Celebrate!
September brings us some major holidays, including Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, and Eid al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting. But the most important date for many kids this time of year is the start of the new school year.
Click on a link below for information, stories, recipes, activities and more related to these and other holidays.
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We Honor… |
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Amos Bronson Alcott (Bronson to his friends), an educator who had some ideas about teaching that were considered pretty outrageous at the time.
As a teacher, he believed that all knowledge and moral guidance come from inner sources, and that it is the teacher’s job to help these inner gifts to grow and unfold. He would hold conversations with his students, drawing out their ideas through questions rather than simply telling them what to think. He brought art, music, PE and the study of nature into the classroom at a time when no one thought these subjects belonged in school. And, unlike most teachers of his day, he thought it was wrong to punish children by hitting them. Surprisingly, when a student was especially badly behaved Alcott would insist that the wrong-doer hit him, the teacher, instead. After all, he said, if a student was doing poorly, it must be because the child had not been well taught.
Bronson’s daughter Louisa, who grew up to be a famous author, wrote about learning from her father: "I never went to school, except to my father or such governesses as from time to time came into the family. . . . so we had lessons each morning in the study. And very happy hours they were to us, for my father taught in the wise way which unfolds what lies in the child's nature as a flower blooms, rather than crammed it, like a Strasburg goose, with more than it could digest. I never liked arithmetic nor grammar . . . but reading, writing, composition, history, and geography I enjoyed, as well as the stories read to us with a skill peculiarly his own."
Many people thought that Alcott, and his teaching methods, were downright peculiar. But he stuck to his principles, and taught in the way that he thought was best for the children. I suppose that explains why parents kept pulling their kids out of his schools. The family had to move some 20 times in the course of 30 years, and every time a school started to have a bit of success Alcott would do something that horrified the parents—like saying something about how babies are made or allowing a little African-American girl to join the school along with the white children. (Remember, this was around the time of the Civil War.)
No matter what the rest of the world thought, Bronson Alcott stood by his ideas and his ideals. He helped to establish a shared farm, named “Fruitlands,” based on his principles of what was true and good, Of course, he might have gone a bit overboard on his principles when he refused to disturb the worms in the apples, and insisted that they not plant vegetables such as carrots whose roots went straight down, rather than reaching upward toward the sky. Still, they lived what they believed. He designed pants suits made of linen so that they would not use cotton which was picked by slaves, and he promoted the use of raw, vegetarian foods, in part so that women wouldn’t have to spend so much time cooking in the kitchen.
Not surprisingly, the farm, like the schools, failed. Whether or not the world was ready for such an idealist, he kept trying to put his ideas forward through lectures on everything from Plato, God and education, to animal rights and vegetarianism. Of course, he didn’t make much money even at that, and his wife, Abigail, did much to support the family when she became the country’s first social worker. But the family only really had enough money to live with any comfort when his daughter Louisa’s books gained such success, starting with the famous Little Women.
Bronson Alcott might never have been a financial success, but his ideas about education eventually helped people to understand that learning is more than just memorizing facts, that it is a way of helping a whole person to grow. |
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Act!
Both Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, and Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, involve fasting—going without food for a certain period of time. Fasting is a kind of discipline: it means that you choose to do things in a way that might be uncomfortable, but it also points your attention toward things that matter. If you don’t eat for a day the discomfort of being hungry can remind you of other things you hunger for, like peace and justice. And being hungry can help you to remember the people in the world who are hungry through no choice of their own. But how you choose to eat can also be a discipline—a careful choice. As UUs, every four years at General Assembly we choose a Current Study/Action Issue (CSAI). The Study/Action Issue is a discipline, something that we agree to give our attention to, learn about and allow what we learn to change how we live. The Current Study/Action Issue, chosen at last year’s General Assembly, is Ethical Eating. Ethical eating means paying attention to how what we eat affects the rest of the world. For instance, global warming, pollution, humane treatment of animals, treatment of farm workers and world hunger are all important issues that are affected by what we choose to eat.
You can be a part of the Study/Action on ethical eating by talking with your family about how you make choices of what to eat. What would it mean if you ate organic fruits and vegetable? Tried to eat things that came from near where you live? Ate less (or no) meat? Ate foods that had little or no packaging? Grew some of your own produce? Whether or not you ever choose to fast, paying attention to our food choices is an important part of remembering that all of us on this planet are connected, and so we need to make choices that promote life and health for everyone.
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Nurturing Your Spirit
One way to celebrate Mabon, the autumn equinox, is to honor the harvest time by baking your own bread. Making bread from scratch takes a lot of time and patience. But the repeated movement of kneading bread dough can be a kind of meditation, and making bread is not only a way of celebrating the fall harvest of grain, but also a way of connecting in spirit with all the people across thousands of years who have gone through the same motions, mixing, kneading and baking bread. You can find instructions here.
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Principles in Practice
Our third principle, “Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations” is a good principle to remember in our “back to school,” September mode. As Bronson Alcott understood, accepting and affirming people is the best starting place for education – and spiritual growth is one of the most important parts of learning. What exactly is spiritual growth? Well, it’s hard to say anything exact about spirituality. But I would say that spiritual growth has to do with understanding and acting on our deep connections. We grow spiritually when we treat other people kindly, when we take care of our planet and the other beings who share it with us, when we take time to look at things from someone else’s point of view. So choosing to eat ethically helps us to grow spiritually, and so does the Yom Kippur practice of asking for forgiveness for any ways that we have hurt another person. We also grow spiritually when we pay attention to the deep connections inside of ourselves, when we get quiet and listen to the “still, small voice” inside of us.
Although the principle talks about acceptance and encouraging spiritual growth in our congregations, the start of school is a great time to remember and practice this principle. You can practice acceptance with new students at your school, who might be used to doing things differently than you or your long-time friends. And you can encourage spiritual growth in yourself and others by showing what it looks like when someone treats people and the planet with care and respect. |
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