This semester was downright crazy.
Taking two classes for a second Master's Degree, teaching two sections of Western Civ 1, working full time, and caring for H after her hip surgeries may have been asking a bit much. The stress involved in trying to do it all well (and only partially succeeding) nearly drove me insane. I know it made me unbearable to live with.
The end result of the semester: a 3.5 GPA at FSU, a grade challenge from a student who thought she deserved an "A" instead of a "B", a mostly successful quarter at work, and the feeling that I didn't quite do any of it as well as it should have been.
Oh, and H felt neglected and lonely because I spent so much time doing homework - a feeling made worse because she was stuck at home all day because she couldn't drive. I probably could have handled this a bit differently.
*sigh*
As always, this semester brought new challenges on the teaching front. Each class had its own unique personality. Class "A" was full of whiners - most of them did ok in the course - but they just didn't want to do the work. They felt that it was too much (4 posts per week), didn't like the timing of the work (why do I have to post on different days, why do I have to do work during the week/weekend), or that other students were being too complete in their submissions (like I'm going to tell them to only answer part of a question).
Some of the Class A students had some interesting views on the material, though. One student, of Norse background, felt the Vikings were portrayed in a biased manner because a lot of our textbook's information came from the victims of Viking attacks (who were literate), not the Vikings (who wrote on stone, when literate). I directed her toward some accounts of the infamous "blood eagle", and asked if maybe the people who feared the Vikings had a point, despite the Vikings contributions to exploration and navigation...
Another interesting student continually claimed that people adopted Christianity because it allowed them to be "free" in their religious practice. This was a high school student living in a rural area, and he was quite... devout (or maybe fervent). I realize that we did spend some time discussing the idea that Roman religious practices were more rigorous than Greek practices, but it doesn't make most of the places we studied look like theocracies. Maybe the whole bit about Alexander the Great ordering people to "vote him a God" had something to do with it.
Anyway, for much of the semester, even when we were discussing episodes of religious intolerance from official Christianity (the Roman Catholic Church and state-sponsored Churches), this student maintained that early Christians adopted Christianity not because of the message of salvation and eternal life inherent in Pauline Christianity, but because that way they could be "free".
I'm still at a loss.
The only "interesting" student in Class B steadfastly refused to purchase the correct textbook until just before the final exam. Why? She got the one used by her community college, which left out key concepts like the Doctrine of Pauline Supremacy, because she could just pay for it out of her financial aid. She only bought the actual course text because I informed her that citing her alterbate text would negatively impact her Final Exam grade (The Final is essay-based, and allows the students to refer to their textbooks and the curse discussion sessions. It also requires that they use inline citations).
At least there was no plagiarism this term - a few examples of problems with quotation marks, but no actual plagiarism (that I caught). I'm hoping this was because I forced them all to do an exercise on identifying and avoiding plagiarism this semester.
More to follow....
Posted by Chris at December 21, 2005 12:05 PMI have read a reference somewhere (can't honestly remember where as my library is not currently in front of my nose) that sort of took the position of Xianity making the early converts "free." Basically the argument stated that, because Rome had a fairly rigid social and religious structure, rebelling against that by joinging the illegal Christian cult gave people a feeling of freedom. Furthermore, the Roman deities seemed so fickle and tempermental that they did not give all people a feeling of safety that the message of Jesus did.
However, I somehow don't think that this is what your student was referring to!
Posted by: God Geek on January 3, 2006 03:51 PMI wish I thought that was the case, indeed, it would have made sense if he had restricted this line of thinking to the Roman Imperial era. Unfortunately, this trend started with Christianity in Greece and the Ancient Near East, which didn't have the the same religious rigidity as the Romans. While the Greeks did deal with fickle dieties, they had a much more laissez faire relationship with their religion, which stands in stark contrast to the Roman practices. This student also pushed this concept of freedom and Christianity to the Medieval, Renaissance, and Early Modern eras, during which the Church was most definitely not a force for freedom and liberty of any sort.
This student also had issues with proper use of citations, so I have no way of knowing if he happened across his Christianity = Freedom conception somewhere else, and was just extending it beyond the intent of a particular text.
Posted by: Chris on January 5, 2006 08:10 PM