Holistic Program Unit 2 – The Chinese Zodiac

We have started an exciting new Unit within Spotlight’s first Holistic Program: The Chinese Zodiac. What a joy and honor it is for me to run alongside these 9 wild beasts in the beginning of this Great Race into Chinese Cultural Recovery. 

I was overjoyed to kick off Unit 2 with a conversation about The Great Race. To my surprise, the kids were telling me, with considerable amounts of detail, their knowledge of this fantastic Chinese Tale. (a friendly reminder for my readers that this was probably the first time they had ever discussed it in English which is a fascinating demonstration of the integration and delivery capabilities we have and should employ during the process of language acquisition). My experience in the west with Holistic Programs of Cultural Recovery tells me that fortunately there are slivers of culture that are still being preserved and passed down to our kids in traditional education. The tragedy however is that their roots are shallow and due to the linear nature of modern educational models. the lack of revisiting them fosters forgetfulness. Over the next 12 weeks we will be adding richness, beauty and depth to their logical, linguistic, artistic, naturalistic, kinesthetic, existential, musical, intra and inter-personal experience and relationship with their own Zodiac Calendar.

Oral tradition is a key component to the Holistic Model of Learning Originateve is committed to. Today I would like to address the mnemonic wonder that Stories offer when it comes to language acquisition by celebrating the brilliance of its presence in the very tale of The Great Race.

Lets take a look for a moment at the Western Gregorian calendar. There is little to no logic to it. Take for example the month of August which used to be called Sextilis for it was the 6^th month of the year on the Roman calendar. However, in the year 8 BC the name was changed to August in honor of the great Emperor Caesar Augustus. (The West unlike the East is full of conquers and re-conquers that uproot and stifle any possibility of ancestral knowledge or wisdom.) This change altered any cohesiveness to the naming of the months in the Gregorian calendar. August gets even more whack when you learn that the reason it now has 31 days instead of the original 30 is because July which was named after Julius Caesar had 31 and it could not be that the great Augustus would have a month with less days…so 1 day was stolen from February, which as we all know is a odd numbered month. Such is not the case with the revered Lunar calendar, which signifies the cycles of nature in and of themselves!! Oh glorious Chang-er!

Now, lets move out of this labyrinth of triviality back into the beauty and cohesiveness of the story-lined Chinese calendar. The mnemonic nature of the Story of the Great Race allows for even the smallest among us to connect with its characters and grow into the the knowledge and understanding of the virtues they represent. Furthermore, even the order in which they take place can be recalled with incredible ease. Undoubtedly, the Chinese ancestors were aware of the power of story as they meticulously weaved her into the tapestry of their astronomy and understanding of time.

It is high-time that we too, acknowledge these ancient wisdoms and bring back story into the center of our classrooms: at home, school, work, bars or parks. This is precisely what is happening with the kids in Spotlight's very first Holistic program.

Information used in this text was acquired through self-learning motivated reading of: http://www.sacred-texts.com/time/smd/   Feel free to venture further into curiosities behind other months.