Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Education

  • Misbegotten Rules and a Cancer Survivor

    School suspends cancer survivor over long hair he intends to donate, says the headline at The Detroit News.

    I have a very strong opinion on this, and I have no sympathy whatsoever with the school’s position. They should work out a policy to allow this sort of good deed and especially to accommodate this young man who has survived cancer. Every bit of his plan resonates with me.

    Our young people need teachers and school administrators with good sense and flexibility. Our country needs more young men like J. T. Gaskins.

     

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  • Scot McKnight on Academic Freedom

    Scot McKnight wrote an interesting post today on the need for academic freedom in religious schools. First let me note that I agree with the need for academic freedom, and that I am sympathetic with all three cases McKnight mentions, and have had personal correspondence with one of them. In addition, I like to promote discussion that is as broad as possible.

    I do want to put a note of my own, however. I think that religious schools should be able to set the boundaries on what they are going to permit. Will some of them set boundaries I would disapprove? Of course. Many already do set boundaries that would exclude me. In a free market of ideas, I would only object if an institution advertised itself falsely, i.e. claimed to have standards of academic freedom which were not true.

    In addition, someone who intends to be a researcher at such a school should be aware of such limitations. If you are doing research at an institution that requires your results to fit in with a 6000 year old earth, for example, you must be prepared for a certain amount of disdain from mainstream science.

    Academic freedom is important, and if certain results are excluded a priori, one needs to be aware of the fact.

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  • Biblical Interpretation Influenced by Those Down the Pew

    It seems that one’s approach to biblical interpretation is not influenced just by one’s own education. It may be influenced by the education of those you worship with, according to a study by Baylor doctoral student Samuel Stroope, reports the Christian Post.

    I hadn’t really thought of it, but it’s not as surprising as it first might seem. Our behavior is influenced by the people we associate with. Why should this be different?

    I would be interested in reading the completed study to see how well it was corrected for choice of companions. In other words, were the people influenced, or did they choose the more educated social setting because that was what they tended to like in the first place?

  • If We Were Doing Our Job in the Church

    … then perhaps nobody could say this:

    But if four years of college undo 18 years of parenting and religious affiliation, perhaps the faith community’s tenuous hold is the problem, not the particular place outside its bubble where that hold evaporates. Consider the believers we’ve seen in history. With all the persecution that Judaism and Christianity have survived over the centuries, an argument that sites America’s Top 310 Colleges as a first order adversary is hard to credit…. (Source: The Atlantic: Why College Students and Losing Their Religion)

    I agree. We tend to blame society for the fact that our young people tend to leave the church around college age. I suspect we’d like to believe that because it means we’re not to blame. We’ve done our best, but it’s just the society. What can we do?

    Well, we could try living our faith and inviting our kids to live it with us, rather than trying to work in just the right amount of indoctrination. We could try examining the kinds of ideas they’ll hear about in college, rather than repeating cliches and working our way through bland, unchallenging curriculum. (Can anyone say, “Bring your Bibles?”)

     

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  • On a Virtual Seminary Education

    Spire of First United Methodist Church
    Image by unca_cthulhu via Flickr

    Jason Byassee explains why he voted to allow up to 2/3 of seminary credits to be taken online in his United Methodist conference (HT: Joel Watts).

    Readers of this blog will already be aware that I believe it’s inevitable that the majority of education is delivered by virtual means. Not only that, I think this is a good thing. I think it will make it possible to deliver a higher quality education. There is always resistance to new technology, because it takes away from our old standard ways of doing things. But instead of fighting such technology, which is still just a tool, we need to find ways to use it to make things work better.

    I think our current concept of a university, a college, and a seminary are doomed. But that doesn’t mean that there is nothing good in those concepts. There are experiences that do need to be carried out together. But those classroom lectures with hundreds of students ignoring the professor can be replaced by more efficient means, and we can spend our money, and the precious time of quality teachers on the most important things.

    For example, I recall preparing lessons for my later classes while occupying a seat in a class on Daniel and Revelation, and then getting a comfortable ‘A’ in the course. I could have learned more by spending those hours online. Could the professor have done better? Absolutely. But he also had to deal with about 50 students, so detailed discussion of all points involving all of us would have been impossible.

    On the other hand I would not want to exchange my time studying Greek exegesis with Dr. Sakae Kubo for anything else. There we had half a dozen serious students, and we made that time with an expert count.

    Dr. Byassee comments on hands-on education, such as learning how to take the hand of a dying person. There’s where I think even seminary fails. I have talked to many seminary graduates who are uncomfortable praying with a member of their congregation when they graduate. They have to become comfortable as they pastor. Here the local church needs to be involved. I wonder why a young person, especially one contemplating full-time ministry, would be allowed to get through their youth in church without learning how to pray with one another.

    I’d think strong local church involvement plus a good online program with additional time spent in person at a seminary (weekends, weeks, months, sabbatical years) would be a good formula. All of those elements should be lifelong, and not just during a time of preparation.

    In my view, social media and virtual education will only hurt us if we don’t learn how to make the best of the resources available.

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  • On Cutting Spending and Investment

    Rand Paul campaigning in Kentucky.
    Image via Wikipedia

    Mark at Pseudo-Polymath links to this post on Rand Paul’s ideas for cutting the budget, using the line: “Someone is forgetting that the left prefers social entitlements to science programs.” I think Mark has a good point, but not the best point.

    This illustrates one of the reasons I oppose across-the-board spending cuts. Some argue–and I understand their point–that since we can’t seem to cut spending point by point, the only way to proceed is with a general spending freeze. I would suggest, rather, that a general spending freeze won’t solve the problem; it just lets us pretend, because after the freeze, we still won’t have the courage to go after the real spending problem, which needs to be done program by program. I don’t see the courage on either side of the aisle to accomplish that mission.

    There are things the government does well, and there are things better done privately. Of the things the government ought to be doing, there are better and worse ways to accomplish those goals. This includes military, security, and law enforcement spending, which Republicans often hold sacred. It includes choosing which moral issues deserve to be enshrined in law and just how much we want to spend enforcing those positions.

    On the other hand, it includes looking at social programs to determine which ones are actually accomplishing their stated goals, not to mention asking whether the stated goals are likely to be accomplished at all.

    Science spending, in the right areas, is particularly important for our future, as is education spending. We could save huge amounts in social spending if we had a better educational system. How much of reforming our educational system involves spending more money, versus changing the structure or spending our money more intelligently, is another issue.

    Right now I’d merely like to suggest that if we want to both shrink the deficit and grow the economy we will need to look carefully at spending point by point. A freeze, unless it is immediately followed by such a reevaluation won’t do the job. And people on all sides of the aisle will need to be prepared to sacrifice things they love, especially if careful evaluation shows their favorite programs aren’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

    I like to suggest specifics, which the politicians rarely do. I’d also like to congratulate Rand Paul on giving specifics, even though I disagree with some of them, for the same reason. Amongst the things we need to ditch I would include almost all of public campaign financing. I don’t think it has made politics any cleaner. It certainly hasn’t made it more civil. It has only made it more costly. Add that to the suggestions I made earlier. There are more!

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  • On the Myth of Adolescence

    When I first looked over the list of David Alan Black’s books I kind of skimmed past The Myth of Adolescence. I have no adolescent children and didn’t really care to read about the matter one way or another. Over time I took a further look at his article, Want to Reform Your Youth Ministry? Reject Adolescence, and also heard him speak on the topic here in Pensacola. I still haven’t read the book, but based on those two items and my own experience, I want to make some comments and invite you to explore the subject.

    Those who know that I am a strong advocate of public education might be surprised to know that I was homeschooled for all but four years of my first twelve. Those four years were spent in a small private school where my experience was substantially different from what it would have been in either public school or a larger, more “mainstream” private school.

    The difference is not just in where I went to school, but in the way I was raised. These differences have been emphasized to me repeatedly over the years. I remember encountering a mother at a church I attended a few years back. She was sitting at a table in the church library surrounded by paperwork. I asked her what she was doing.

    “Filling out application and financial aid forms for my daughter to go to college,” she said. The girl in question was nowhere in sight.

    I was amazed. Here was a girl who was 18 years old and presumably ready to go to school away from home, and yet her mother was filling in all the paperwork for her. Not only did my parents not fill in any of my college applications, they required me to prepare any financial aid paperwork all except for their signatures where required. I’m not trying to paint a picture of the good old days. I’m not anxious to turn back the clock. And no, I didn’t walk three miles to school, in the snow, uphill both ways.

    I was reminded of this again when I saw an ad for the new show “Glory Daze” about going off to college. The assumption in the show is all too frequent. Young people will leave home irresponsible and ready to go crazy, and this is the natural thing. There’s an expected wild time when young people get to high school as well. In fact, it seems that we expect quite a lot of our children and young people–in terms of trouble, irresponsibility, and downright stupidity. Responsible behavior? Not so much!

    Responsible decision making is not learned by being told what the right decisions are. We seem to think that if we teach enough Sunday School classes that tell our young people they shouldn’t use drugs, they’ll be properly inoculated. We think that if we repeatedly indoctrinate them with the right beliefs and doctrines, they will keep on believing those things as they go on through life. No matter what the evidence, we cling to such ideas.

    But life itself is going to involved repeatedly making decisions and dealing with the consequences of those decisions. Life is going to force responsibility on people in some way. Often, because their first experience with real responsibility comes very late in life, young men and women make wrong choices that harm them for a lifetime.

    My parents were missionaries. That is a very important point in my background. Now not everyone will be a missionary overseas, but the most important witness parents can have on their children is by living their faith. I know that my parents’ faith was a faith that would hold in the face of major hardships and even the threat of death because I saw them live it in that way.

    They had high expectations of their children. We were expected to take responsibility. I went on mission trips when I was eight years old. It was my responsibility to carry out the garbage for the portable clinic. This was not a mission trip by car or by air. We were already at a clinic that was about as far as you could get by car. The clinic equipment was carried by two mules. I recall being rather disturbed that there was no room for me to take a pillow. Actually I think the problem was more that there was no way it could be kept dry, but that’s retrospect! The people walked.

    When I was 12 years old I became a teacher for the kindergarten section of my church’s Vacation Bible School program for the first time. It was a bit hard to endure the teasing of other kids my own age who laughed because I was “going back to kindygarten!” I taught that class both for VBS and often during the rest of the year for many years after that.

    When I was a teenager in South America, I would go out to churches by myself. I know my mother’s prayer life must have really grown during that time. Most of the time the host pastor or evangelist would stop at our house on a motorcycle, and I would grab my trumpet (my reason to exist at the time!), hold it in one hand, jump on the back, and head out to some church where I would support pastor’s ministry with music.

    I’m also a high school dropout. Yes, really. I have 2 1/2 high school credits earned by correspondence. My parents decided that it was no point pushing me to go through the regular high school curriculum when I was so busy doing so many useful things, including reading a small set of encyclopedias through. The high school curriculum really couldn’t keep my attention. Just to finish this story, at one point I thought I was going to have to go back to high school to get the credits. It was going to require some determination on my part just to tolerate it. Fortunately, I met with a friend of my parents who was also a college president. He told me that once I graduated college nobody would care where I went to high school. “Take a GED and get on with your education,” he told me. Best advice I ever got!

    I’m not telling these stories to illustrate how wonderful I was. In fact, I don’t think these are examples of how I was exceptional at all. They are just minor examples of what young people can do when parents, teachers, and church leaders have high expectations of them. We consistently set our sights too low.

    When I was in college I worked in a small private school teaching whatever they needed taught. At one point I was teaching American history. I picked up a wonderful book of readings, but it was aimed at the college level. As I read it myself, I could see nothing that my kids couldn’t handle, so I added it to my list for the class. I got a number of complaints. Was I sure the kids could read the book? Maybe I was overestimating their comprehension. But I got no complaints from the young people, who were in seventh and eighth grades. They just read the essays, discussed them, and had a great time.

    I believe that our educational system is becoming less and less capable of handling the world in which we live. We are still spending years and years getting the basic preparation to start working, when the world is changing so rapidly that the career for which one begins to train may be totally transformed by graduation. This suggests the value of a lifelong attitude of learning, working, and adapting. Our educational system is not providing that.

    I would suggest three words to guide child raising and education: Expectations, responsibility, and risk.

    We need to expect more and expect better. If we expect adolescents to be rebellious, they will likely live up to those expectations. If we expect college students to be wild, they certainly will be. I often mention the effect my mother can have on a room full of four-year-olds. She can begin with chaos, and in moments transform the room into order. This is not accomplished through mass violence or yelling. I’ve often said I don’t understand it, but I think now I do. She expects good things of the children and she gets them.

    Second, we need to permit responsibility. Responsibility is not something drilled into people. I receive ads in e-mail all the time for boot camps. I have no idea why. My children are grown and have their own children. But these messages claim that their boot camps will transform a child. Now there is a value in this military style training, especially for the military. But responsibility comes from making decisions and dealing with the consequences. It is practiced and not drilled. I don’t mean there is no teaching involved; rather, I mean that teaching responsibility is insufficient. Young people need to practice responsibility. In the essay I cited Dave Black uses the phrase “novice adults.” A novice learns by doing.

    Finally, we need to accept risk. Allowing young people to practice responsibility involves risk. Some aren’t going to get it right. When my parents dropped me off at the top of a mountain about 20 miles from home with just a bicycle I had repaired and refurbished myself, and then headed off for the weekend, there was risk. (No, I wasn’t going to be “home alone.” My older sister was there.) It turned out that I hadn’t been quite perfect in restoring that bicycle. I had to stop at a town half way home, buy a part, and install it in order to finish my ride, but I made it just fine. Parents may face more daunting risks, but I suggest that no risk is greater than the risk of not allowing your child and then young adult to learn responsibility through facing risks.

    I’ll get around to reading the whole book here sometime soon, but at the moment I’m convinced I’m likely to agree with most of it, and enjoy quibbling about details. I hope you’ll give this some thought.

  • Gov. Crist Vetoes Merit Pay and Tenure Bill

    You can find the full story in the Florida Times-Union.

    I am a supporter of merit pay, but in this case merit pay was tied to test results, which makes me much less happy. Even though I think pay should be based on merit everywhere, one must measure the merit in some realistic manner. I don’t think the FCAT does that. So despite my early support, I’m actually glad this one fails. (You can see some ambivalence in the way I wrote that first post, but you can call it a flip-flop if you want.)

  • Few Knew Health Care Bill Got No Republican Support

    I don’t think this is a major issue against the Republicans, in the sense that I don’t think they should be criticized for managing to be united in opposing something that they, well, oppose. That’s good politics, and if they really do oppose the bill (and I’m not certain about some of them) it’s honest politics as well.

    But the voters need to know what their representatives are actually doing, thus I was not surprised, but nonetheless dismayed to learn that according a Pew Research poll, only 32% of those polled know that the senate version of the health care bill was passed without a single Republican vote, while only 26% know that it takes 60 votes to stop a filibuster.

    Why do people need to know that sort of thing? How do you know who is doing what if you don’t understand the basic of the process? Knowledgeable voters are critical to the success of democracy, and we have a serious problem.

    I note that the news story in which I picked this up, Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire, there was no mention of the fact that Republicans did better on the quiz than Democrats. Being an independent, I’m not as concerned here, but it’s an interesting result.

  • An Evangelist for Evolution

    The Rev. Michael Dowd is preaching a surprising message: Evolution is real and science points to the existence of God. (Source: .)

    Rev. Dowd also joins the growing group who acknowledge that accepting evolution does impact one’s theology in some ways. I find his specific take interesting.

    One theme that seems to get someone entry into Christian venues is the idea that science can help support faith. Those who say, “Evolution is true, live with it” don’t get so much of a hearing. Unfortunately, while I believe that scientific evidence can be seen as consistent with the existence of God, I see nothing that forces or drives the conclusion that there truly is a God. Often the evidence makes one drop some definition of God that one had held before.

    In a comment to a previous post Larry B. writes:

    In the same (but different) way, I honestly feel that evolution for a lot of people has unmoored more than a few christians from their foundations.

    (I don’t want to copy the whole comment here, but it is worthwhile reading the entire context.)

    I agree with this statement, but would ask what is the proper response? If people have faith that God will heal everyone for whom prayer is offered, they will very possibly be “unmoored” from that faith when reality doesn’t accord with their expectations. In the case of evolution, I suggest that there is more education needed amongst Christians about the implications and possibilities, so that people can make intelligent decisions.

    I do think it is important to note the real challenges to theology, and to welcome, rather than fear questions. Christianity is ultimately doomed if it cannot find a more friendly way to co-exist with challenges. There’s the “fall over and play dead” option and the “circle the wagons option.” We need more folks in the “let’s have fun with this” camp!

    Or at least that’s my take on it.