rigor in grad Christian Ed

Experience is generally the first teacher. But a person who has had poor experience is almost impossible to retrain.

I have been in the field I am in 35 years this year and realized a long time ago that the vast majority in the working world have poor practices stemming from their experience alone without any additional study.

When I was a student in school I was talking with another student and we reaized that the top people in the world have all gone to school to learn from some of the best in ther world.

Being the best requires experience and study. </font>[/QUOTE]Oh, I’m not anti-education per se but I am opposed to what it has become—a religion. Americans have almost a religious faith in education. Americans believe that if you survive the process then you have arrived. On the whole, I find Europeans to have a more serious view of education. They seem to place greater value on learning as opposed to the degree process and they are more interested in intellectual things—ideas and theories. The end of education should not be degrees or recognition but learning and understanding should be primary. Today, however, a degree or an advanced degree is seen as the ticket to a good job or bigger opportunities. Whatever happened to the love of knowledge and learning?

With the open admission policies of the 1980’s, education ain’t what it used to be. Every Tom, Dick and Harry can go to college and graduate school. When you admit virtually everyone, how can you maintain standards? Academic standards have slipped. I still believe that an ambitious and bright student can learn without jumping through the hoops proscribed by degree programs. Degree requirements tend to be bureaucratic, dull, boring and stifling. After all, a degree is no guarantee of success or even competence. Lots of duds have degrees.

One of America’s cutting-edge mathematicians, although he attended MIT, does not even have a college degree. IMHO, we need someone arguing for experience versus formal education just to balance the scale somewhat.

What do you think? Or do you?

 

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Bill, poor man, you must have gotten caught on the barb of my harpoon. (BTW, I have no feelings on the subject even though I do have a few thoughts. ) I’m not anti-intellectual and anti-education. I’ve spent most of my life in academia. However, it is so easy to get caught up in the ramblings of one’s own mind and lose sight of the real world. You can waste a lifetime contemplating your own navel.

You must have missed the point of my comment. I was lampooning myself because this is exactly what I can so easily do myself. Yet, you were pricked! Take care since I’ve seen many good men ruined by a doctorate. There’s no natural immunity for pride. Usually it takes about five years, as I am told, to get over it.

I did not denigrate your dissertation although I don’t reach your conclusions*. You seem scholarly and bright enough. I challenge the whole paradigm behind your dissertation (epistemology is one of my esoteric failings). I have a healthy skepticism when we balance whole doctrines on fine points of Greek grammar. Although I accept plenary verbal inspiration, I am not wholly persuaded that God was conveying data through the parsing of verbs. Are there not grammatical errors in the Greek text? Furthermore, I don’t think we can refine our understanding of the Trinity to the point that you are trying. I don’t know that we can go beyond the point that is plainly revealed. There is not enough data and our minds cannot handle this level of resolution. However, this is not to say that you ought not to have done your dissertation on this problem. On the other hand, I think your honest conclusion can only be “We don’t know.” BTW, I hate dissertations that are dry as dust and conclude in obfuscation. I always like to inject some breath and life in my writing that upset the old academic stogies.

Thanks for the response. Best wishes.


*NOTE: Personally, I accept the impeccability of Christ. Although incarnate in human flesh, He was still God and could not sin or be tempted (allured, enticed) with sin. However, the problem comes with our understanding of temptation. This is a provocative issue for me. What’s your view on temptation? What is it?

 

Yeah, when you think about this, it applies to the educated as well as the uneducated. Education ought to make us humble when we realize how much we do not know.

 

This is an aside--it has nothing, I repeat, nothing to do with the mainstream of your post.

Did you know that Tim LaHay attended North Greenville College and Bob Jones University in South Carolina? Also, he pastored Oolenoy Baptist Church at Pumpkintown in Pickens County. This may not be of interest to the Oregon Bill but the SC Bill will probably connect here.

Oh, BTW, Tim LaHay has found a nice fat nest egg worth millions and millions through his writing. Does he care that one finds his theology shallow?

 

This is an aside--it has nothing, I repeat, nothing to do with the mainstream of your post.

Did you know that Tim LaHay attended North Greenville College and Bob Jones University in South Carolina? Also, he pastored Oolenoy Baptist Church at Pumpkintown in Pickens County. This may not be of interest to the Oregon Bill but the SC Bill will probably connect here.[/QUOTE]

I didn't know that LaHay went to NGC. That would have been when it was just a very small, two-year institution. Thanks for the info.

Bill