when the opinion or belief of one student is an affront to another student? How do we strike a balance when one student wears a burka while another finds it an affront to her gender? What happens when one student who is raised to believe homosexuality is immoral expresses that view in a classroom where another student is struggling to find a way to come out of the closet?

            I don’t know what the answer to this question is, though I’m sure that I will need to before I take on a high school classroom. I do find it incredibly important that we do all we can to create environments that are open to dealing with conflict in non-offensive ways. Finally, I think that if we are trying to affirm free speech we need to affirm all free speech, not just speech that comes from marginalized points of view.

French Muslims Find Haven in Catholic Schools

Katrin Bennhold

New York Times

September 29, 2008