My English Teacher Uses “Puritan Literature” as a Pretext to Preach Christianity

<p>(A Reflection on HS)</p>

<p>My English teacher often used “Puritan Literature” as a pretext for preaching Christianity to the class. During my Junior year, my teacher required us to read several stories from the puritan part of the literature book. This would be excusable as legitimate teaching if he had neglected to explain in full the nature of hell, the devil, and the core tennents of the Puritan religious belief while gesturing wildly and completely skipping most nearly every unit in the book. </p>

<p>I remember having an Indian friend sitting next to me who was expressing my feeling when he rolled his eyes during the sermon and slouched into his chair, deliberately staring at the ground with stubborn resistance. As soon as he sighed, the teacher snapped his head in his direction and said quickly without pause, “V___(his henceforth anonomous name), are you listening? Are you paying attention? This is going to be on the test.” Then the teacher resumed his digestion of the themes and imagery in a Puritan “hell and damnation” speech before moving on to analyze an allegory about Tom Walker.</p>

<p>Write comments?</p>

<p>who cares???????</p>

<p>That guy is piece of (bad word here). The Indian should have switched teachers.</p>

<p>Well English Literature is highly religious so you might as well know the history and ideas of Christianity. I know atheists who read the bible just to know what's going on when analyzing poems/novels.</p>

<p>charizardpal:</p>

<p>There is a huge difference between "The Bible as Literature" and "The Bible as some teacher interprets it."</p>

<p>Your teacher should have kept a clinical view of the Bible and spoken of it when applicable. But, only in a clinical way - not in a religious way. </p>

<p>Your friend at least had nice manners. I would have gotten mad at that teacher, to be honest.</p>

<p>are we talking dot or feather indian? cause if he's native american, i can see why he'd be really ****ed, i mean the whole puritans coming in and begining a 400 year genocide kinda sux</p>

<p>Actually he's "feather Indian." I mean, his parents were from the country of India.</p>

<p>Anyway there were other sections in that text book which were never addressed. I don't remember there being anything written during or after the civil war was addressed actually (except for the Crucible). To indulge your curiousity, the other short stories our class read were the Scarlet Letter, Dr. Heidegger's Experiment (both written by the same author), and an Occurrence on Owl Creek Bridge. (These are the titles I can remember the titles of, in addition to a poem by a Puritan about the joy she felt watching her home go up in flames knowing this life was but ephermal, and a hell and damnation sermon by an alledgedly famous early 19th century preacher.)</p>

<p>We read no Shakesphere during this class, and as you can see all of the literature we read was written by or about the puritans.</p>

<p>I feel that his decision to emphasize this period was part of a larger agenda to teach the class about morals, and specifically about Christianity. The teacher was the advisor to a community service club (Amnesty International), and he often did take the opportunities that literature presents to give us moral guidance. For instance, with the Scarlet Letter he told us that the reason flirting is bad is because it it entices people to want what they cannot have. He would also ask us questions and then when no one answered them word for word, he'd answer them rather like, "People try to move away from pain, and move toward pleasure." At one point someone asked him if he was Christian and he replied with some Kings James quotation, "hark unto you belivers..." or something...I honestly can't remember what words he used, and I think he probably used the word "Thou."</p>

<p>I also remember an aethist on the other side of the classroom who would sometimes get to arguing with him....although at the year's end he told the teacher in class that he respected him as the only English teacher that actually taught in the school. Actually I liked the guy because I one time had brought a Charmander doll to school and the teacher confinscated it and set it behind his desk on the other side of the room. Later, when the teacher was facing the other direction and distracted, the guy took the doll and pitched it to me from across the room! Man that guy was cool, he was in drama class and had taken Japanese 2, too.</p>

<hr>

<p>Stops arguing; begins reminiscing</p>

<hr>

<p>Yeah, I used to attract a lot of attention in that class! I had a stack of index note cards from my Chemistry class and I would stack them on the desk as tall as I could without them falling down. Usually I'd hide them behind my binder and the Indian guy next to me would help out. We'd also balance pens and pencils onto of one another, making the teacher really annoyed when he found out we weren't paying full attention. It was a lot of fun and I actually starting hanging out with the guy in the science room the year after it happened.</p>

<p>Sometimes the teacher asked us to take notes while often repeating his points or lectures due to old age. I'd boredly make eye-contact with him while moving my pen-hand over the paper. Then the guy would get annoyed and come over to see if I could actually write while looking at him, and he'd find what I'd written to be legible. One time, over the course of an hour I sketched a picture of Master Chief from the video game Halo riding a Warthog car over a cliff. He got annoyed while the guy next to me said, "Wow! That's really good! You even got the shading and the tires...." Then the professor snapped, "Don't encourage him!"</p>

<p>Meanwhile there was a Korean guy to his left who was always deliberately falling out of chair, and another Korean guy on my right who was probably gay that often took bathroom breaks for the entire hour. One time he brushed into me at lunch and knew to the answers on the make-up scantron test. I told him, "I don't know! I don't memorize the test questions!" He sulked off and got a C afterwards.</p>

<p>Beside him was girl who was running for the student class president. During lunch I went up to vote, (randomly since I really didn't know the canidates), and she was standing beside the polling station. She actually came up to my side, called me by name and asked me to vote for her, and then brushed her breasts against my arm and stepped back to watch me. I voted, and the next year I found out that she had won the class presidency.</p>

<p>Actually, I'm fond of remembering that class. I pulled off some cool stuff. Even though didn't like the way we were patronized, that was the funnest class I took in High School.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>This rocked. I honestly read the entire Absurdities section (thus gaining a superficial knowledge of the Bible) in about an hour.</p>

<p>Kaiser, that's hilarious.</p>

<p><a href="These%20are%20the%20titles%20I%20can%20remember%20the%20titles%20of,%20in%20addition%20to%20a%20poem%20by%20a%20Puritan%20about%20the%20joy%20she%20felt%20watching%20her%20home%20go%20up%20in%20flames%20knowing%20this%20life%20was%20but%20ephermal,%20and%20a%20hell%20and%20damnation%20sermon%20by%20an%20alledgedly%20famous%20early%2019th%20century%20preacher.">quote</a>

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<p>That ^ would maybe be Anne Bradstreet and Cotton Mather, eh? They are both folks who pertain to early American Literature. And, yeah, they were both rather Christian. </p>

<p>Now, was this class a "World Literature" type of class? Or was this class an "American Literature" type of class? Or, what? I am curious about that.</p>

<p>ur friend coulda just listened. Rejection of knowledge is foolish. At least here different oppinions before choosing to believe something stubbornly.</p>

<p>And you do realize that most all classical American Literature is christian based, except for a few noted authors (like emerson and stuff)</p>