Religion, Day 6 - Class Recap

The streets of Kathmandu at night are really something. The prayer flags lining the streets in Thamel are a nice touch. I have obviously been thinking a lot about my time in Nepal over Spring Break, since the enormous earthquake that killed 4,000+ people over the weekend. Photo taken in March, 2015.

Hi everyone,

I hope you enjoyed the long weekend! I did a ton of grading on Friday and felt very accomplished at the end of a long day here at Westview, then really enjoyed my time at the Oregon Coast with my girlfriend the rest of the weekend. Here's what we did today in class:

Learning Targets: 
Knowledge LT 22: I can explain how religious ideas impact the shaping of societies.
Critical Thinking LT 2: I can explain connections between events, issues, problems and concepts.

Soundtrack: "Mustt Mustt" by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Selected because this is a representation of Sufism (some consider this to be a branch of Islam), Explanation of the song can be found here.

AGENDA 4/28/15:

News Brief – Asha
ISIS and Sunni/Shia
More Religions/Atheism
Vocabulary Guide

Homework: Read the blog!  Know your grade and how to improve it - Russian Revolution (found on this post), World War I work (found on this post) and finishing Historical Investigation if you have not - revisions needed, as well (if you want to turn in a revised copy, please give me the original graded copy for review, as well). Next news brief: Nikki.

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News Brief: Asha had the news brief today and selected an article about this story to talk about: CNN.com - Nepal quake: Death toll passes 3,200 as nation struggles with devastation. This story has dominated international news, and I obviously feel a personal connection to this, as I was just in Kathmandu, Nepal last month for Spring Break. I showed this article (which has some stunning before/after images) in class, to talk about the religious impact of the earthquake: CNN.com - How Hindus and Buddhists view Nepal's devastating earthquake. I also showed some Facebook posts, of places in Kathmandu that I stayed or went to - it seems like the people I interacted with are fine, but the devastation is extreme.

We also watched VICE News for the day and talked about our weekends, before moving on.

The next news brief was assigned to Nikki.

ISIS and Sunni/Shia: To start this section, I asked the class to brainstorm what we knew about ISIS, especially as we have been talking about the group in our news briefs for the entire year so far. I wanted to hear what we remembered and also maybe some assumptions. Next, I asked students to get out paper for notes on the rest of the class and I played this video from the New York Times: NYTimes.com - The Evolution of ISIS. I also talked a bit about the demographics in the Middle East. Specifically, I wanted to look in depth at the central role that the two main sects of Islam have in conflict, by watching this video:

One of my main points with this is that we cannot stereotype "all Muslims" in many of the conflicts that the world is in, just as we cannot stereotype "all Christians" or any other religion. If you are really interested in learning a lot more about ISIS, I encourage you to read through this lengthy article: TheAtlantic.com - What ISIS Really Wants.

At the end of this section, we watched the short video called FIVE, looking at children in the five major religions we talked about with the PowerPoint slides:

Five from The Mercadantes on Vimeo.

More Religions/Atheism: Next, we did a sort of blitz through a few other religions that students wrote to me they identified with (I think these are important to cover), along with Atheism (belief that there is no God or gods at all).

Here are the resources we looked at as a class, as students took brief notes (there will be a few questions about these on the test):

Shintoism (based in Japan, focused on ancestral spirits).

Jainism (based in India, focused on nonviolence and sanctity of life).

Taoism (mostly found in China, based on concept of yin and yang).

Sikhism (based in India, focused on one God, rejection of caste system).

Finally, we ended by watching part of this video about Atheism, which is the belief that there is no God or gods, and that faith, being unscientific and not testable, is impossible to prove:

I thought the above videos and articles did a pretty good job explaining the points of view of some important philosophies in a short amount of time. Thanks for hanging in there with me as we looked at all of these!

Vocabulary Guide: At the end of class, I passed out a vocabulary sheet to study for the quiz. Please note that there will also be a question or two based on some of the religions we talked about today in class, too! This guide is intended for you to help review your Religion PowerPoint notes. Here it is:

Google Drive: Major Religions Vocabulary Study Guide

Be aware that Google Drive makes the sheet two pages, whereas the copy I passed out in class is just one page. Study the vocabulary and your notes from the beliefs we went over today! Next class, we will play PowerPoint Jeopardy to review, then take the religion test next week.