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| Tory Jeremiah D'Anna, Untitled |
"The child’s answers are the beginning of a search for identity, something to define who the child really is as a member of the human species and as an individual apart from everything else in the world. They are an attempt to capture the individual at the present moment of time. This attempt to define the child is intimately joined with two other aspects of the child’s identity, representing the past and the future."
This sense of discovering identity, one’s place in the creation, corresponds well with Catholic educators understanding the child is created in the image of God. Our role in introducing the child to the Creator
helps the child understand the wonder of his or her own creation.
I recently enjoyed the consolation of knowing a student figured out what I was getting at in English class. One of my eighth grade students accidentally recognized the goal of a cosmic education during his farewell speech at the breakfast held on the morning of graduation. When praising his introduction to the beauty of literature as a means to pursue God, he kept coming back to how discovering who he really is in my classroom being the best thing he took away from the school.
I recently enjoyed the consolation of knowing a student figured out what I was getting at in English class. One of my eighth grade students accidentally recognized the goal of a cosmic education during his farewell speech at the breakfast held on the morning of graduation. When praising his introduction to the beauty of literature as a means to pursue God, he kept coming back to how discovering who he really is in my classroom being the best thing he took away from the school.
I am fond of the way both St. Augustine’s Confessions and Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life both have a grand personal narrative that necessitates going back to the creation as part of their story. The Catholic educator, understanding that humanity is created in the image of God, can draw from both the rich religious tradition of finding God through his creation and the common sense understanding that any creator is revealing his or her personal attributes in their varied creations in a somewhat veiled way, ought to see the creation and the Creator as the primary sources for whatever discipline they are teaching.
As an English teacher, I keep coming back to the first chapter of John, knowing that the Word who created the world was God and became flesh. The idea of making sense of any assembling of words takes me back to two moments, the abstraction of the Word making tangible creation before becoming incarnate in the creation, so I am always looking for ways to make the origins of creation and the creator tangible to my students. For me, it begins with my presence with my students, and I want an appreciation of the creation both at its roots in God and immediately in front of me with each child to be a tangible witness to my classes. I would imagine the process of understanding this role may be different for other teachers across the disciplines, and even among teachers with the same faith teaching the same disciplines. Nonetheless, if we follow our understanding to its origin, we arrive together at the same creation and Creator, finding ourselves in the same role of being little creators in our classrooms.
As an English teacher, I keep coming back to the first chapter of John, knowing that the Word who created the world was God and became flesh. The idea of making sense of any assembling of words takes me back to two moments, the abstraction of the Word making tangible creation before becoming incarnate in the creation, so I am always looking for ways to make the origins of creation and the creator tangible to my students. For me, it begins with my presence with my students, and I want an appreciation of the creation both at its roots in God and immediately in front of me with each child to be a tangible witness to my classes. I would imagine the process of understanding this role may be different for other teachers across the disciplines, and even among teachers with the same faith teaching the same disciplines. Nonetheless, if we follow our understanding to its origin, we arrive together at the same creation and Creator, finding ourselves in the same role of being little creators in our classrooms.
The importance of Catholic worship and devotion to a God who is found in all things will keep the faith from becoming compartmentalized and devoid of its transformative power by being segregated to the religion classroom. This will benefit the church and the world, the church by allowing it to truly be the salt of the earth, and the world, not only by the salvific message of the church but by the growth of scientific and cultural pursuits motivated by religious devotion.
But why would we adopt religious education across the curriculum and the interdisciplinary teaching that goes along with it? This model of teaching across disciplines is consistent with findings showing students excel whenever they can see the interrelatedness between what is being taught in, especially as it relates to them personally. Transfer of learning from class to class is encouraged in the process. Students grasp new material with greater ease whenever it is presented in a way that builds on their previous knowledge. Kathy Lake notes "that schools must look at education as a process for developing abilities required by life in the twenty-first century, rather than discrete, departmentalized subject matter.
Father Julian Carron expands on this notion in his recent book, Disarming Beauty. He writes, "The task falls to the educator not to close all the person's energy on this one aspect (of disciplinary specialization) alone, squandering it, but to relaunch the cognitive process as openness to the whole, starting with that particular factor: 'Modern scientific reason . . . bears within itself a question which points beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology."
Ultimately, as Catholic educators, we were charged to combat this dehumanizing specialization during the Second Vatican Council. "The Church in the Modern World", Gaudium et Spes includes these words in paragraph 61:
"Today it is more difficult to form a synthesis of the various disciplines of knowledge and the arts than it was formerly. For while the mass and the diversity of cultural factors are increasing, there is a decrease in each man's faculty of perceiving and unifying these things, so that the image of 'universal man' is being lost sight of more and more. Nevertheless it remains each man's duty to retain an understanding of the whole human person in which the values of intellect, will, conscience, and fraternity are preeminent. These values are all rooted in God the Creator and have been wonderfully restored and elevated in Christ."
Works Cited:
Carron, Julian. Disarming Beauty. University of Notre Dame Press, 2017. pg 111.
Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes) http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html
Father Julian Carron expands on this notion in his recent book, Disarming Beauty. He writes, "The task falls to the educator not to close all the person's energy on this one aspect (of disciplinary specialization) alone, squandering it, but to relaunch the cognitive process as openness to the whole, starting with that particular factor: 'Modern scientific reason . . . bears within itself a question which points beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology."
Ultimately, as Catholic educators, we were charged to combat this dehumanizing specialization during the Second Vatican Council. "The Church in the Modern World", Gaudium et Spes includes these words in paragraph 61:
"Today it is more difficult to form a synthesis of the various disciplines of knowledge and the arts than it was formerly. For while the mass and the diversity of cultural factors are increasing, there is a decrease in each man's faculty of perceiving and unifying these things, so that the image of 'universal man' is being lost sight of more and more. Nevertheless it remains each man's duty to retain an understanding of the whole human person in which the values of intellect, will, conscience, and fraternity are preeminent. These values are all rooted in God the Creator and have been wonderfully restored and elevated in Christ."
Works Cited:
Carron, Julian. Disarming Beauty. University of Notre Dame Press, 2017. pg 111.
Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes) http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html
Duffy, Michael and D'Neil. Children of the Universe: Cosmic Education in the Montessori Elementary Classroom. Parent-Child Press, 2016. pg. 5.
Lake, Kathy. "Integrated Curriculum." School Improvement Research Series, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, 1994.
Lake, Kathy. "Integrated Curriculum." School Improvement Research Series, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, 1994.