Teaching and Learning > DOCUMENTS
Spooky Spirituality
Mark Plater
David Hay's empirical data on contemporary spirituality in Britain (Hay, 2002)
indicates that the large percentage of adults who experience events 'outside
of the ordinary' have an experience of what we might call 'dark' mysterious,
and the paranormal.
In the speaker's own experience of work with young people in further and higher
education, students show a fascination for such phenomena.
In spite of this however, just as primary schools avoid the topic of Hallowe'en,
so higher education courses on religion and spirituality generally tend to
avoid issues related to the 'occult' or paranormal, preferring instead to
focus on aspects of religion and spirituality which are less controversial,
and which can more easily be described and accounted for.
This workshop will explore the following questions:
Why do higher education courses not include a study of mysterious religious/spiritual
phenomena? (such as contact with angels, spirits and the dead, experiences
of paranormal activity, healings, miracles and answers to prayer, etc)
Is this a subject of particular interest of students, or just a fascination
for fringe lunatics?
Is growing popular interest in such phenomena a counter-reaction to the taboo
which educationalists generally seem to have placed on the subject?
If such material were to be studied in the classroom, what pedagogical approach
should be taken?
Presentation materials
Download
Mark Plater's presentation
Download
Mark Plater's module specification
Download
Mark Plater's polarities paradigm diagram
This page was originally on the website of The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies. It was transfered here following the closure of the Subject Centre at the end of 2011.
