Anti-Anti-Intellectual-ism.

This week I read Chapter 1 Mark Noll’s “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind”, which makes the argument that the “scandal” of the evangelical mind is that there really isn’t one. Noll claims that evangelical (specifically in America) have had very little influence in intellectual spheres, and sadly, I think he’s right. Sure, there are a lot of people that I know  or know of that are both evangelical and intellectual, but when was the last time that you heard one of these people cited as a major and respectable voice in their field (besides Theology)? Fields like science, math, and art: When has the Christian, evangelical position been a strong voice in culture? And more than that, when was the last time that evangelicals themselves actually thoughtfully, deliberately, and skillfully sought out what a different their faith can make in such fields? Or in politics? Or economics? Or media? When was the last time that 1.) Evangelicals put effort into defining and living out their views on these subjects with thoughtful consideration and intellectual study, and 2.) became an actual force in these fields – a voice that people actually listened to. Well? Yeah, it’s been a while….

I think there are several reasons for this: One is that the world in general (ok, maybe just America. I can’t speak for places I don’t know) has become VERY anti-intellectual. Yes, we celebrate from intellectual celebrities, but really, since when has the world supported study for the sake of study? We study in order to make MONEY and be HAPPY. That is what the world values. No one cares how smart you are if you are not successful.

The second is that the church itself, for much different – or not so different – reasons has ALSO become anti-intellectual. This started a long time ago, in fact you might say that evangelicals have always been this way. The very word “evangelical” conjures in my mind an image of a people so fully devoted to winning others for Christ that they sometimes forget that they need to continue their edification of these people AFTER they have been won. Evangelicals have a mind-set of “The most important things are spreading the good news and helping the poor, why would you waste your time doing anything else? Go be a missionary in Africa!”. This needs to stop. Be belittling the “life of the mind” the church is belittling a huge part of the Christian faith: that of reason (faith makes sense), beauty (The world is worth studying), and cultural influence. Influencing people through evangelizing is one thing – changing culture is another. To change one person’s life is an amazing feat, but to change the consumption of an entire culture is simply astounding. For this both reason and beauty are needed. Reason is needed because people ARE smart (or they can be). They are not looking for watered-down answers. Reasonable people need reasonable answers. There are people out there are are dedicated to their study, and they expect us to be dedicated to it as well, ready to answer them in their own fashion. Also, by belittling the intellectual we belittle the intellectuals – real people with souls that can be turned away if we reject their legitimate values. With leads to beauty: The world has legitimate values that a LOT of people have already seen and would agree with, and intellection is one of those. Embracing intellection would show the world that those values ARE Biblical and that the Christian view CAN and SHOULD affect them.

Anti-intellection-ism, in short, gains us little to nothing, while it loses for us an entire realm of influence. And it is a very powerful influence at that – one we cannot afford to lose. My previous post is about the intrinsic value of the life of the mind, this one is the other side: the practical, world-changing value.

Once upon a time there were Champions of Science who were Christians, there were Masters of Literature who were Christians, there were Political Leaders, Teachers, Doctors, Mathematicians, Artists, Film-Makers, Musicians, Psychologists, Philosophers, ALL KINDS of intellectual people who had GREAT influence in our world – who were Christian. Where have they all gone? Has our golden age of cultural significance vanished forever? Do we even know how it is possible that these people applied their faith to their learning? Let me tell you: It is. We just don’t like to, because no one else is doing it; because our history, especially recent history, is so lacking. But if no one rises up to fulfill this, than these figures will become even more scarce in the history books and we will drift further away; it will become harder and harder to come back to where we were.

We could have so much power – so much influence. It will take hard work, but we have God on our side. But we’ve allowed the enemy to deceive us: to tell us it’s not important and that we could never have influence; to tell us that the world is to far-gone to save. But perhaps it’s only far-gone because we haven’t been trying to save it. Perhaps we should try.

The intrinsic goodness of the intrinsically good

(First I'd like to apologize for the length of this post.. I got a little carried away. I my defense, this is one of the most interesting subjects I think that there is. It was a bit part of that 15 min. speech I mentioned in a previous post.)

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and motion how express and admirable. In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals…

For those who don’t know, that was a short passage from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It may include a few errors or deviations from the original text, though, because I typed it up from memory. You see a while back I thought ‘You know, I really like Shakespeare. Maybe it’d be worth it to study and learn some of his stuff.’ Not really for any reason. I wasn’t in a play or anything, and I’m still not sure how one can practically use information like this. But sometimes that’s alright. There are certain things that are just worth it…

I was asked this week to read Chapter 2 of Clifford Williams’ The Life of the Mind, which is entitles Is Thinking Good for Its Own Sake? And I must say I absolutely LOVED it. This is my kind of book. Actually I’d really like to read the rest of it just for the sake of it. And that is exactly what the chapter addressed; doing things for the sake of it.

As I said before, there are certain things that are simply worth it. They’re not worth it for any specific purpose, they just are. In my mind memorizing passages I like is among these, but I’ll get to that later. The real question is: If it’s not for any specific purpose then why is it worth it? This is where we run into an interesting clash of terms. You see a lot of people have fallen into the trap of equating purpose and reason when it comes to value. A lot of the time something’s purpose is also its reason for value: A broom, for instance, would have no value if it had no purpose, as the reason we have brooms is for the purpose of sweeping the floor. But there are other things in which this is not the case. A scenic view of a mountain range, for instance, has value, but maybe not purpose. Nevertheless it does have a reason for this value that we ascribe to it: value is not some arbitrary, absurd, unreasonable thing that we cannot define or discover. There is no “what for” when it comes to mountains, but there is a “why”.

The Christian worldview claims that in this case the “why” is because God made them. In fact, that is the case for a lot of things. And this is the interesting thing about value and reason and purpose. Without God, there is none. Sure, without God brooms might still be brooms, but what about mountains?  Why should we care about them?

Another interesting thing about this notion is that we as human beings are the only ones who seem to see it. A monkey may see the use in a tool or utensil in the same way we would, but he would not see mountains in the same way. As C. S. Lewis said in his book God in the Dock, “Men look to the starry heavens in reverence: Monkeys do not.” So in effect only humans see value and reason for things that have no purpose, and in fact I believe that it is among the staple aspect of human nature that we seek out this type of meaning: we need purpose, but we need more than just utility. Anyone can see utility, but it takes a uniquely human mind to see reason for value beyond simple purpose. Turning to Lewis’ book again, this is because “We are inveterate poets. Our imaginations are awake Instead of mere quantity, we now have a quality–the sublime. Unless this were so, the merely arithmetical greatness of the galaxy would be no more impressive than the figures in a telephone directory... To a mind which did not share our emotions, and lacked imaginative energies, [such]… size would be sheerly meaningless.” The question then becomes why do we have this ability? The Christian worldview claims that it is because we as humans are made in the image of God.

Christian thought has now brought us twice to the same answer: God. He is the basis of all power, goodness, reason, purpose, value, and hope. We find mountains beautiful because they are God’s handiwork, and because He has granted us the ability to perceive that. In short, everything can and must be derived and defined by God. It’s part of His nature.

Mountains are good because God made them good, seeing as He is good and they reflect that. The stars are likewise. Mankind is likewise. This is what we call ‘intrinsic good’.  But it’s not just things like this that are intrinsically good; our response to them based upon this intrinsic goodness can be called intrinsically good as well. As Williams sates, admiring the beauty we find in the mountains does not really serve us any purpose; it does not just help us survive. But humans weren’t made merely to survive. We were made to glorify God.

Perhaps that is a good definition of intrinsic good: Something that is good even if it has no other purpose than to glorify God.

In the end, then, I suppose that everything, even seeing the beauty of the mountains, has a purpose: the purpose of glorifying God. The only thing left to answer is what is the purpose of glorifying God? – THAT is where we truly run into the most intrinsically good of all intrinsically good things. The only reason that man’s glorifying God is good is because it is. Because God is worth it, and man was made to glorify Him. And interestingly enough through other things that we call intrinsically good, we can even fulfill some part of the purpose without knowing it. A non-Christian can still find beauty in the mountains, even if he doesn’t know why.

I’ll re-state it like this: Once upon a time there lived a woman who fell in love with a man. She was fortunate enough to have this man’s love in return. This man was an author or many books, and the woman loved to read his books for the simple sake of reading them because he had written them. Other people read the books, too, and they liked them, but it was a very different kind of liking that they had for the author than that of the woman. Perhaps she had grown to love his books and then got to meet him, perhaps she met him and then began to read, it doesn’t really matter (because this is not a perfect metaphor; nothing ever is.) but do you see the point? She reads his books simply because they are his. We adore this world simply because it is God’s. And that’s good.

Now just like the reading of books because of their authorship can also be beneficial if the books are good and insightful, the worship of God can also help us in more practical ways, but the point is that it does not have to. To quote Williams, “It is, in fact, a characteristic of an intrinsic good that it has good effect. It would be odd if it did not. Although an activity that is intrinsically good would be worth pursuing even if it did not cause good effects, it is good for its effects too.”

I really am rambling now, so I suppose I should get back to the point. According to my prompt, I am supposed to be listing 20 things not mentioned in the text that are intrinsically good. Wow, there are a lot, but the book covers a LOT in very broad topics… In fact, excluding what the book says (Praising God, finding beauty in nature, respecting nature, and thinking/learning) I’m not sure what all I can and cannot list. As I said “praising God” is quite universal when it comes to intrinsic good. So is finding beauty in nature. And learning. In fact, how important is it that I follow these prompts?

Hmm… Here’s one: Creativity. God gave us this amazing ability to create and to appreciate the creations of others. Both reading and writing fiction have value, even if they are not utilitarian. The imagination of fantasy and fantastical worlds, the imagination of musical melodies that have never been thought of before, the creation or beautiful strings of words, colors, textures, tastes, sounds, smells, movements, all kinds of creative energies: dance, writing, singing, playing, cooking, painting, sculpting, IMAGINGING all have their place among the intrinsically good. And so does the enjoyment of all of these things. Reading, watching, tasting, seeing, hearing, ENJOYING, all of these are of God. However all of this must be taken with a grain of salt: obviously all of these things can be used in ways that are intrinsically good, that is with no other purpose than to glorify God, but they can also be used for evil. Because man is fallen, so are all of his works.

I have said an AWFUL lot in these paragraphs, and I’m sure it was one of the least concise and clear things you’ve ever read. Maybe one day I’ll come back and make more sense of this post, all the same I think this is a VERY interesting topic, it you can’t tell. Hmm… there’s something. Is the pursuit of intrinsic good itself an intrinsic good? I think it is.

Kel

P.S. This is another point that Williams mentioned: there are some things within the realm of the intrinsically good that are not as good as others. He called these the “trivial” and the “perverse”. In my mind the perverse are the much more easily set apart: God Himself makes many distinctions of what is right and wrong in our action, for instance in our creation and observation of artwork. Some things even though they were created by a being created in the image of God who has the intrinsically good gift of creativity, are in fact harmful. That is easy enough to see, but sometimes hard to avoid in the real world.

The “trivial”, I think, is another matter. For who are we to say that something God has made is trivial? What if the scientist thought that something as small as an atom was trivial? At the same time, God does not want us to be so focused on the details that we forget that this is really all about Him. Williams claims that one purpose of mankind in considering things it so link them all together in one understanding of the world. This, I think, is what needs to be done to the “trivial” to make it “non-trivial”. For instance, I mentioned earlier that I had memorized certain passages from Shakespeare because I felt like it, even if I had no need to do so. Was that trivial? Would it have been trivial if they had been Bible passages instead? (I shall leave the Secular-Spiritual debate for another post). I’ve also memorized the naval phonetic alphabet, just because I found it interesting, even if it’s not very useful to me. Was that trivial? Who is to say? At the same time, I would never think less of anyone if THEY did not know the phonetic alphabet. I might think a little less of them if they were unfamiliar with Shakespeare and even more so if they were unfamiliar with Scripture, but that is all personal preference. Or is it? Are some things more trivial than others?

Blank Pages

(I don't have a prompt this time, this isn't for a grade. I just sat down and wrote. I'm preparing for my final paper due for my honors orientation class and I sat down and wrote this in contemplation... I didn't really read over or spell check it, so read at your own risk)

I hate staring ant big white pages like this. They’re so… Blank. It’s intimidating. I never know what to do with them. There is so much space to fill up. I always end up staring at them for much longer than I should, wishing that words might magically appear on them. But it never happens. Or perhaps it does. Maybe it’s a miracle every time I finally start staring and force myself to write something down – no matter how many times I erase it all and stop staring at the blank paper again.  I could delve deep into the miracle of human creativity or language or reason or consciousness or psyche at this moment but I won’t, because that would take too much effort. I think that’s what it’s always been about. Things take too much effort. It’s not that I don’t have the energy or the ability to spare; it’s just that I don’t want to. We horde effort like misers and then waste our time doing less effortful, mindless things. Like staring at blank pages. We don’t actually think that staring at a blank page is a better way to pass the time than writing on it, but we certainly act like it. The human race is just so hypocritical like that. We never actually think that the way we are living is the best way to live, but we certainly act like it. We say we want change but we don’t act like it. Or at least I don’t. There’s one other mystery: I can only speak for myself. I see the world through my own eyes and must constantly stop myself from assuming that other people see it the exact same way. But at the same time it’s very hard to try to see the world in any other way than I do. I think. But I digress. I was talking about blank pages, and about the hypocritical state of human nature. I suppose it all comes down to what the Apostle Paul said (it often does): “For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good” (Ro. 7:15-16). Why is it so hard to do the things we think we ought to? I suppose it’s because we have a great and powerful enemy that does his utmost to stop us. It’s a war, I suppose, as Paul later says “But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members” (Ro. 7:23). I call it human nature, and it is, but perhaps it’s also the direct work of the devil himself that keep us from changing that blank page. That is what this is all about: Change. Change isn’t just hard, change is war. It’s bloody. There is real loss. And we’re afraid. Because if there is one thing harder than making something out of a blank page, it’s making something good out of a page that’s already filled with ink, yet in need of complete revision. Especially if we’re not talking about a page anymore but a person. The Bible compares us to clay in a potter’s hands, but sometimes I feel more like Tom Riddle’s diary in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: A torn and desperately evil text that will do anything to keep from being hurt, including try to kill the one who wants to harm it – the one that lies bleeding ink after Harry destroys it. It’s really hard to be both Harry and Tom in this instance, but I think we try to a lot. All the same, maybe that is a very good example for it. Maybe we are both Harry and Tom (and possibly even Ginny). But what we really need is Fawkes. When I began this example I was intending for God to be represented in Harry and us in Tom, but maybe that’s not quite right. Maybe we ARE both Harry and Tom, and God is Fawkes. Because we can’t be completely passive when it comes to change. We must act. We can’t act on our own, we need God’s help. Maybe this wasn’t such a great example. I, for one, would rather just rely on God to do all of the work. But perhaps He does indeed call us to act upon what He’s already done. Maybe I don’t like this example because it scares me. Because no matter how much I say I want to be like Harry, I really REALLY don’t. It’s not just Harry, of course. Not matter how much I say I want to be like Christ in reality I really don’t. I mean I do: I want God to make me more like the nice and easy and respectable parts. I want the glory part and the sin-less part. But I don’t ever want the sacrifice part and the humble part and the long-suffering part. And I certainly don’t want to have to WORK to get either. Not really. Deep down I don’t really want to change. No matter how much I beat myself up, I still think or at least act like I’m fine how I am. Other people seem to act like I’m fine how I am. And I certainly wouldn’t want them to stop. I suppose this goes back to the Audience of One thing – that it doesn’t matter when I think or that others think but what God thinks. And He doesn’t think that I’m ok how I am. But He won’t change me until I give in and let Him have His way. It’s really quite an amazing gesture, but at the same time sometimes I wish God would come in and change me without my leave more often – then at least I wouldn’t have to struggle to obtain change, just to deal with it. But that’s not how God works. God is a story teller, not just a magician. He doesn’t just fix us on the spot (Although He does forgive us on the spot). He writes us a big long story about struggle and sacrifice and pain and happiness and joy and triumph and failure and tears and lifted hands and hugs and smiles and long nights and tired eyes and sore muscles and hurting heads and laughter and singing and dancing and playing and life and death and love and loss and learning and striving and CHANGE. It’s an absolutely beautiful story, all said and done. And how could it be otherwise? God, the Creator of beauty, wrote it. And everything in our hearts screams that we want to live a story like that! And then God tells us that we indeed will. He’s written a special one just for us. And then we set off and we look around and think, “What is this? There must be some mistake. I don’t want to live a story like this anymore! Skip to the end!” It’s kind of like a song from Shrek the Musical: (I Know it’s Today) “Ever After better get here, I want love in seconds flat. No one needs these middle bits…Cut the villains, cut the vamping, cut this fairy tale! Cut the peril and the pitfalls, cut the puppet in the whale! Cut the monsters! Cut the curses! Keep the intro, cut the verses! And the waiting, the waiting, the waiting, the waiting!” . Sometimes I think that’s the worst part – The waiting. Because we can’t see this big story, and all we want to do is get it over with so we can look back and see it! We want God to show us the next step, but we REALLY want Him to show us the whole picture. We don’t want to look at a blank piece of paper OR a bad one filled with ink, we want to see the finished piece, and we want it NOW. Westley from the Princes Bride was right: “Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” Life is PAINful. As I said, it’s WAR. And we don’t like war. Especially this war, in which we enact both the loosing and the winning army. And we never know exactly which one we’re routing for. We know which we SHOULD route for, but what if we really just don’t want to? Maybe we don’t even want to want to. I think that’s one of my problems: I wish I wanted to change. I do, in a sense, but I don’t act on it. I don’t want it enough for the want to affect me in any real way. And I don’t really know how to change this. Prayer and scripture reading is always an answer people give. But what if I’m so trapped in the devil’s scheme that it is these very things that I fail to do the most? I truly believe that God can save us from everything, including ourselves, but once again it’s so hard to see. I keep faith, but it doesn’t change me. I keep on staring at the blank page and hoping that words will magically appear. 

“I didn’t want to get well, because if I got well, nobody would come and save me anymore.” This is probably one of the truest statements I have ever read. Or at least it is true for me. I don’t want to get better on my own, not because I don’t want to get better, but because I don’t want to have to do anything for it, and even more than that because I want someone else to come in and save me. We all desperately long for a savior, and I think sometimes we forget that we already have one. We all yearn for adventure, and we forget that we’re on one. Because it sure doesn’t feel like an adventure from the story books, and we don’t physically see our savior come in and save the day each and every morning. I am the very first to stand up and defend the importance of fantasy and fiction to our lives – I love fairy tales and the great stories of old more than I can say. But I think I’ve been a bit too focused on them that I’ve missed all traces of them in my life. Stories are supposed to give us a reference point so that when we see traces of their themes in our life we will take notice of them. But I’ve been looking for the obvious marks – obvious like they are in stories. Real life is such a subtle fairy tale. I wish it was more blatant. I wish it really felt like an adventure.  I wish it really was orcs we were battling, not laziness. I wish it was wizards who taught us, not experience. I wish it was Time Lords that went along with through life side-by-side: then perhaps we would see the novelty and never grow bored. That’s what we really need. We need the out-of-the-ordinary feel of ordinary life. Perhaps if we had that we would be more open to change. But we like the ordinary, no matter how much we rebel from it. Sometimes I think that if I ever had the chance to do something extraordinary I would never take it. I’d be too afraid and downright lazy to do so. 

Hey look, the page is no longer blank. That's interesting, I wonder when that happened. Sometimes life is like this - it gets filled up and changed when we're not looking. But then we find out that we've been responsible all along. Or perhaps God has been doing some of the writing through us - we can always hope for that. Life doesn't have to be a blank page.

Kel

Curiosity dosen't always kill the cat...

“Why does it do that? How do they know?” I asked. I don’t remember exactly what the question was, but we were studying molecular structure. I wasn’t even really interested in the atomic and molecular powers at play, but if I had to learn it than the text darn well better at least have the decency to answer my questions.

It didn’t. Neither did the teacher. I was basically told to stop insisting upon more and more questions and simply learn what I needed to know to answer the text-book questions – the test. Either grow up and become a molecular scientist or shut up.

As I said, I wasn’t that interested, but if I was going to have to learn it, I wanted to do it right. I don’t remember exactly what grade I got on that test, but I passed the class. I don’t remember a single thing about molecular structure. And I don’t bother to ask too many questions about that subject any more. Luckily other subjects of my schooling have counter acted this – I’ve been blessed with AMAZING opportunities for education and for asking questions (which I shall expound upon later). But most people aren’t that lucky.

Today I was asked to give my opinion of Freire Paulo’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Chapter 2. My first honest impression is that the whole thing is MUCH too long and complicated, and this is coming from an honors student who values both vocabulary and precision in speech. Also, Freire’s main point about the oppressed was no nearly as interesting as his sub points, and seems to get in the way of the value of this chapter. Then again I was not provided with chapter 1, so my opinion might be different if I had.

Regardless, I’d like to address the bits I DID like about this chapter. Freire defines two teaching methods, the “Banking” method is what he calls the method of a narrator or teacher filling his students up with information – a lecturer or fact-filled textbook does this. Freire spends a good amount of time talking about the evils of this type of teaching and how oppressive it is and how it displays a lack of trust in people’s critical thinking abilities, but that it not the part that interested me. I really liked how he covered the alternate form of teaching – “Problem-posing”, he called it; to “Abandon the educational goal of deposit-making and replace it with the posing of the problems of human beings in their relations with the world”

I thought that this was a brilliant phrasing of the “deep-thinking” type of learning that should be sought. It is certainly the type of learning that I flourish under. I loved what he said about dialogue: “Banking education resists dialogue; problem-posing education regards dialogue as indispensable to the act of cognition which unveils reality. Banking education treats students as objects of assistance; problem-posing education makes them critical thinkers.” Dialogue is of the utmost importance. It is the only way for a teacher and student to have any connection at all. In my mind, there are two things that must be present that are lacking in Freire’s “Banking” education: 1.) The student must ask questions and receive or find answers. That is the first way to “humanize” education – personal interaction. Through asking questions, the student learns which questions to ask and how to answer them. I believe that we cannot learn the answers to questions that we do not ask. And 2.) The student must be able to express not only what they have learned but why it matters. And not in a mechanical way, but an open-forum type of discussion way. “What do you think that means?” or “What do you think about that?” are important questions. “Why is this important?” and “SO WHAT?!” Are much MUCH better queries than “How many protons are contained in an Oxygen molecule?” or “What year did Christopher Columbus die?” These better questions require dialogue – the mutual participation of more than one party in exploring and understanding the subject. I think that this is what Freire wants when he says that we must be “Revolutionary – that is to say, dialogical – from the outset”.

I could go on and on about how this type of communal action in learning is one of the God-given goals of mankind, but I won’t. Not now at least. All I shall say is this: ASK QUESTIONS. Be curious. Find the answers. Find meaning. Express your thoughts. Ask more questions.

Here are a few: How can we encourage question asking (and more important the right type of question asking) in schools? How can we encourage dialogue? What are some of the most important problems that we should pose?

Kel

Learning for learning's sake - aka the sake of glorifying God

Alright, this blog post will be rather technical, as I have a complicated prompt to respond to.

I’ve been asked to look over some “alternative” methods of education from Evergreen State University (WA), Berea College (WA), Green College (VT), St. Johns (MD and NM), and Experimental College of Haverford (PA) and answer a few questions. I think it would be rather hard to answer for ALL of these, so I’ve chosedn to focus on two of my favorites: St. Johns and ExCo of Haverford.

How does the program or college differ from JBU?

St. Johns: There is one curriculum that all students take, not specific majors. Learning based on reading the classic literature of the western world in many liberal arts topics with no textbooks or lectures, just discussion of the texts themselves.

ExCo: Classes taught by anyone (from the university) willing to teach to anyone (from the university) willing to learn about any (legal) subject they want. No academic credit is given and teachers are not paid – focused on learning for learning’s sake, for those who are interested.

What's the aim of their education and how does it vary from JBU's aim?

St. Johns: To provide a wide spread education based on the liberal arts basec on self-education through reading and discussion. – A lot like JBU but with less textbooks and specified learning.

ExCo: To create a place for creative methods of learning to be tested and to allow people to come together in the joy of studying a topic that interests them and teaching others about it. – JBU is more about building the foundations for a strong career and adult life, providing college credit and more structured learning.

How would you do in this program? In other words, how would this system help you develop your gifts, passions, and calling?

St. Johns: This is actually a LOT like my high school. We did basically the same thing (except for math and science) by going through relatively chronologically and reading the primary texts of the ages and discussing them. I think I would really like St. Johns, but it DOES sound like a lot of work.

ExCo: I think I would absolutely love this, and I would not only attend many classes but try and teach my own once I got a good feel for them. Learning for learning’s sake and getting together to formally study things simply because you find them interesting sounds AMAZING.

Should we try to adopt the educational approaches here at JBU? Why or why not?

St. Johns: I like this school, but I also understand why John Brown does what it does. I think it would be very hard to integrate such ideas with what JBU already has without re-making everything. However, I think that discussion-based classes primarily taught by the reading of these classic texts would be GREAT. I don’t like textbooks and I love discussion.

ExCo: YES. This would be AWESOME if a student or anyone could just say “Hey, I want to teach a class on ______” and JBU say “Awesome! You go do that. We’ll help you find a room, you contact the other students.” I’m not sure how hard it would be to do at the moment, but if classes like this were the norm here at JBU I would be very VERY happy. I would love that.

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I myself often get quite fed-up with the typical traditional college education, as I feel they are often too focused on getting a major and getting a job, and not enough on LEARNING. I really love both St. John and ExCo’s emphasis on learning for the sake of learning, as I think it is very important. It glorifies God, for one, because it is a way in which we exemplify our being made in His image and exploring His world in the interests that He has given us... and it is FUN!

Questions: If you were to teach a class on ANY subject you wanted, would you? Why/Why not? What would it be on? Also (this is a reference more to my quick reading for the other schools I did not focus on) is the use of grading important? If not, why do we put so much emphasis on them? Is practical experience important?  if so, why do we not put  more emphasis on it? Is having a specific “major” or specified field of study important, or should we try even more to stress the importance of all subjects and a broad spectrum of learning?

Kel