Mar

18

A degree in creationism in Texas?

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A recent story on FoxNews describes a Texas legislator’s attempt to allow the Institute for Creation Research to award a Master of Science degree.  It appears that the bill would exempt certain types of non-profit educational institutions from regulation by the state higher education board.

In particular, it seems that ICR is the intended beneficiary of this change, which apparently would allow them to grant the M.S. without state permission or regulation.

Some thoughts:

It is in a sense unfortunate that education has become such a political football. I have absolutely no problem with the state controlling education in a limited sense. It is in the interest of the state to do so. However, the politicization of education means that serious discussions about its goals and procedures will be heavily colored by political rhetoric. Again, the political rhetoric is necessary in the abstract, but modern American political rhetoric is simply too weak to substantively address the weight of a robust educational debate.

I don’t know that I would support this bill. On the one hand, I think it would be a good thing if ICR could issue an M.S. It sounds like much of the opposition is ideological — the education board doesn’t want to condone, or possibly even permit, creationism. But the bill would have far wider consequences. Basically it would allow non-profit, non-government-funded schools to invent and issue whatever degrees they wish. Eugenie Scott, quoted in the FoxNews article, makes this very point, and with good support.

It sounds like ICR is appealing to the state board for the right to issue the degree under the current statute. I think this is the route to take. I’m sure the state representative is well-meaning, but I fear that his approach is likely to further discredit schools like ICR.

In the news article, Scott claims that ICR’s offering is vastly inferior to UT’s or Baylor’s. According to his article, his primary concern is the ICR position that the Earth is only about 10,000 years old. I fail to see how this point is relevant, except in the sense that it treats seriously a view that a fairly decent percentage of Americans actually hold.

I would be curious to see exactly how ICR is pursuing their court appeal with the state board — on what grounds to they claim the right to issue the degree?

So it seems there are actually two issues here. First, ICR claims the right to some sort of equal protection/fairness for their views, religious though they may be. I tend to side with them on this point, at least in a qualified, theoretical sense. Second, the bill at hand proposes to vastly expand the powers non-profit groups to award state-recognized degrees. I tend to oppose this point. It is not in the interest of the state or most of its citizens to devalue degrees. But it looks like several critics of the bill are conflating these two points. They recognize the impact of the bill, but they can’t seem to get away from their instinctive opposition to a creationist perspective. I think the best solution would be for the state to find a way to objectively assess the quality of ICR’s program, without any prejudice for or against a religious position and its implications, and then to grant or deny the degree based on the assessment. The bill is too much

Feb

24

Getting It to Christian Students

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Summit Ministries as a couple of very good articles about teaching a Christian worldview (Part 1 and Part 2).

A quote that particularly struck me:

There simply is no substitute here for equipping students to dive deeply into the Scriptures. At the same time, however, it is important to help them dive into the Scriptures in the right way. Unfortunately, many students have only seen the Bible handled poorly by other Christians. Often, their only experience with the Scriptures include it being replaced by therapeutic clichés, utilized and memorized completely out of context, tacked on but not central to a lesson, strangely pieced together with other verses to make a point, proof-texted to supplement a devotional book or song lyric, or largely ignored.

Mar

31

Rethinking Higher Education

Filed Under Education, Ideas, Philosophy, Random Thoughts | 2 Comments

There has been an interesting series on edwired about changing higher education to match the “free” economy. The series is called “The End of Western Civilization (as we know it).”

My question is this: Would the amorphous, free learning environment that the author appears to propose actually contradict the content of the learning? Part of education (a liberal education) is to learn the structure of and connections between spheres of knowledge. I would be concerned that the undirected learning approach might create a contradiction between content and vehicle.

Thoughts?

Dec

22

Roger Scruton

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Roger ScrutonI’m a big fan of Roger Scruton. His books on philosophy and culture have done much to create my love of philosophy and to deepen my understanding of culture. He has a recent article called “Two Virtues of Western Culture” which addresses culture, philosophy, and education. It is an excellent article.

May

25

Plagiarism

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It’s been a week since I finished up my subbing job, and I’m finally writing a post about it. It was a long eight weeks, and I’m so glad it’s over. It was a blessing to have a steady job and actually know the names of the students in the classroom, but it was a job I was quite ready to finish with.

My last week of school was busy with grading tests and projects. I had three CP (college prep) classes whose project was to create a booklet on the Renaissance. They had 5 various topics and each topic needed to have 75 written words and 2 pictures. We spent 3 days in the computer lab so they could work on their project. Of course when the projects were due on Wednesday only about 1/3 of the students turned them in. As I began grading I began to suspect plagiarism. I would put a sentence or two into Google, and sure enough every word in their project would be found on the internet.

Thursday, I gave the students the chance to rewrite their project. The penalty? They would only lose 10 points (otherwise the highest grade possible was a 50%). Several students asked to redo their project.

The best situation was a student who kept looking at his project wanting to know if I had graded it. I wouldn’t tell him, but asked if he needed to take it back. He didn’t. When I went to grade his project I knew he didn’t write it, but I couldn’t find it on the internet. So I went to the school library and enlisted the help of the librarians. They pulled out 3 books some of the students had used. Looking in the books I found 3 of the 5 topics. I figured that was enough evidence for me, especially since one of the other topics started with the phrase “Plato said…” I knew a 9th grader wouldn’t have written that!

Mar

20

Humanities and specialization

Filed Under Education, Random Thoughts | 1 Comment

The last few days I’ve been checking out job postings in a couple of potential grad school locations. It seems me that basically anything above entry level requires a degree in a particular field. My major was humanities, which means I didn’t train for some particular job — I trained for all of them. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like many employers see it that way.

My suspicion is that I could do just about any of the jobs I’ve looked at. There might be a slight learning curve as I became acquainted with the jargon of a particular profession. Nonetheless, my liberal education would probably give me an immediate advantage over everyone who didn’t major in the field, and a long-term advantage over many who did.

Several of the jobs I looked at were for teaching in public schools. Though I understand the advantages of having certified teachers, certification, like most other screening processes, has its flaws. It can allow in people who aren’t really capable, and bar some who really are. Basically, in order to be certified, you have to have taken certain classes. It doesn’t matter much whether you can actually do the stuff they teach in those classes — you have to take them. As I was lamenting this fact earlier, Lincoln helpfully shared something he had told a friend with a similar problem: Look for a job teaching gym; then you can teach whatever you want. Ha.

I could go on about my ideas on education, but maybe I’ll save them for a later post. I guess the lament of this post is that our world seems to have no place for the generalist. The liberal arts are confined to a small corner of academia. Classic ideas have no currency in our society. Does anyone else think this is a problem?