2.2 Positive criteria

to lead readers into faith, it is a sign (i.e. miracle) from the Gospel writer point of view. It’s our

intention to avoid catechizing children. Nonetheless, it could be achieved from an incidental point of view using parables. One distinctive aspects of parables from miracles and other passages from the Gospels is that parables can be fully understood from a non-theistic point of view, as they enhance universal values.

We will provide two examples: one parable and a short story. Let’s take the parable of the two sons (which is really short); it serves as a way to introduce children into prompt responsibility, which is a universal attitude to life. And so could be done with all the parables. If we choose one of the short story we propose to be used, we will get the same outcome. Let it be Peter’s denial of Jesus, after he was arrested. Isn’t it an excellent way of talking about friendship and loyalty? The absence of faith in the children of their belonging to any other religion or confession wouldn’t be any obstacle to work with this texts. The aim of RE is to develop the ability to ask relevant questions not only about religion but also draw on that they read and learn and make critical questions about the real world they live in (Teece, 2012).

Despite what we’ve just stated, we should recognize that the Gospels are a whole and any text needs

context to be fully understood. Some of the stories we will select have some degree of dependence on the context and will have to be introduced. This is the case with stories like Peter’s denial of Jesus, John the Baptist death or the last supper. Should we discard this stories for this reason? Europe has been, up to some degree, a Christian civilization; even the western civilization in which we have been grown up is a Christian one. It is known the Roman expression: “the Christian roots of Europe”.

Therefore, our use of parables and the short stories we will select comply with the condition of being fully open to all and embedded in our cultural background.

2.2 Positive criteria.

We will select texts that fit into the children’s level of English, are suitable for classroom use and have a narrative structure. In accordance with our project, passages should meet the following requirements to be selected:

- Length. Any parable or story should have a manageable length for classroom use. The whole passion of the Lord could be considered a single story with narrative characteristics and target grammar structures, not to mention its core role in the Gospels; but it’s too long to be selected. And some other stories, like “The cure of Peter's Mother in Law” in Mt 8, 14-15, may be too short for our purposes. Some of the texts in our final selection will need more than one teaching period while some

other won’t deserve a second.

- Narrative structure: A narrative text is an account -written or spoken- of connected events in order of happening (Axelrod & Cooper, 2010). In order to achieve our aims, our text should have several clear elements:

- Setting: where and when the events take place. Many parables and gospel stories are timeless, i. e., do not have a specific location in history; but a brief setting is always offered somehow.

- Characters (and characterization of them).

- Problem, conflict or situation that characters have to face.

- Sequence of events: event 1 → event 2 → and so on.

- Resolution or outcome.

- Moral lesson of teaching to be obtained.

Nonetheless, parables are a unique and some of these elements have a distinct taste. Some of these characteristic aspects are (Theissen & Merz, 2000): (a) sobriety: they use only the essential number of characters; (b) law of duality: never more than two people speak or act at the same time; this will help understanding by children; (c) only one line of narration: no parallel stories; (d) law of repetition; (e) interruption of the story just after the crucial point: the story does not end with the resolution that could be expected in a tale. For example, we do not know if the elder son gets himself reconciled with his father and his brother (Lc 15, 11) or if the budding fig tree ends up bearing some fruit, and we ignore the resolution of the man who was attacked in the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Applying this criteria of narrative structure, some parables in the Gospels will be discarded. It is the case of John 10, 1-8, the parable of the good shepherd. Despite the very same Gospel says it is a parable (παροιµια) and many authors consider it as such (Wikenhauser, 1967), we do not have a course of events consisting of a setting, problem to be solved and resolution, with characters interrelated. Only parables and stories that could fit into this scheme or be outlined in a story map (see story map by Taberski in the Anexxe III) will be selected for our project.

- Presence of target grammar structures. Our selected text should contain one or more of the next grammar structures:

- Verb tenses, in particular those in the list of KET grammatical areas (see below); the higher the number of tenses, the better. Parables and short stories make greater use of past and present verb tenses; a balance should be sought through classroom activities.

- Must contain expressions suitable to be transformed from direct to indirect speech, and the other way round.

- Some expressions that could be transformed from passive to active voice, and vice versa.

- Vocabulary.