What am I responsible for as a teacher of religion? Is my objective to teach the details such as rituals, rites, history or am I to engage in discourse about faith? Emotion? Ethics? Difference? And of course the search for Truth?
Every teacher struggles with not having enough time. A few hours a week is not enough to teach everything there is to know about reading, writing and arithmetic thus surely it is not enough time to teach about god. Therefore, we limit ourselves. We set boundaries on what makes the cut and what doesn't. We censor in order to provide more of the big picture, hoping that with that in the hands of students they could examine the material as a virtual Where is Waldo? and they will glean the details. Is it this very idea why we have students that know that Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliette, but can not explain the complexity of family and love that it holds within it's renown sonnets? Is there value in recognition without synthesis; without analysis; without ownership?
An unsure teacher sits and considers the value of the surface in the face of sacrificing the depth.
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