Message from jschilp

[Anonymous]

http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/buddhistworld/korea-txt.htm
The website about brings us to a page on Buddhism in Korea. At my school, we have a large Korean population and this introduction gives a brief summary of how Buddhism came to Korea and why it became easily accepted and assimilated on the peninsula. It is a short page with a few photos and two links (Buddhist World & Mahayana) which allow the students to delve further into this religion.
My students can benefit greatly by starting with this website in class and moving forward to begin the research into deeper ideologies regarding Buddhism. I would give them the option of further investigating Korean Buddhism or looking into the practices in other places and how these other countries assimilated or pushed back against this new arrival. From there, groups of three students present to their classmates how Buddhism spread & changed as it moved from region to region and examine the modifications that took place. The end result would be student-lead lessons on the religion & culture that include ways of life, customs, rituals, dietary limitations, funding of monasteries, and other concerns that may spring up through their research. The presentations themselves would be multimedia works that bring students into the lives of the monks and practitioners in order to gain a better understanding of one of our world religions.
Most likely, this unit of studies would fit into my World Literature offering but could fit into other courses as well.