Week 6

Read the article: “Defining the Integration of Faith and Learning” by Robert Harris

How can you develop the capacity for connectedness?

     I was the product of the public school system all the way through college and I learned all there was to learn from there. At the same time I attended church faithfully and learned all there was to learn there as well. However, these two vital spheres of my knowledge base somehow never connected in my head. What I learn in school and what I learned at church were separately important to me, but separate none the less.

     It wasn't until after my college, when I first started teaching, while going to seminary that the two finally clicked. How we understand the world in the secular sense and how we understand it in a faithful sense should not be separated, but rather integrated into the whole of understanding of the world around us. I learned that my students learned best when I used my knowledge of history that I gained from college along with my knowledge of spirituality that I was learning from seminary. When the two worldviews, as Harris puts it, are integrated into our teaching, then our students can fully understand not only the “when” and “what” but the “why” and “for what” as well.