Institute for Christian Teaching
Education Department of
Seventh-Day Adventists
RESPONDING TO POETRY IN THE
SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST COLLEGE
CLASSROOM: A PEDAGOGICAL RESPONSE
BASED ON THE
INTEGRATION OF FAITH IN THE
LEARNING PROCESS
by
Carlton Drepaul
Assistant Professor
Faculty of Humanities
Caribbean Union College
Port of Spain, Trinidad
Prepared for the
18th
International Faith and Learning Seminar
held at
West Indies College
Mandeville, Jamaica - June
16-28, 1996.
254-96 Institute for
Christian Teaching
12501 Old Columbia Pike
Silver Spring, MD 20904 USA
Literary criticism emerged during the eighteenth century as a critical art of comparing the literary greats. During the nineteenth century, literary studies appeared in the curriculum of leading universities, and criticism became an issue of great concern. At this time, two basic schools of thought existed. One aggrandized the text and discounted the reader, while the other enabled the reader and dominated the text. In other words, one saw the literary text as a miraculous, semi-autonomous aesthetic artifact while the other saw the text as a valuable cultural production grounded in anthropological, economic, social, and political history.
Whatever these schools of thought propagated, the response of the reader was always required. As time elapsed, reader-response criticism became a crucial tool of literary critical theory inasmuch as literary response experienced an epochal transformation that was distinguished by various schools of thought from Marxist to Feminist criticism. However, many have dealt with the literary experience since the time of Aristotle's discussion of catharsis–literature clarifies, purifies, and purges–but this literary experience, which is response to literature, has always remained a performance and a transaction between the reader and the literary work.
The reader of
the literary work, and for this essay the poem, has a task to accomplish before
critical response is made. The author
and speaker, who are almost always different in a literary work, must be
separated. For instance, the
"lover" in Shakespeare's love sonnet, "116," must not be
confused with Shakespeare in real life.
The reader's primary concern is with the speaker within the poem that
voice or disguise through which communication is done. So then, the "real
reader" is recreated by what the voice communicates through language. Language, therefore, makes the reader
assume, for the sake of experience, and by experience, a set of attitudes and
qualities, which the language of the poem dictates as the poem is read. But in as much as the language dictates communication within the
created "real reader," the author and his/her place in history also
helps to make
response substantial. Louise Rosenblatt claims that the author of a literary
text communicates with readers through experiences that are common and which
make the text a social product (27-28), by sharing his [her] vision with
readers (34), setting "forth scathing revelation of the life about
them," and creating a "culminating experience that crystallizes a
long subconscious development"(195-197).
Within the process of response in literary criticism, there are various emphases, but all conclude that the reader brings to the poem expectations and schema to produce meaning and behavior. In the Christian college classroom, and specifically the Seventh-day Adventist college classroom, the integration of Christian faith and learning should be reflected in the various responses students make. Therefore, in order to guide students through the exercise of literary response, the SDA philosophy of integrating faith, which means faith in Christ, and learning needs to establish a pedagogical approach to provide for a specific response in the SDA college classroom. This attitudinal remodeling of literary response involves emphasizing the meaning of a poem, what the author means, and what the poem means to the reader. This literary response includes one of the pertinent issues that have eluded theorists for decades: the issue of the faith or beliefs that the reader brings to the poem. It is important that response to poetry in the SDA college classroom exhibit the SDA worldview and not the general worldviews of literary response.
All the major
worldviews of the various schools approach literary response differently. The
generalists see literary response, not as an investigation of literary history
or studying established blue prints of criticism, but as a result of what the
text "speaks for yourself" (Jane Tompkins 86). New criticism requires
the poem to be seen as a literary response as an exploration of the structure
of the text. Literary response, then, is an organic development that shows how
each word contributes to a unique context and derives its meaning by its
particular usage within the poem (Vincent Leitch, 26). The phenomenologists claim that the poem is
said to be awaiting its fate, that is, to be delivered by the reader. Literary
response in the phenomenological approach requires the reader to bring the poem
to life as poem and reader converge.
This kind of response engages the imagination of the reader in a
pleasurable exercise of creative reading activities.
All literary
worldviews require response from an internalized process. Stanley Fish,
literary critic, posits that literary response to a poem is not acquired like
extracting a nut from a shell, but an experience in the course of reading
(Tompkins xii - xvii). This theory fits the mould of the SDA literary
worldview.
The SDA view
sees literature as setting forth people's impressions of their world, as well
as their aspirations, deeds, thoughts and accomplishment whether good or bad.
This literature can be factual or non-factual, and may be drawn from secular or
religious literary works. It supports the theory that God is the source of all
knowledge and wisdom. It further claims that God is the creator and sustainer of
the earth and the entire universe. Literary response is required to investigate
significant, artistic, lasting insights into essential human experience. It
must include an appreciation and emulation of the beauty of language and the
art of literary structure. It must show that the reader confronts reality which
can provide a basis for developing discriminatory powers that will draw the
reader to Christ and strengthen understanding and faith (Guide to the
Teaching..., 3-5). The conclusion,
therefore, is that whenever response is made to a poem, the responder is
required to integrate faith in the learning process. This integration concept stresses two key terms that are
pertinent in Christian education–faith and learning.
Webster's Twentieth
Century Dictionary of the English Language offers a proliferation of synonyms for the
word faith: belief, trust, confidence, credence, fidelity, conviction, creed,
tenets, doctrine, opinion; yet, none of these aptly covers nor concretizes in
the mind the concept of faith. Humberto M. Rasi understands faith to be
"both a gift of God and human response to the trustworthiness of
God." He continues to suggest that it is "an ability that God has
granted to every human being," which will develop only when "we
respond to God's self-disclosure and trustworthiness as we pass through the
various stages of life" (1). Ellen G. White sees faith as a channel
through which the grace of God comes to the soul; it is that which is exercised
"to believe that we received the blessing even before we realize it"
(Early Writing, 72).
Once the
views on faith are rationalized, whether cognitively or otherwise, faith
requires that the praxis of the person be consistent with the expressed
belief. So faith cannot be defined as
passive; rather, it is the activity expressed, rooted and grounded in the
belief of one's reality.
Learning is
not an activity; it is a process. Developmental psychology postulates that a
child needs two essentials–the ability to grow and the ability to learn. When
learning takes place, the individual exhibits an acquired response or, as some
experts would say, an acquired mode of behavior. Logically, it can be argued
that all behaviors are acquired–"the native" or inborn behavior which
seems to be ready-made at birth can be said to be acquired through biological
emergence and functions prior to birth. Whatever stance the debate takes, one
thing is quite sure, some behaviors are "built in," and after birth,
others are constantly "built into."
Educational
psychology defines learning as changes taking place in the mediating processes
of an individual's life, and mediating processes develop and change in the
course of life (George J. Mouly, 25). Learning, for Mouly, is a progressive
process that proceeds by discarding mediating process for more efficient ones
at every stage of life. This learning process views response as a phenomenon
that is actualized in the light of interpretation that depends on "the
potentialities, the social and physical setting," "motivational
status," and past experiences of the responder (Mouly, 24, 25). This
theory, therefore, claims that response is controlled by the changes that
affect learning.
The Bible
also purports that learning is a continuous acquisition of behavioral
responses. Solomon says that the wise would listen in order to add to their
learning, and this is possible by attaining wisdom and discipline,
understanding words of insight, acquiring a discipline and prudent life, doing
what is right and just and fair, giving prudence to the simple, and knowledge
and discretion to the young (Proverbs 1:2-6, NIV). All the various aspects of
learning provide a challenge that shows the sacredness of learning.
The Bible
presents a challenge that gives a clear-cut perspective for the SDA college
teacher. Faith must be creatively integrated in the learning process to create
a form of response that provides a holistic outlook on life–an outlook that is
replete with beliefs, attitudes, and values, and shows a confession that faith
and values inevitably influence literary response. But characteristic of the
integration of faith in the learning process is a literary response based on
honesty, liberty, hope, and redemption: recapturing the meaning and worth of
human existence and reinvesting life with the sanctity of God. This is only
possible if the SDA college teacher is aware of his/her God-given mandate:
"Whatever the line of investigation we pursue, with a sincere purpose to
arrive at truth, we are brought in touch with the unseen, mighty Intelligence
[God] that is working in and through all" (White, Education, 14).
Every SDA
college literature teacher needs to be aware of the process that the student
must go through before literary response is made. The literary response process can differ from student to student
because each student has very different sets of expectations, experiences, and
bases of judgment. However, it must not be forgotten that the poem becomes an
event in the reader's life, and the reader enters into an actual process of
literary excursion.
Since the
reader/student undergoes a process, the SDA literature teacher must adhere to
the counsel that "guided study" is a part of the process. Guided
study, in this context, means the "selection of materials and methods of
teaching" that will help students to develop into mature children of God,
and become "committed to the search for wisdom and truth, and concerned
with the physical and spiritual well-being of their fellow men" (Guide
to the Teaching, 9). This process inevitably involves the conscious or
unconscious reinforcement of ethical attitudes, and if the process is not
guided, then there will be no enrichment or clarification of individual
experiences. The teacher must guide in a "setting of love, compassion,
beauty and simplicity" (Guide to the Teaching, 11), showing at all
times the relevance of literature to the Christian life.
God has
mandated the SDA Christian teacher to carefully understand the relevance of
literature. Rasi gives the clear mandate of God on literary response when he
declares that God's message must be mediated to a world that is in need;
creation be restored "to its pristine state;" and honoring God
"must ever remain the ultimate goal of all activities in which Christians
engage" ("Adventist...", 7). An extension of God's mandate as
reiterated by Arthur Holmes states that part of the created order if sacred and
everyone must "exhibit his [her] wisdom and power both by exploring the
creation and developing its resources, and by bringing our own created
abilities to fulfillment"(6). To follow God's mandate, the Christian
teacher needs to unite faith and learning. But how can this unity be realized in
the act of responding to poetry?
This unity
proposes that responding to poetry is an act of faith. This means repudiating
the idea of ideological neutrality and detached objectivity, and allowing faith
and personal values to inevitably influence response. This response process can
only be effective when it is guided by the SDA literary worldview. The
resultant response of the student will reveal whatever is believed and valued.
The teacher
must integrate the guided-study philosophy that is perpetuated in the SDA
college classroom with the college's guiding image to Christian thought: all
students must acquire a holistic perspective of life, and what is right and
good. There is no room for a neutral response. Student must be exposed to
Christian learning, which, like Christian living, requires Christian liberty.
Some may complain that there is a mixture of students in the classroom and that
this requires the Christian teacher to accommodate responses that may reflect
an integration of faith, which is not of Christ, and learning. But while the
Christian teacher is busy protecting and accommodating the few who might be
offended in the Christian classroom, by requiring responses that are other than
the Christian faith approach, the majority of Christian students and searchers
of Truth are left unchallenged. The Christian college and teacher cannot
participate in the secularization of learning. After all, the college is a
Christian community that must maintain its spirituality while at the same time
remaining creatual. So then in
responding to poetry through the integration of faith and learning, the
student, through a Christian perspective, must recapture the meaning and worth
of human existence, and secular knowledge and thought with their God-given
sanctity. This theory thinking and responding with a redeeming hope, and this
is the kind of response, which the SDA pedagogical framework for poetry
demands.
Too often
have I heard college students say: "We had too much analyzing of poems
assigned for study," "we were given too many selections that were
boring," the poems are too long," "poetry is hard to understand
and it's difficult to read." Interestingly, these responses are invariably
the same quarter after quarter. Leyland Ryken explains that poetry, like the
rest of literature, "is the interpretive presentation of human experience
in an artistic form," only that it is a more concentrated form of
discourse (121). There is also the fact that poetry is primarily emotional in
its appeal, is built around subjects and ideas, and appeals to the intellect.
This fact mandates the SDA college teacher to maintain the principle of guided
reading.
The issue
that now arises is one of choice. Many students show distaste for the selection
of poems that are presented to them. How can literature teachers arrest this
distaste for poetry in unhappy students, and at the same time remove the
general prejudice against poetry? The issue must be faced frankly because
poetry has always been and will always be a part of the college's curriculum. An
avoidance will not suffice. A new approach is requisite. The teacher must
propagate the poem as an item of creation.
The Webster's
Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines a poem as "a creation"
and poetry as, "writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative
awareness of experience in language, chosen and arranged to create a specific
emotional response through meaning, sound and rhythm." Whenever poems and
poetry are discussed, certain literary terms dominate: emotion, perception,
experience, condensation, symbolism and imagery, sensuous appeal, rhyme,
rhythm, meaning interpretation, subject matter. All these terms aptly present
the complexity of a poem and leads us to the salient question: what is the
source of a poem? Stephen Minot in establishing the source of a poem, looks at
four mediating processes: "Sense perception," allowing the confines
of the mind to make contacts with the outside world in a sensuous framework;
"Personal Emotions," dealing with feelings close to the heart;
"The sweep of Experience," using sense perception and specific
emotions to create experience, and "Delight in Words," using words to
create a finished work that emphasizes overtones rhythm effect and sounds of words
(14-21).
It is also
very important that the SDA Christian worldview of God, that sees Him as the
source of beauty and the creator of man and his capacities and capabilities, be
the framework of our acceptance of a poem as an item of creation. This
acceptance will acknowledge that man, made in the image of God, has limited
creative power that glorifies his creator, and, moreover, supports, in the
college classroom, the "premise that God is the Creator and Sustainer of
the earth and the entire universe and is the Source of all knowledge and
wisdom" (Guide to the Teaching, 3). God, therefore, is at the
center of every response a student makes to a poem, however novel this idea may
be for the student. The problem in a situation of this nature can be put in a
question: how must the teacher approach literary responses so that the students
can benefit from using the proposed pedagogical approach?
The response
approach of major worldviews presents a launch pad for the Christian approach
to responding to poetry because of commonalities among responses. All
worldviews require response from a created reading self, a genuine sense of
belief in the poem, and seeing response as an act of faith. These commonalities
of literary responses are the same in the recommended pedagogical approach, but
within SDA college classroom, it is necessary that responses by students image
God (Brian Walsh and Richard Middleton, 86). As "confessing, believing,
and trusting" creatures, students in the SDA college classroom react to
all views by a faith commitment–a commitment that says the responder believes
in what he/she knows about imaging God and is willing to act on it. This act is
an act of faith and is similar to the commitment that is also required of the
Christian in every phase of life.
The SDA
college teacher of literature can use the act of faith to show that the Holy
Spirit guides the believer to respond in revelations that can glorify God, the
creator, and that God is pleased whenever His people respond in ways that bless
His name. A teacher must encourage students to make responses, written and oral
that glorify God and propagate His character of love for the beautiful.
This,
however, will not be the experience of all students. Students come from varying
backgrounds; and therefore, some will be conditioned to respond to certain
stimuli in certain ways because their environment plays an important part in
the response process. So then, the SDA college campus is required to provide
the disciplined and conditioned environment for experiential responses that
reflect the guidance of God and the Holy Spirit. This requirement is part of
the philosophy of the teaching of literature in the SDA context: God created
the earth the earth and the entire universe and sustains them, He is the Source
of al knowledge and wisdom, and literary responses must conform the truth about
God, and nurture "an intelligent dedication" and desire to server
people (Guide to the Teaching, 3).
Proper
conditioning and discipline will avoid "sensationalism and maudlin
sentimentality" (Guide to Teaching, 5-6). The classroom will be a
place of challenge. Teacher and student will challenge and stimulate each other
and search for knowledge that will clarify problems and supply the basis for
valid judgments. The poem, in this challenging environment, must be seen as an
artistic creation in which "few words make much sense," and yield
their "basic meaning" and work their "magic on our mind and
heart" (James Sire, 166). The student, with the help of the Christian college
teacher, can develop an appreciation for poetry. However, this is not always
the case.
The student's
inability to appreciate poetry is of great concern especially when poetry is
described as a medium for providing insight into essential human experience.
This inability may be the result of an inadequacy. It can be an inadequacy to
respond to a specific image that is outside of the reader's experience or an
indifference to poetry as a genre of literature. A situation of this nature
will require the teacher to provoke a change to an attitude that is flexibly
receptive to what the poem offers and to perceive its significance. This change
of attitude will come about when students attend to the basic elements poetry:
speaker and tone, diction, imagery, sound, rhythm, meter, structures, and
theme. Attending to these basic elements can bring about the literary excursion
experience–an experience that involves reading the poem a few times to identify
speaker, subject, tone, and situation; understanding the grammar for denotative
and connotative meaning; listening to rhythm and sound for changes that affect
meaning; attending to figures of speech that create symbols and images.
The student
will acquire, from this approach, a broader and deeper insight of the poem
through this new literary experience. The result will be a full interplay
between student and poem, and the creation of an awareness of the dynamic
nature of such an interplay: the gaining of a critical consciousness of the
weaknesses or strengths of the emotional and intellectual devices with which
the reader approaches poetry and life. The student in this situation will learn
to handle freely, with intelligence and discrimination, the personal factors
that are involved in reacting to a poem. A free response helps in the
initiation of a process of growth.
The Christian
teacher in this response situation can help in the choice of poems that will
initiate a guided response process. Choice or selection of poems must be done
by teacher in the initial stage of the class, and later, by students, when the
teacher is satisfied that students are capable of adhering to the SDA
philosophical mandate: Firstly, selection must satisfy certain functions: to
show the artistic wealth available in the forms of the written word; to provide
significant, artistic, lasting insights into essential human experience; to
develop an emulation and appreciation of the beauty of language and art
literary structure; and secondly, selection must lead to significant insights
into the nature of man in society and be compatible with SDA values (Guide
to the Teaching, 5). The college classroom will be a setting, which
bespeaks admiration and respect for both teacher and student, and the feeling
of a sense of adequacy by the students because their ideas and experiences are worthy of consideration
and answer the philosophical call to integrate faith in the learning process.
This
integration helps the teacher to treat the response framework as an SDA
pedagogical approach, which demands that students treat the whole range of
choices, aspirations and values as a machinery of weaving an SDA Christian
philosophy of life. Rosenblatt claims that students are "meeting extremely
compelling images of life that will undoubtedly influence the crystallization
of their attitude" and calls on the teacher to "exert an influence
through the whole framework of ideas and attitudes" (20). This is a clear
mandate that the SDA college teacher must provide the role modeling and
awareness that will sharpen critical thought and perceptions and, at the same time,
adhere to the call for guided reading. This means that the role of the SDA
college teacher must be looked at more closely.
Traditionally,
the role of the teacher is viewed within the context of dispersing information,
of managing the learning process to the extent where he/she becomes the sole
and indispensable disseminator of information. Learning along this contour
emanates from teacher to pupil. The recommended SDA pedagogical approach
changes this idea. The role of the teacher becomes that of a facilitator where
the environment for response is created by the teacher. This environment
generates intellectual discourse and demands that the teacher be a model of
intelligence and a guide to help students expose their value systems for
reflection by both teacher and fellow students. How can this be done? Students
can scrutinize the value system exhibited and propagated by both the teacher
and the college in terms of its consequences and interpretation of human life.
Response to the poem, using this value system, will not only yield literary
values, but also the appropriate values that must be attached to life. Students
will learn that certain kinds of feeling and experiences are sociable and
valuable.
Everyone
expects the SDA college teacher to be a model in reflecting the dogma of
his/her redemptive axiology, which is a commitment to faith. This commitment
becomes contagious in the SDA college classroom. Regardless of the theory this
teacher appropriates, the method of tutelage should not only be viewed as
perceptual but also exemplary: helping students to create responses that
exhibit "thorough analysis of methods and material and concepts and
theoretical structures, a lively and rigorous inter-penetration of liberal learning
with the content and commitment of Christian faith" (Holmes, 7).
The following
are examples of how the SDA pedagogical response of integrating faith and
learning can be achieved in two poetic structure: "Sonnet 116" by William
Shakespeare and "Human Abstract" by English Romantic writer, William
Blake.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediment. Love is not love
Which alters when in alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within the bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prove,
I never writ nor man ever loved.
1.
A
college student, responding to this sonnet using the prescribed pedagogical
framework, can find meaning by examining the following words and phrases that
aptly describe genuine love:
|
Words and Phrases |
Paraphrases Version |
|
"Does not alter" |
It is unchanging; |
|
"A fixed mark" |
It is a fixed mark; |
|
"not shaken" |
It is not easily shaken:; |
|
"Not time's
fool" |
It is not fool's time |
|
"The star to every
wandering bark" |
It is the star to every
wondering ship; |
|
"Bears it … to the
edge of doom" |
It bears … to the edge of
doom |
2.
Love
is defined within a personal emotional framework. Shakespeare claims to have
never written if his definition is proven wrong. Can the definition be proven
wrong? Another exercise that is possible here is to let students create their
definition of Love.
3.
Value
systems of student can be exposed if this question is discussed in a class
setting: would it matter if we do not love?
4.
Students
need to experience the insight of enlarging their world. Is Shakespeare making
an unconscious admittance that the symbol "love" transcends
worldviews and leads to the image creator, God? There is a dynamic interplay in
the Bible: God is love. Let students
react to the interplay in a personal manner.
5.
What
value can be placed on love? Students can adjust their worldviews, and see love
from a changed value system which shows that God is really love.
Pity would be no more
If we did not make somebody Poor,
And Mercy no more could be
Of all were as happy as we.
And mutual fear brings peace,
Till the selfish loves increase;
Then Cruelty knits a snare,
And spreads his baits with care.
He sits down with holy fears,
And waters the ground with tears;
Then Humility takes its root
Underneath his foot.
Soon spreads the dismal shade
Of Mystery over his head;
And the Caterpillar and Fly
Feed on the Mystery.
And it bears the fruit of Deceit,
Ruddy and sweet to eat;
And the Raven his nest has made
In its thickest shade.
The Gods of the earth and sea
Sought thro' Nature to find this Tree;
But their search was all in vain:
There grows one in the Human Brain
Using the recommended pedagogical response to Blake's poem, meaning must be determined. What is the poem saying? Here, love is not the same as in Shakespeare's sonnet. This is love that is skewed. This love demonstrates impulses that are opposed to sincere love–impulses or acts of accommodation and meanness.
Pity and
mercy can be extended to people who need them. This is axiomatic, but it's a
lie–an inappropriate truth with an unhealthy emphasis. It shows how easy a lie
is entered upon. This verse gives two axioms, which are untruths.
Third axiom
carries the same hidden acceptance, but the irony with which it is stated is
more apparent. "Mutual" refers not to a working together but a
separate working to compatible private ends. This is regulated by an esteem
based on mistrust–accommodation. The "love" is selfish.
"Peace"
and "love" here describe impulses that are opposite to what we
usually take them to mean.
The first two
axioms are truths told with wrong emphases, but the third goes further. It
suggests that one may now feel quite easy about advantage or exploitation, for
it insists on the necessity of "mutual fear" in communal life.
The poet's
insights now take over and he makes a direct attack on the distorted thinking
and hypocritical concealment consequent on the lies of the first six lines.
Cruelty is seen as setting a snare and laying baits in order to entice for
further self-deception, encouraging the worst propensities to be practiced with
the best of intentions.
The remainder
of the poem uses the image of the growth of a tree to describe the advanced
stages of deception.
The Bible
says true virtue or love is unselfish–"it vaunteth not itself."
The growth of this tree commences in the heart of the deceiver and advances to full fruitation in deceitful pride. We distinguish between a proper sense of duty and revenge, and an unnatural and distorted dedication.
The root of
the tree is a form of self deception. A continuous patchwork of rationalization
goes on to keep the tree alive.
The fruit of
the tree looks healthy. For example, "humility" and
"mystery" are seen like the real thing but they are all motivated by
self-love.
The
"selfish loves" increase quietly just as how fishermen knit their
nets and spread their baits quietly, and the caterpillar and fly go quietly and
intently about their activities.
No human
voice heard in the poem and the abstractions refer to mute, internal processes.
The final
stanza shifts from nature to the human brain, hence the title, "Human
Abstract." Three lines are dedicated to the search and one line to the
discovery. Who is qualified to search for natural than the gods of earth and
sea. They search hard but fail to find it as belonging to nature. Hence , it is
a human abstract.
Deception and
hypocrisy are sins that walk unseen except to the God of creation alone, says
John Milton. And the human mind is the only place where these grow. They do not
belong to nature. "The heart if deceitful about all things, and
desperately wicked: who can know it?" (Jer. 17:9).
Teacher can
conclude the study of this poem by letting the class examine 1 Cor 13 without
being too didactic. It speaks for
itself.
The
controversy on the issue of reader-response theories will continue. There are
those who will support the pseudo scientific reaction of objectivity and
impersonality, and those who will define the implications of the personal
nature of the literary experience. Whatever approach the response takes, the
SDA college teacher must help students to read so well that they may derive any
and all possible benefits from the poem, using at times the theoretical
framework of interpretation from the Scriptures.
The quest for
integration of faith in the learning process underscores the thought that
something has gone wrong. In college courses on Christian education, students
study the various schools established by God. In these schools, faith and
learning were not integrated; faith was the basis of the learning process. In
retrospect, the SDA philosophy demands the concept of educational wholeness
that is characteristic of its message-dominated schools: the integration of
faith and learning. From the recommended SDA pedagogical framework, and the
response exercise in the last section of this essay, SDA college teachers
should not be at a loss as to how to link beliefs, values and academics in
legitimate ways in the college classroom. There must be coherent approach to
all reality. This is one of God's
proven ways to lead people into an understanding of the meaning and aesthetics
of life.
The
Bible. [NIV]
Guide to the Teaching of
Literature in Seventh-day Adventist Schools Washington: Department of Education
, n.d.
Holmes, Arthur F. "The Idea
of a Christian College." The Journal of Adventist Education 34.3
(1972): 5-7 & 14.
Leitch, Vincent B. American
Literary Criticism. New York: Columbia UP, 1988. Minot, Stephen. Three Genres. 2nd ed.
Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1971.
Mouly, George J. Psychology
for Effective Teaching. 3rd ed. New York: Holt, Rinchart and
Winston Inc., 1973.
Rasi,
Humberto M. "Adventists Face Culture: Should We Love or Hate the
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_________.
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