It has been more than 10 years since I really gave Buddhist teachings, with the exception of one or two seminars and conferences. I guess a long break helped in gettting focus on key activities of my life. Rekindling the passion to learn and teach helps is something I wanted to do for a long while. Hence, I felt I was ready to return to teaching.
I volunteered to teach Sunday Dhamma school at a local Buddhist community and went straight for the Youth classes (form 2 and beyond). When I ageed to take the class, I felt that this group of student would be able to best appreciate my somewhat different approach and would be ripe for a much more socially-engaged Buddhism.
Well never mind all that. In this morning's class I was tested in my ability to first engage with student in the age group of 14 and above. The challenge to trying to understand the teenagers and get them interested to explore the values of the Buddha's teachings away from traditional sutta quoting and "Buddha said......." methodologies. The is just too much detatched lecture approach making Dhamma classes either too class room orientated hence causing the lessons to be another school lesson - something student are trying to shake off in the weekends. On the otherhand, there may be too much flexibility to please and address the student - putting in so-called fun activities. Both ways the value of Dharma can get watered down.
In my class, I had to confront the fact that almost all the students who were there attended the class because they felt "there was no choice". Their parents "forced" them to attend. Whatever the reason or reasons were none from the 14 students asked their parents why? When asked why did they not object or dialogue with their parents, one of them responded that it was out of "respect" not to question. Come from a background and training where I have often encouraged my kids to speak up, this response was a little bit a surprise to me.
Chinese in an Asian community often equate respect as fear and not trust. Respect goes both ways as well. I guess in the same manner Siddhartha respected his father, Sudhodana. Siddhartha questioned and made his decisions. Finally, Sudhodana accecpted and respected the path Siddhartha took. Respect is also not the blind violent objections to anything the parent brings-up.
One challenge for our youth is the ability to decide what they want and to be firm to go the whole nine yards and later communicating that mesage effectively. In order to decide, there must be opportunity where youths are given the opportunity to have right information with the appropriate exchanges and getting each other to understand.
As a parent, I feel the bigger challenge is the ability to gain the "mind share" of our children. Our society is a society where information (read: messages) are bombarded to us on a daily basis. From the start of the day, there is the radio. Besides spattering of news, most information are about trival stuff like celebrity gossips, songs and music. Just try listening to Light & Easy for a day and you will see what I mean. Now try flipping to Radio 4 and you have "matsallehs wanna-be" talking (mostly) rot. I wrote about this before in earlier articles. Television is not much different. Satisfaction of the advertisers is paramount. Some good documentry however, offers some ray of hope though.
Our lives are very much guided by these information and messages which is oftened aimed at making decision about lifestyle in the material world. Apart from mass media, the schools struggle to get into the minds of the students as well. Leaving little time and space for parents, what more Dhamma school teachers.
Hence, getting connected with students is really key. Once that done, communication willl begin to flow or at least meaningful dialogue....
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