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Use of secular material to teach ethics
My thanks to the Blaut's for sharing their experiences with us. To clarify
my suggestion, though, let me point out that the Blaut's used "real-world"
events as triggers for in-depth discussion with their students - an
important technique in itself. I am suggesting using elements of the
outside culture to actually instill values. As an example, since you force
me to it, when Portia begins "The quality of mercy is not strained," we
are handed an eloquent plea for hesed, along with a list of its practical
benefits and the mean-spiritedness of withholding it. All of this in a
package designed to speak to people's hearts and move them, to an extent
rarely achieved by mussar books.
There are wonderfully-crafted moral lessons in everything from "Sir
Gawain" to "Groundhog Day," and with teachers to navigate, so that the
lessons learned are unequivocally those that we agree with, they
constitute a vast, and I suspect untapped, resource.
Michael
PS: Actually, I barely remember "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," but I
needed it for the antiquity and alliteration; the principle is the same</HTML>
