Writing an Introduction to Religion syllabus
How can you possibly introduce a classroom of college freshmen to the world’s religions in a single semester? Right now I am building a syllabus for a condensed course, which meets for only a few months, once a week. I’m faced with questions of scope (what religions?), emphasis (history? ritual? beliefs? significant figures?) and material (what primary texts? videos? discussion groups? presentations?).
Any introductory course confronts these questions, which must be answered before the nitty-gritty syllabus building can even begin. Below are a few ideas I’m tossing around to equip my students.
Goals
The course I’m handling is short, so I have to decide whether to aim wide or deep. I’ve chosen wide. The text the course uses, Many Peoples, Many Faiths, is thematically divided into theoretical, sociological and practical expressions of religion. I’m taking those as the major teaching points for religions.
Along the way, I want to give my students a sketch of the historical development and geographical situation of the religions, and a glimpse into their scriptures. Which religions will we cover?
Hinduism | Buddhism | Confucianism | Taoism | Shintoism | Judaism | Christianity | Islam
After we’ve covered the basics of each religion, I want to revisit them, with a topical perspective. What do these religions believe and practice in terms of:
Women | The State | Salvation | Communities | God
At this point, the students should be equipped to do some compare and contrast. They can come away from the course with, I hope, the tools to continue this analysis throughout their lives.
Techniques
How can these, admittedly basic, goals be accomplished in a classroom setting which is 6 hours long and meets only once a week? There isn’t much time to draw students in, as you can over an entire semester. But there’s quite a lot of time (in terms of hours strung together) to bore them. My plan is to mix up the teaching techniques I use and encourage learning by:
Power Point Lectures | Small Group Discussions | Classroom Discussions | Bringing in Discussion Topics | Short Reflection Papers | Newspaper Clippings | Movies | Reading Scripture Texts | Individual Presentations | Short Quizzes
The aim is to present important points in several ways. Normally I am not a fan of Power Point (it can easily become boring), but I am going to use it to provide images, maps and animations to bring concepts to life. Starting from the first hour, I’ll be encouraging discussion–with some structure that I hope to talk about later. We’ll also be watching The Long Journey which students will be quizzed on.
Preparation
In addition to preparing my slides (which are helpful in terms of assessing the length of time a lecture will take), I am working to come up with a set of reflection questions for the students to work on. These questions may be sent home with them to bring back next time or could used on an in-class essay assignment. Before class begins as well, I want to have a set of quizzes (of which I may not use all questions), and ditto sheets for the movies (to make sure they are watching, not sleeping).
For a lengthy classes like this, I’m finding that the best way to tackle it is to break up each day into several periods. We’ll be taking breaks throughout the day, and treating each segment like a class gives me a smaller group of goals to work towards. I can also use a similar pattern each day, in terms of when I lecture, when we break into discussion groups, when we watch the movie. Although I don’t need to be, well, religious about it, I think setting a pace allows both the students and I have to have expectations.
Naturally, all of this is untested–I haven’t taught the class yet, and each new set of students comes with its own challenges and surprises. I’ll report back with any helpful amendations and, as I mentioned before, possibly put some material online.