Well, here we are again, back at it with another blog post. Today we are going to be looking at what we learned in the humanities class in the past two and a half months. This unit was mainly based around worldview, which is a way to view the world, and also some things that might affect your worldview.
We started off in this unit just defining worldview. Things like what it is, what can affect it, etc… I immediately established my worldview, which was a good thing because Ms. Willemse assigned a project on the app Explain Everything. This project was to explain our worldview with brief animation and speaking about our worldview. Luckily for me, we did multiple drafts of this project. My first draft was a train wreck, but it got better progressively and by the end, I was pretty satisfied with my work.
Here’s my worldview project explaining the way I look at the world.
If you still don’t understand everything about worldview, here’s an image that really helped me.
These things in the image above might affect your worldview. For example, if I gain knowledge from a certain subject, then my worldview will have changed because I understand more about it and it affects my worldview more.
I thought three of those words up there affect my worldview in many ways. For one, values. I definitely value my family and the way they think definitely changes my worldview. Another is technology. Technology has come so far and it’s crazy what it can do to shape your worldview. Lastly, society. What I mean by this is that the way people view different things as a whole. To hear me fully explain it, click the link to watch the video on my worldview.
We also learned some key words in worldview: pervasive, point of view, ethnocentrism and perspective. If you don’t know the meaning of these words, here’s a definition.
Pervasive: something that is everywhere. We don’t think about it, it is just naturally there. It is the way we think and act. We are shaped by the “western worldview”.
Point of view: opinions or preferences of a single person.
Perspective: the collective point of view of a group.
Ethnocentrism: the belief that one’s personal opinion is correct and also superior to any other opinion.
These words helped explain the differences between a single person’s beliefs and a group’s beliefs. This led us right into studying religions. To fully comprehend different peoples beliefs, studying religions was a great idea.
I thought that learning about different religions was incredibly interesting. I was brought up in a Catholic family and I’ve learned about this religion since I was really young. I thought studying different types of religions was a real eye-opener and I learned a lot.
We started this unit off in class learning basic knowledge about the main religions. We all learned some facts about Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism and Hinduism.
After we finished looking at all the religions, our class was divided into groups of four and then were assigned a different religion to research in further detail about. I was put into a group with Izzy, Grace and Jason. We were told to research Judaism, which by the way, has 13 million worldwide followers. During this project, our main focus was to develop what a Jewish follower’s worldview would look like. Our goal in the end was to create an infographic showing what a Jewish person’s worldview would look like. Each group had to do the same for their given religion.
I don’t think it would have been possible without a knowledgeable person’s imput. So what did this mean? If you guessed another PLP field study, you would be correct! We visited all of the main religions and their places of worship. We also looked at all of these places of worship over the course of three days.
We started out at the Islamic mosque. The imam, who’s name I cannot remember, gave us a very through tour of the mosque and explained their beliefs very nicely and it was really easy to understand.
One of the main things I remember is that all Muslims pray 5 times a day at different times that are predetermined. The picture of the tv shows those times.
The next place we went to was the Jewish synagogue, which was the religion my group and I had covered. We met with the leader of that synagogue, which is called the rabbi. He showed all of us around the place and showed us some of the holy scripts that were in the church. My group and I asked a lot of questions and gained a lot of key knowledge towards our project.
These were some photos I got from the synagogue.
After that, we ate a very memorable meal at Chipotle. 😉
A few days later, we went all the way out to Richmond to visit a Sikh gurdwara, a Hindu temple and a Buddhist temple.
We started out a Hindu temple. Before that, we had not learned too much about the Hindu religion and I thought it was kind of crazy compared to the other religions we had learned about. Some of the statues and figures were really interesting.
Here are some pictures:
We then went to a Buddhist temple. We got to go inside all of the many places of the temple amd although we were not allowed to take too many photos, I thought the Buddhist temple was really cool. We also got to go through one our their practices (meditating) as a group. I thought it was really interesting because the exercise was very calming.
To end our day, we visited a Sikh gurdwara. One very nice person showed us around and gave us us a emphasizing talk on a sikh’s beliefs and the way they have their daily practices. There was also a cafeteria there where we had a great meal. The cafe was there because all members of the Sikh faith can eat there every day for free. We also had to cover our heads with a piece of cloth before we entered.
A few days later, we went up in the morning to see Saint Pius the 10th church and Father Horgan showed us around and gave us a informative talk about Catholicity. Lucky for me, I already knew most of it because I go to that same church on most Sundays.
So, after seeing all those religious places, we had to finish our infographic for our group with our new information. Here is one of the first drafts:
And here is our completed version.
I think we all worked really well as a team contributing ideas and helping this come together.
Well, that pretty much sums up the entire unit!
Until next time,
Nik
