Peace Studies in My Classroom
The final chapter of Mosaic 2 Reading, the text used with our second semester freshman English course, is titled "Conflict and Reconciliation." As a partisan of "the peace-and-love left wing of paleoconservatism" (to borrow Bill Kauffman's phrasing), you would be correct to guess that it is one of my favorite units.
Yesterday's post — From Holy Mother Russia With Love — was about a reading that gave me the opportunity to show YouTubes of not only the sinister but bombastic Гимн Советского Союза but also the heavenly and glorious Богородице Дево (see also A Kiwi Choir Sings Arvo Pärt's Bogoróditse Djévo). Today's readings also offered the opportunity to use video.
A photo of one of my heroes, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, graces the chapter's first page, and an excerpt from The Courage for Peace by Louise Diamond about a Cypriot child reminded me of a scene from one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies, Gandhi (1982), depicting the Mahātmā's "fast unto death" in protest of Hindu-Muslim violence:
Another reading, an excerpt from Being Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh, offered an opportunity to show this contemporary news clip of the events the Vietnamese Buddhist monk describes:
From a theological standpoint, I could not disagree more with the content of the above videos; the first clearly advocates Relativism and the second ignores the fact that Suicide, for no matter the motivation, is a grave evil. The Christian Humanist in me, however, cannot but be moved by the profound statements in both.
Had I the time or talent to go back to school, one of the candidate institutions would be the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies at Kyung Hee University.
Yesterday's post — From Holy Mother Russia With Love — was about a reading that gave me the opportunity to show YouTubes of not only the sinister but bombastic Гимн Советского Союза but also the heavenly and glorious Богородице Дево (see also A Kiwi Choir Sings Arvo Pärt's Bogoróditse Djévo). Today's readings also offered the opportunity to use video.
A photo of one of my heroes, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, graces the chapter's first page, and an excerpt from The Courage for Peace by Louise Diamond about a Cypriot child reminded me of a scene from one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies, Gandhi (1982), depicting the Mahātmā's "fast unto death" in protest of Hindu-Muslim violence:
Another reading, an excerpt from Being Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh, offered an opportunity to show this contemporary news clip of the events the Vietnamese Buddhist monk describes:
From a theological standpoint, I could not disagree more with the content of the above videos; the first clearly advocates Relativism and the second ignores the fact that Suicide, for no matter the motivation, is a grave evil. The Christian Humanist in me, however, cannot but be moved by the profound statements in both.
Had I the time or talent to go back to school, one of the candidate institutions would be the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies at Kyung Hee University.
Labels: Buddhism, Commies, Corea, Eastern Orthodoxy, Education, Hinduism, Musica Sacra, Peace, The Catholic Faith, The Seventh Art, The Subcontinent, Viêt Nam, War and Rumors of War
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