Learning Through Celebration

It is wonderful that life can offer a new beginning just when you thought that you had reached an end of something.
For me this time, at 31 and finishing my studies, it was the realisation that there are no jobs for an academic with a Master degree that made me sign up for a whole new beginning.

In England, no one wants to teach religion, it seems. This is why a postgraduate in Philosophy and Social and Political Thought, like myself, gets paid to study the pedagogy of religious education. Tempting enough, I’ve signed up. Now, there is only one remaining detail: to learn the practice and theory of six world religions before September 2007. It is almost strange then, that I have somehow – rather than experiencing total disbelief and panic – managed to become super enthusiastic about the whole thing.

Though I think the reason for this enthusiasm is fairly simple since I have come up with the best way to learn; that is through celebration. This is the way children learn about their religion and their culture prior to theorising about it. For adults too, despite having gained the ability to cognise abstract ideas, words don’t have much meaning unless they are deeply rooted in practice.

Therefore, equipped with a multi-faith calendar I intend to celebrate all the holy days of Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Sikhism, Judaism and Islam.

Since it is also important for me that the educational tone of the project stays functional, my intention is to educate others, in the same time as educating myself. By doing this I hope to create the maximum amount of learning within the minimum amount of time.

So, every day there is cause for celebration I will send out an email to friends and family explaining the holiday, together with some suggestions on how to celebrate it. In addition to these emails I will also keep a diary in which I will write down, in more detail, the events and thoughts of some chosen celebrations. Below are links to these: