¶ … Learn, and Gladly Would He Teach -- Teaching Values to Students in the Classroom Today
This quotation from The Canterbury Tales in many ways presents the image of the ideal teacher. (Chaucer, 1981, 17) According to the classical ideal, a teacher teaches his or her students, and learns from his or her students as well as a part of the learning process. However, the ideal role of the contemporary teacher in a public school setting, particularly in the lower grades, has become especially murky in regards to values education. Individuals such as the former Secretary of Education and conservative educator William Bennett have suggested in texts such as his The Book of Virtues, that a true education is impossible without children becoming instilled with a society's core set of values. Bennett alleges, in contrast to educators such as Robert Banks' stress upon "Multicultural Education in the New Century," that core American values have become lost in recent years, due to liberal influences and questioning, and states that education must provide the values that the modern home lacks. (Bennett, 1993)
However, Bennett ignores the increasingly multicultural and diverse fabric of the American ideological condition. Even an America that embraces certain core values such as justice and fairness may express these values in different ways, in different cultural contexts. Are students truly lacking in values, or simply lacking in the specific values held dear by Bennett? A teacher must acknowledge his or her students cultural and spiritual differences as well as embrace his or her children's 'sameness' and location within a common American mosaic or melting pot, depending on the metaphor...
At which point, Palaomon would marry Emelye. This is significant, because it is highlighting how the various outcomes of different events can change quickly. As the knight is drawing upon his own experiences to: illustrate how your personal fortunes can change (based upon your level of preparedness for them). ("The Knight's Tale Part 1 -- 2," 2011) ("The Knight's Tale Part 3 -- 4," 2011) When you step back and
Canterbury Tales are a collection of stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the late 1300s. At the end of the contest and pilgrimage, the person who has told the best story will win a free meal at the Tabard Inn in Southwark. Among the most popular tales in the book are "The Knight's Tale," "The Miller's Tale," and "The Wife of Bath's Tale." "The Knight's Tale" is a story that follows
But while it is true that he loved the funny side of life, he was also quite genuine and sincere in his purpose to expose the superficialities of social roles. "If we look at the whole corpus of his work, we see his tragic poems all interrupted, unfinished, or transfigured into celestial comedy" (Garbaty173). Chaucer unlike some tragedy masters of his time was not too concerned with gloom and sadness
They were seen as wives, mothers, daughters and usually "portrayed in relation to a man or group of man" (Klapisch-Zuber285). While they were given little freedom outside this restricted sphere, critics observe that medieval women were granted substantial autonomy within that sphere. Men "imposed a closely circumscribed domain in which women exercised a degree of autonomy... primarily the house, a space both protected and enclosed, and, within the house,
The destination is a holy and venerated site, one that should inspire devotion, a spirit of penance, and peace; and it is fitting that a merry man should be the one to invite the other pilgrims to the game of the telling tales. Unlike Dante's pilgrimage through the afterlife, which tends toward a much more spiritual focus, Chaucer's pilgrimage is earthly in the sense that its main focus is on
The contrast between the pardoner and the content of his tale also shows that from a literary perspective, Chaucer was illustrating a new subtly of character. What a character thought he was like (a holy man) might not be who he or she actually was. This could be revealed through involuntary 'slips of the tongue,' like the pardoner condemning greed, even while he was a greedy person in life.
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