Category: DOC Thoughts
Teaching Issues
I read Paul Krugman’s column in the New York Times. This week’s thoughts were on education in America. One of the changes in our culture, during my lifetime, is the notion that education leads to better opportunities. I was an average student. Some days I applied myself and could score A’s on assignments, but other days sports or social life lured me away from the books or library. Short-term memory work is not my strength, but I do remember what I take the time to read. I would call my learning style a blend of visual and auditory. If history lessons would have been movies without author bias, I would probably know a lot more. Education provided me the critical thinking skills to recognize that no history is without bias. This is what I think young people are missing in education today: critical thinking skills.
My companion teaches at Lynchburg College. Before that she taught aspiring ministers at Lexington Theological Seminary. Her common complaint about both settings is that students could not think critically or write more than simple sentences. Do quality teachers still exist in primary and secondary schools? I am sure they must. But, curriculum changes and social pressure have pushed critical thinking skills aside for short term immersion in information so that students can score well on standardized tests. Did I mention I was a “B” student? When I listen to my companion, other professors, and teachers in public and private schools it is clear to me that fifteen years of “teaching to the test” has caused more harm than helped students learn the skills needed to succeed. That is harsh, but busy does not mean successful, nor does multitasking mean the ability to do quality work. If you can only be successful by someone giving you a study guide, then there is a problem. Is it no surprise that we continue in an age of anti-intellectualism in society and that it has seeped into the Church. This is a sweeping generalization but currently acceptable given our educational system and examples from our politicians that are supposed to be critically thinking about issues that benefit us all.
So, Krugman’s article was interesting as he reflects on, “The Uneducated American.”
“Most people, I suspect, still have in their minds an image of America as the great land of college education, unique in the extent to which higher learning is offered to the population at large. That image used to correspond to reality. But these days young Americans are considerably less likely than young people in many other countries to graduate from college. In fact, we have a college graduation rate that’s slightly below the average across all advanced economies.”
Mind Games: The Dalai Lama Takes Harvard
This is a good article on the Dalai Lama’s visit to Harvard. He was visiting to be a part of a conference on the changes that meditation and mindfulness techniques are bringing to psychology. There is one portion of this report from Time Online that I found informative for our denomination and the changes we are living through with the MACC report and those to the Order of Ministry.
Other researchers also seemed to puzzle the Dalai Lama. Conference organizer Christopher Germer, author of the forthcoming book The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion: Freeing Yourself From Destructive Thoughts and Emotions, asked His Holiness whether he would “lead us in a brief meditation that the therapists in this room could practice at home to cultivate compassion for themselves as well as for their patients.” The Dalai Lama shot him a skeptical look that got everyone laughing. He was sweet about it, but meditation isn’t a “brief” trick.
As I think about all the borrowed ancient practices, music fads, new church, emergent, “tricks” that Discipledom has tried, endured, and improved a few during the last two decades I think the Dalai Lama’s words are informative for our denomination. Spirituality isn’t a quick fix. New Churches are not a fix to decreasing membership, decreasing funding, or a missional way to keep up with the Baptists. Like mindfulness and meditation, our way of practicing faith is something a person does, a discipline we practice, for a lifetime. It is a way of living and seeing the world. Our western culture looks for the quick fix, next spiritual high, but really, we know it doesn’t work that way for the long term.
Read the entire article to learn about how the Dalai Lama puzzled the Harvard crowd.