Anyway, thank you for reading that. Here's the meat:
Here we are at the end of Family Studies 322, and how quickly it went by! I am sure, however, that if I were to list out everything that I learned in this class that I would be surprised at how bountiful it was. I flipped through my notes and found that there is a lot of trivial knowledge in them, but also a lot of ...other stuff (a better term evades me).
One of the biggest things that I learned in this class wasn't something that we specifically studied but rather an undertone to the entire course: people's views on human sexuality are like snowflakes - no two exactly the same. Sometimes it could be slightly surprising at how firmly rooted other people (or myself) could be in their views and opinions. I never found this frustrating, I found it quite enlightening. We can consider this to be just another course to get through en route to our degrees, but it was in fact a very unique opportunity - the opportunity to explore and discuss the world of human sexuality with 40 other people. It was a first hand reminder that we are all different products of different environments (because we construct our own, of course). This is just such an important concept to be in touch with as a teacher, and not just for human sexuality but for everything I might face as an educator. We always say "everyone is unique," but this course really brought that sentiment to life for me.
If I had to pick a topic out of my notes which I found the most intriguing, then I would have to go with sexual education itself. I'm really excited to see the state of sexual education in the curriculum when I enter the workforce; that, or really scared. Talking about sex ed. in class (and blogging about it too) helped me to realize how influential sexuality is in a person's life, and how skewed the information distribution is within it (ie. from advertisements, programming etc. vs. parents, teachers, peers). I also see how all things love & sex is a very tender issue for some, and as such needs to be approached delicately and with efforts made to respect all.
I can't positively say how all of this will affect me in my future civil discourse, but I'll sure take a stab at it. Habermas' paradigms and components of critical thinking will play a big part in this, as will my discovery of diversity amongst all. I imagine that I will be careful to listen carefully to others, and I will also choose my own words carefully. I will respect that we have all come from different directions, and I will know that agreeing to disagree is a valuable life skill and that battles must be chosen carefully, and I will continue to believe that if something comes to a battle that it is most often not worth fighting at all. (I realize that this may read somewhat vaguely, but I'm trying to say that I generally value the assertive over the passive and the aggressive).
Bonus
I also saw a slight generation gap unfold before my eyes this term. In a couple of ways, if we consider the generation gaps between the twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings, and that between the thirty-somethings and forty-somethings (all numbers rough). I mention the first one because I think a lot of the young(er) ones in the class didn't know who Sue Johanson was, and she taught me an awful lot about sex! I feel bad for them that they didn't have sex talk radio to listen to! The second one is that which exists between you and I, as I seem to have illustrated many of my points with South Park, whereas you have shown preference to Woody Allen and Monty Python, both of whose genius is under-explored, but not lost, on me. Your contraception clip along with the final item in my astronomy class, The Galaxy Song, has piqued my curiosity to the comedic styling of eras prior to my own. Hooray!
It all comes down to this: We've learned a lot, but we'll always have so much more to learn from each other*.
*everyone, not just you and I...
No comments:
Post a Comment