CAN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES IN EDUCATION BY ILLUSTRATED BY THE BIBLE?

This is a little on the personal side, but because it cemented a learning concept for me, I am sharing.....

My daughters have grown up in the Catholic school system and their teachers never cease to amaze me with how their faith-based studies can be entwined with other curriculum, like art and social studies.  And I mean all faiths not just that of the Catholic school system.  Maybe they are influencing me more than I imagined because during one of my readings for next week,  I started thinking about history from this perspective.

I was reading "Beyond 'content' and 'pedagogy':  in search of a way to talk about history education by Peter Seixas.  He said, "precisely because meaningful accounts of the past are contentious, and because no single account will be taken as the truth simply by virtue of its being offered by an authority, students themselves need the means to asses historical counts, to analyze historical sources and to construct consciously a framework of historical meaning for their lives" (Seixas 333-334).

Immediately upon reading this, my reflection was that this is why there are gospels from different apostles.  The multiple accounts of the same period in history allows for the perspectives needed for Christians to first of all have multiple accounts, thus validating the content, but also to be better assess the accounts and construct a framework that is meaningful to them.

When attending church, we have different priests who have different strengths.  Some are very social, some are great at getting projects going, others are expert historians.  Each have something wonderful to offer the students, but what I like about those who are true historians is that they can make seemingly unrelated concepts connect.  Just like in this article when it talks about students not understanding because they don't "get" what was happening in the lives of the characters of history.  When they have the stage set with things that they understand (moral dilemmas, betrayal of friends, having no money, feeling powerless) then they can better understand the content and why it "went down, the way it went down).

Ok... enough rambling thought.... now, to turn this into a question....

Could the religious of the multiple accounts of the apostles be used to help Christian children to be better able to apply critical thought to history education?

If so, what effect might this have on faith?

RESOURCES:

Seixas, P.  (1999).  Beyond 'content' and 'pedagogy':  in search of a way to talk about history education.  Curriculum Studies, 31, 317-337.

Various Contributors.  (unknown).  The Bible:  The New Testament.    Pages 1- infinity.

(I will know if you caught this cheeky reference by the way you comment on it :)