The conflict between spirituality and religion have a negative impact on the South African educational system. Continuous conflicts will result in a confusion between the learners and also within the teachers. Spirituality can be defined as the state of being aware of the human spirit and soul, contrary to physical and material items. It consist of experiences that individuals come across in the spheres of life. Religion deals with beliefs from the experience of other individuals. It is a cultural system of faith, worship, and paranormal. Paranormal can be defined as events that are supernatural and science cannot prove or come up with their origin. Spirituality and religion is integrated in the education systems, although it is taught implicitly.
In this essay, conflict between spirituality, in terms of rules; love, fear, truth and how teachers can incorporate paranormal in their subjects are going to be discussed.Firstly, there are no rules in terms of spirituality, but awareness of human spirit and soul. This means individuals are not governed by the rules, they live according to their vision of life. Religious teachers and learners are obedient to the rules set within their religion. Spirituality and religion tend to have disagreements because the behaviour, decisions and the view of life for a religious person is influenced by beliefs. For example, during sports at school, a girl would not agree to wear a trouser because her religion does not allow it, although a spiritual learner, would agree if she feels comfortable. In contrast, spiritual individuals behave according to their own experience, feelings and pleasure.
They can also be influenced by love and fear.Spirituality is based on love, but not fear of consequences for actions done by an individual. Both religious and spiritual individuals pursue love towards others, although, there is fear and consequences influencing the behaviour of a religious people. Christians For example, have fear of what would happen after dying if they did not follow the rules/commandments specified in the bible. Religion reveals the truth and spirituality let individuals discover them, as opposed to explaining to people about how the universe was created, Spirituality let them discover questions and answers about the universe for themselves().
Being well equipped about knowledge on aspects of spirituality and religion, teachers will be able to incorporate these paranormal in the education system. Teachers have to allow children to practice their religion and emphasis respect on the religious practices of others. When learners have knowledge about their different, they will accept each other and this makes it easy for teachers to integrate spirituality and religion in their lesson presentations.
This essay has shown that conflict between spirituality and religion are influenced by rules; love and fear of consequences and aspects of the truth about the universe. The implications of this essay shows that in the road to adulthood, children acknowledge their spirituality, however in some families, children are compelled to follow religion. Parent forced their children to go to church every Sunday and impart that knowledge to them from childhood until adulthood. Although, individuals tend to discover that their inners self, who they are and their soul. Therefore, teachers should incorporate and equip learners with knowledge about spirituality and religion to benefit them in the classrooms and in their daily lives. BIBLOGRAPHY ? Laura, J. 2005. What Does Spirituality in Education Mean? New York.
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