Secular and religious moral grounds resonating across state schools in Indonesia

This paper describes moral education in Indonesia, more particularly, how teachers have implemented the Character Education policy issued by the Ministry of Education and Culture (MOEC) in 2010. This policy required teachers to instil certain values in every lesson, including EFL lessons, to contribute towards building a shared national moral character. Drawing on Durkheim's distinction between secular and religious morality, this paper considers how state schools accommodated and promoted this ‘rational moral education' or secular morality (Durkheim, 1925) in government schools, and how it interacted with religious moral education. This paper uses Bernstein's concepts of pedagogic discourse, instructional and regulative discourses to analyse how teachers have recontextualised this policy in the micro pedagogic settings of their EFL classes. Three types of data were collected for this study: interviews, class observations and teachers' lesson plans. In this way, four EFL teachers working in state schools were interviewed on two occasions and three of their classes were observed. The first interview identified teachers' beliefs and perceptions regarding the Character Education policy. Their classroom and lesson plans were observed to augment this information. Then the final interview asked about the teacher's thinking behind their actions in the observed classes. Since character education was issued within the broader frame of school based curriculum that offered schools and teachers more choices to develop the local curriculum and its intent, the analysis will focus on what moral premises were evident in their school and classes, and how such morality was transmitted through the EFL lessons. The conclusion suggests that teachers' implementation of moral education in their classes was dominated by their school communities and the teachers' own preferred value of religiosity. Such value played out in the classes through both the regulative discourse and the instructional discourse.

Fresh Cuttings: A Celebration of Fiction and Poetry from UQP's Black Writing Series

As the first anthology of UQP's indigenous-authored books, Fresh Cuttings represents the very best of fiction and poetry publishing from UQP's Black Australian Writing series. An introduction by the editors and a biography of each author is included.

Basic Religious Charities

Just over 44,000 registered charities filed their first Annual Information Statement (AIS) return with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) before the end of October 2014. Of these, 10,918 charities self-identified as Basic Religious Charities (BRCs). These are usually, but not always, unincorporated religious congregations which receive no or little government funding. Having a central agency for reporting, in the form of the ACNC, having access to information supplied in the AIS by registered organisations has allowed access to new measures of charities and their activities. In September 2014 the ACNC, in conjunction with Curtin University Not-for-profit Initiative, released a high-level report on the first AIS, and the data were also made available digitally through the Australian Government Data Repository. This factsheet builds on that report by focusing on BRCs.

Drops That Open Worlds : Image of Water in the Poetry of Euphrase Kezilahabi

Euphrase Kezilahabi on tansanialainen kirjailija, joka ensimmäisenä julkaisi swahilinkielisen vapaalla mitalla kirjoitetun runokokoelman. Perinteisessä swahilirunoudessa tiukat muotosäännöt ovat tärkeitä, ja teos synnytti kiivasta keskustelua. Runoteokset Kichomi ( Viilto , Kipu , 1974) ja Karibu Ndani ( Tervetuloa sisään , 1988) sekä Kezilahabin muu tuotanto voidaan nähdä uuden sukupolven taiteena. Kezilahabi on arvostettu runoilija, mutta hänen runojaan ei aiemmin ole käännetty englanniksi (yksittäisiä säkeitä lukuunottamatta), eikä juurikaan tutkittu yksityiskohtaisesti. Yleiskuvaan pyrkivissä lausunnoissa Kezilahabin runouden on hyvin usein määritelty olevan poliittista. Monet Kezilahabin runoista ottavatkin kantaa yhteiskunnallisiin kysymyksiin, mutta niiden pohdinta on kuitenkin runoissa vain yksi taso. Sen lisäksi Kezilahabin lyriikassa on paljon muuta ennen kartoittamatonta tämä tutkimus keskittyy veden kuvaan (the image of water). Kezilahabi vietti lapsuutensa saarella Victoria-järven keskellä, ja hänen vesikuvastonsa on rikasta. Tutkimuskysymyksenä on, mitä veden kuva runoteoksissa Kichomi ja Karibu Ndani esittää. Runojen analysoinnissa ja tulkinnassa on tarkasteltu myös sitä, miten äänteellinen taso osallistuu kuvien luomiseen. Tutkimuksen määritelmä kuvasta pohjautuu osittain Hugh Kennerin näkemykseen, jonka mukaan oleellista kuvassa on kirjaimellinen taso. Kennerin lähtökohtaan on yhdistetty John Shoptawin teoriaa, joka korostaa runon äänteellisen puolen tärkeyttä merkityksen muodostumisessa. Foneemien analyysissä vaikutteena on ollut Reuven Tsurin teoria. Analyysiosio osoittaa, että veden kuva edustaa ja käsittelee teoksissa lukuisia teemoja: elämää, kuolemaa, fyysistä vetovoimaa, runoutta, mielikuvitusta ja (ali)tajuntaa sekä moraalia. Veden kuvan tutkimuksen pohjalta on nähtävissä, että Kezilahabin filosofia asettuu elävä/kuollut- ja elämä/kuolema dikotomioiden ulkopuolelle.

Ivanov-mistik : Okkul'tnye motivy v poèzii i proze Vjačeslava Ivanova (1907-1919)

The subject of this work is the mysticism of Russian poet, critic and philosopher Vjacheslav Ivanov (1866-1949). The approach adopted involves the textual and discourse analysis and findings of the history of ideas. The subject has been considered important because of Ivanov's visions of his dead wife, writer Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal, which were combined with audible messages ("automatic writings"). Several automatic writings and descriptions of the visions from Ivanov's archive collections in St.Petersburg and Moscow are presented in this work. Right after the beginning of his hallucinations in the autumn of 1907, Ivanov was totally captivated by the theosophical ideas of Anna Mintslova, the background figure for this work. Anna Mintslova, a disciple of Rudolf Steiner's Esoteric School, offered Ivanov the theosophical concept of initiation to interpret paranormal phenomena in his intimate life. The work is divided into three main chapters, an introduction and aconclusion. The first chapter is called The Mystical Person: Anthropology of Ivanov and describes the role of the inner "Higher Self" in Ivanov's views on the nature of human consciousness. The political implications of the concepts, "mystical anarchism" and "sobornost" (religious unity) are also examined. The acquaintance and contacts with Anna Mintslova during 1906-1907 gave a framework to Ivanov's search for an organic society and personal religious experience. The second part, Mystics of Initiation and Visionary Aesthetics describes the influence of the initiation concept on Ivanov's aesthetic views (mainly "realistic symbolism"). On the other hand, some connections between the imagery of his visions and symbols in his verses of that period are established. Since Mintslova represented the ideas of Rudolf Steiner in Russia, several symbols shared by Steiner and Ivanov ("rose", "rose and cross") have been another subject of investigation. The preference for strict verse form in the lyrics of Ivanov's visionary period is interpreted as an attempt to place his own poetic creation within two traditions, a mystical and literary one. The third part of this work, Mystics of Hope and Terror, examines Ivanov's conception of Russia in connection with Mintslova's ideas of occult danger from the East. Ivanov's view of the "Russian idea" and his nationalistic idea during World War I are considered as a representation of the fear of the danger. Ivanov's interpretation of the October revolution is influenced by the theosophical concept of the "keeper of the threshold" which occurs in the context of the discourse of occult danger.

"Four Ways of Writing the City" : St. Petersburg-Leningrad as a Metaphor in the Poetry of Joseph Brodsky

The present study discusses the theme of St. Petersburg-Leningrad in Joseph Brodsky's verse works. The chosen approach to the evolving im-age of the city in Brodsky's poetry is through four metaphors: St. Petersburg as "the common place" of the Petersburg Text, St. Petersburg as "Paradise and/or Hell", St. Petersburg as "a Utopian City" and St. Petersburg as "a Void". This examination of the city-image focusses on the aspects of space and time as basic categories underlying the poet's poetic world view. The method used is close reading, with an emphasis on semantical interpretation. The material consists of eighteen poems dating from 1958 to 1994. Apart from investigating the spatio-temporal features, the study focusses on exposing and analysing the allusions in the scrutinised works to other texts from Russian and Western belles lettres. Terminology (introduced by Bakhtin and Yury Lotman, among others) concerning the poetics of space in literature is employed in the present study. Conceptions originating from the paradigm of possible worlds are also used in elucidating the position of fictional and actual chronotopes and heroes in Brodsky's poetry. Brodsky's image of his native city is imbued with intertextual linkings. Through reminiscences of the "Divine Comedy" and Russian modernists, the city is paralleled with Dante's "lost and accursed" Florence, as well as with the lost St. Petersburg of Mandel'shtam and Akhmatova. His city-image is related to the Petersburg myth in Russian literature through their common themes of death and separation as well as through the merging of actual realia with the fictional worlds of the Petersburg Text. In his later poems, when his view of the city is that of an exiled poet, the city begins to lose its actual world referents, turning into a mental realm which is no longer connected to any particular geographical location or historical time. It is placed outside time. The native city as the homeland in its entirety is replaced by another existence created in language.

Patterns of Transcendence : Classical Myth in Marina Tsvetaeva's Poetry of the 1920s

This study examines the position and meaning of Classical mythological plots, themes and characters in the oeuvre of the Russian Modernist poet Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941). The material consists of lyric poems from the collection Posle Rossii (1928) and two longer lyrical tragedies, Ariadna (1924) and Fedra (1927). These works are examined in the context of Russian Modernism and Tsvetaeva s own poetic development, also taking into account the author s biography, namely, her correspondence with Boris Pasternak. Tsvetaeva s appropriations of the myths enter into a dialogue with the Classical tradition and with the earlier Russian and Western literary manifestations of the source material. Her Classical texts are inextricably linked with her own authorial myth, they are used to project both her ideas about poetry as well as the authored self of her poems. An important context for Tsvetaeva s application of the Classical myths is the concept of the Platonic ladder of Eros. This plot evokes the process of transcendence of the mortal subject into the immaterial realm and is applied by the author as an extended metaphor of the poet s birth. Emphasizing the dialectical movement between the earthly and the divine, Tsvetaeva s Classical personae foreground various positions of the individual between these two realms. By means of kaleidoscopic reformulations of similar metaphors and concepts, Tsvetaeva s mythological poems illustrate the poet s position between the material and the immaterial and the various consequences of this dichotomy on the creative mission. At the heart of Tsvetaeva s appropriation of the Sibyl, Phaedra, Eurydice and Ariadne is the tension between the body and disembodiment. The two lyrical tragedies develop the dichotomous worldview further, nevertheless emphasizing the dual perspective of the divine and the earthly realms: immaterial existence is often evaluated from a material perspective and vice versa. The Platonic subtext is central for Ariadna, focussing on Theseus development from an earthly hero to a spiritual one. Fedra concentrates on Phaedra s divinely induced physical passion, which is nevertheless evoked in a creative light.

Counter-figures : An Essay on Antimetaphoric Resistance: Paul Celan's Poetry and Poetics at the Limits of Figurality

Titled "An Essay on Antimetaphoric Resistance", the dissertation investigates what is here being called "Counter-figures": a term which has in this context a certain variety of applications. Any other-than-image or other-than-figure, anything that cannot be exhausted by figuration (and that is, more or less, anything at all, except perhaps the reproducible images and figures themselves) can be considered "counter-figurative" with regard to the formation of images and figures, ideas and schemas, "any graven image, or any likeness of any thing". Singularity and radical alterity, as well as temporality and its peculiar mode of uniqueness are key issues here, and an ethical dimension is implied by, or intertwined with, the aesthetic. In terms borrowed from Paul Celan's "Meridian" speech, poetry may "allow the most idiosyncratic quality of the Other, its time, to participate in the dialogue". This connection between singularity, alterity and temporality is one of the reasons why Celan so strongly objects to the application of the traditional concept of metaphor to poetry. As Celan says, "carrying over [übertragen]" by metaphor may imply an unwillingness to "bear with [mittragen]" and to "endure [ertragen]" the poem. The thesis is divided into two main parts. The first consists of five distinct prolegomena which all address the mentioned variety of applications of the term "counter-figures", and especially the rejection or critique of either metaphor (by Aristotle, for instance) or the concept of metaphor (defined by Aristotle, and sometimes deemed "anti-poetic" by both theorists and poets). Even if we restrict ourselves to the traditional rhetorico-poetical terms, we may see how, for instance, metonymy can be a counter-figure for metaphor, allegory for symbol, and irony for any single trope or for any piece of discourse at all. The limits of figurality may indeed be located at these points of intersection between different types of tropes or figures, and even between figures or tropes and the "non-figurative trope" or "pseudo-figure" called catachresis. The second part, following on from the open-ended prolegomena, concentrates on Paul Celan's poetry and poetics. According to Celan, true poetry is "essentially anti-metaphoric". I argue that inasmuch as we are willing to pay attention to the "will" of the poetic images themselves (the tropes and metaphors in a poem) to be "carried ad absurdum", as Celan invites us to do, we may find alternative ways of reading poetry and approaching its "secret of the encounter", precisely when the traditional rhetorical instruments, and especially the notion of metaphor, become inapplicable or suspicious — and even where they still seem to impose themselves.

War and Revolution in St. Petersburg : Modernist Links in the Poetry of Edith Södergran and Anna Andreevna Akhmatova

Important modernists in their own countries, Anna Akhmatova and Edith Södergran are compared in this dissertation as poets whose poetry reflects the climactic events of the early twentieth century in Finland and Russia. A comparatist, biographical and historical approach is used to uncover the circumstances surrounding these events. First the poets’ early works are reviewed and their contemporaries are mentioned to provide a poetic context. Then a brief review of Finnish and Russian history situates them historically. Next, the rich literary diversity of St. Petersburg’s Silver Age is presented and the work of the poets is viewed in context before their poetry is compared, as the First World War, October Revolution and subsequent Finnish Civil War impact their writing. While biography is not the primary focus, it becomes important as inevitably the writers’ lives are changed by cataclysmic events and the textual analysis of the poems in Swedish, Russian and English shows the impact of war on their poetry. These two poets have not been compared before in a critical review in English and this work contributes to needed work in English. They share certain common modernist traits: attention to the word, an intimate, unconventional voice, and a concern with audience. In addition, they both reject formal traditions while they adopt new forms and use modern, outside influences such as art, architecture and philosophy as subject matter and a lens through which to focus their poetry. While it may seem that Anna Akhmatova was the most socially aware poet, because of the censorship she endured under Stalin, my research has revealed that actually Edith Södergran showed the most social consciousness. Thus, a contrast of the poets’ themes reveals these differences in their approaches. Both poets articulated a vibrant response to war and revolution becoming modernists in the process. In their final works created in the years before their deaths, they reveal the solace they found in nature as well as final mentions of the violent events of their youth. Keywords: St. Petersburg, Modernism, Symbolism, Acmeism, Silver Age, Finland-Swedish literature

Paranormal, superstitious, magical, and religious beliefs

A lack of conceptual clarity and multivariate studies has impeded research on paranormal, superstitious, and magical beliefs. In this series of studies a new conceptual framework of these beliefs was presented. A general belief in the paranormal was shown to lead to specific paranormal, superstitious, and magical beliefs. The beliefs were defined equally as category mistakes where the core attributes of psychological, physical, and biological phenomena are confused with each other. This definition was supported by an empirical examination: Paranormal believers confused more core knowledge than skeptics. A multivariate study revealed that the best predictors of paranormal beliefs were intuitive thinking and a humanistic world view, while low analytical thinking was a less important predictor. Another study showed that women s greater belief in the paranormal compared to men was partially explained by women s higher intuitive and lower analytical thinking. Additionally, it was shown that university students were originally more skeptical than vocational school students, but university studies did not increase skepticism. The finding that paranormal beliefs mainly arise from an intuitive system, instead of a malfunctioning analytical system, explains why the beliefs do not vanish with the increase of education, scientific knowledge, and rational thinking. Religious and paranormal beliefs share important qualities and generally, they were positively related. The most religious people, however, abandoned paranormal beliefs. Religious people and paranormal believers differed from the skeptics similarly by being more intuitive, having experienced more mystical phenomena, and having peers and parents with more positive attitudes toward the supernatural. Religious people had, however, higher conservation and benevolence values than paranormal believers. The new conceptual framework presented in this series of studies integrates research on paranormal, superstitious, magical, and religious beliefs. Hopefully it will enable researchers to develop more elaborated hypotheses and theoretical statements about paranormal beliefs in the future.

Intergenerational Transfer of Sabbath Observance : How is Religious Tradition Transferred to Children among Finnish Seventh-day Adventists?

This study examined religious home education in educational, psychological, and sociological context. Growing up within a religious denomination is a process of learning the rules, norms, opinions, and attitudes, which serve to make the individual an active member of the group. It is a process of transferring the cultural inheritance between generations. Sabbathkeeping can be regarded as a strong indicator of the Seventh-day Adventist value system, which is also why I have concentrated on this specific issue in my study. The purpose of the study was to find out, how the Sabbath is transferred from parents to children among Finnish Adventists. It was also examined how parents could make the day of rest positively exceptional for children, and how the parental authoritativeness affects the process of transference. According to Bull & Lockhart s (1989) theory, the amount of Adventist generations in family history influences the transfer of religious tradition. This study aimed to find out whether or not this theory would apply to the present-day Finland. The nature of religious development among Adventist young people was also one of the interests of the research. The methods used in the study were in-depth interviews (n = 10) and a survey (n = 106). The majority of the interviewees was young adults (age 15-30) grown up in Adventist families. The interviews were taped and transcribed for the study, and survey answers were analysed with SPSS-data analysis program. The amount of survey questionnaires evaluated was 106, whole population of 15-30 year-old Finnish Adventists being about one thousand. Democratic relationship between parents and children, parents' example, encouragement to own thinking, and positive experiences of Sabbath and the whole religion, including the social dimension of the Adventism, seem to be some of the most significant factors in transference of religious tradition. Both too severe and too permissive education were considered to lead to similar results: unsuccessful transfer of values, or even rebellion and adopting a totally opposite way of life than that of the parents. In this study the amount of Adventist generations in family history does not correlate significantly with the end results of value transference. Keywords: Sabbath, intergenerational, value transference, religious home education Avainsanat: sapatti, arvojen siirtyminen vanhemmilta lapsille, uskonnollinen kotikasvatus

Religious Jew Ordered to East Transport Artworks

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Sermons, discourses, and epistolary opinions on religious matters by Gershom Seixas

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