Week 9-Tony Tran

Future of Spirit Realm Studies

I’d like to think about integrating spirituality into the academia not through resistance. I’d think that starting on the ground level, working with students on projects on multi-ethnic spirituality, is the first step to seeing change of the academy’s perspective on it (aka. Like Spirit Realm Studies). To me, if I were a chancellor or any higher up that was reading a paper such as this week’s reading, Connected, I wouldn’t give a care. Sure it speaks the truth about western society and its perceptive and inherent issues revolving around spirituality; however, tangible steps need to be presented in order to progress the case. I kinda think it back to asian american studies. Since elementary to high school education, there was surface-level teachings of anything pertaining to asian americans. It was only when I took asian american studies classes where I learned much more about it and got some motivation to delve deeper into its histories. Thus, I kinda think an early platform of multi-ethnic spirituality education should be addressed in order to educate the younger population of not only their family’s beliefs, but of other friend’s and family's’ beliefs in order to not only be ignorant of the ideals, but be more open to other ideals as well. And I understand that spirituality can be different in different states, towns, and neighborhoods. But I’d like to present a progressive answer: to allow students to do projects that allow them to explore outside the classroom to figure out what spirituality is to them.

And in order to successfully lobby this issue to higher education, a viable solution must be presented. I can see how marginalizing ethnic studies is so easy for higher up administrators. They are presented with issues such as this one with arguments that “you must not ignore this” or “you are marginalizing this ideal”. In the end of the day, all I’m saying is that although we know that they do not understand the complexity and urgency of the issue and are trying to explain it to them, you must also understand where the latter comes from as well and plea your case such that they can understand or relate. Because UCD is a higher education so focused on science, I feel that the asian american studies department isn’t putting forth their message in the best way possible. With so many science majors being of within ethnic groups, a way to bring this issue into attention is to explain that spirituality doesn’t leave the self. It permeates through the sciences, psychology, and families that you are trying work your way up to care for.

Question: In middle and high school, there were extracurricular classes such as music, art, and maybe even drama or woodworking. However, why shouldn’t there also be one on multi-ethnic religion or culture studies? I believe if there a multi-cultural class, there would not only be art, but music, dancing, and physical artwork that can be integrated into the class.

This speaks a truth that if you treat a patient as a person with a spirit within him/herself, you will do everything you can to improve his/her health holistically and they (the self and spiritual self) will be grateful for your service. If you just treat the disease that they seem to have, you can fix the physical issue, but not the potential underlying mental one. In that case, you indeed win yet lose at the same time.

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