The Emerging Scholars Blog

Do schools fail democracy, as argued by E.D. Hirsch Jr., in How Schools Fail Democracy (The Chronicle Review, 9/28/2009)?  Personally, I have been frustrated by public education’s emphasis on skill development for check-lists, competitions, and test-taking with low reference to exposing students to common culture, core values, and must reads (i.e., classics).  As a parent, I have slowly come to own the counter-cultural responsibility of intentionally teaching our common knowledge, but ironically it demands a lot of effort to share who we are (and our roots) while still maintaining ties to the larger culture!

Stepping back to look at the big picture, how do educators come to agreement upon the truths/reality which are to be imparted by schools in the United States of America, e.g., what books are to be read over the course of one’s fifteen minutes of reading per day at home?*  Do Education degree programs have a shared culture on which they can agree and impart to their students as the foundation from which our future direction emerges?  Can they, along with concerned parents/communities, challenge the common cultural definition of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness before the consequences run over us (if they already have not done such)?

Too many Americans are in the linguistic shadows now—possibly close to a majority. Despite intense efforts driven by the No Child Left Behind Act, the language abilities of our 17-year-olds have remained stuck at the steeply declined levels of the 1970s, while the language gap between white students on one side and black and Hispanic students on the other remains distressingly and immovably large. Read the rest of this entry »

I asked the other day about your nominations for the best novel about the academy? What about movies? Here, I don’t have a clear choice for my pick. The Paper Chase comes to mind for a law school choice, as does the Marx Brothers’ Horse Feathers for sheer absurdity.

What are your choices?

(P. S. I apologize for the short post today. My power is out and I’m writing the from my phone. Ah, the miracles of modern life…)

What's better than a pencil? Maybe a Montblanc fountain pen.

Our Week-in-Review feature has a new format.  We know there’s way too much to read out there already, so we’re going to be highlighting the top five articles, books, websites, etc., that we’ve been reading or thinking about the past week.  If you have items you’d like us to consider for the top five, add them in the comments or send them to Tom or Mike.

A Better Pencil – Inside Higher Ed interviews Dennis Baron, author of A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution. It’s a history of writing implements in the digital age, and Barron provides some insights into how our media affect our messages. For example, in his class on the history of writing, he sometimes uses an exercise in which his students have to write on modeling clay – very old-school.

Photo credit: 2careless via Flickr

One indisputable sign of that postmodern Stalinism is the revival of the idea of the great Russian nation, which Stalin had recognized as the most important achievement of the czars. “The Russian czars did a great deal that was bad,” Stalin noted at a famous toast on November 7, 1937, at the height of the terror. “But they did one thing that was good — they amassed an enormous state,” he went on. “We have inherited that state.” — Postmodern Stalinism: Revisionist histories help revive his reputation in Russia (Jonathan Brent, Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/21/2009).

According to  John F. Burness, Study Abroad Is Often Not All It Should Be (Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/21/2009).  Have you taken advantage of the surge in studying/teaching in other countries? If so, how have you found it to be of educational value and on what grounds would you recommend it to the next generation of scholars?

How have you responded to the controversy raised by The seven deadly sins of the academy (Matthew Reisz, Times Higher Education, 9/17/2009)?  Tom found the editor’s comment, in which Ann Mroz highlights that she is a woman and a feminist with a sense of humour who supports academic freedom and the right to free speech, perplexing.  How do you have conversation about the seven deadly sins without a shared moral framework?  Is it just a shouting match, even the part about being open?

Terence Kealey was asked to write on the theme of “the seven deadly sins of academe”. He was explicitly asked for a “lighthearted” or “wry” piece, and we suggested the topic of “lust”, which was a “sin” identified by a straw poll of academics; it was not Dr Kealey’s own suggested topic. Dr Kealey’s article was satire. I fully support his right to express himself in this way. If people are offended, that is their right and they also have the right to express that.

If we cannot have freedom of speech and robust debate in the academy where can we have it?

Nine Famous Workspaces – The personal productivity website Lifehacker has been focusing on workspaces all week, and this post shows off workspaces of some famously productive people: Al Gore, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and so on. No academic workspaces are included in this post, unfortunately, but it’s still an interesting peek at others’ working lives.

Bonus: Don’t forget to order your copy of George Marsden’s Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship (Amazon, Abebooks, B&N, WorldCat).  We’ll be discussing it in October for our 2nd ESN Book Club.

Have you seen and/or experienced  The Rural Brain Drain (Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas, Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/19/2009)?  After a number of suggestions regarding how to address The Rural Brain Drain, Carr and Kefalas conclude:

Ultimately, with a plan and a vision the undoing of Middle America is not preordained. The rural crisis has been ignored for far too long, but, we believe, it isn’t too late to start paying attention. The residents of rural America must embrace the fact that to survive, the world they knew and cherished must change. And, on a national level, rural development must be more closely linked to national economic growth priorities, and policies must be created to help these communities prepare for a future that is already here.

The article is drawn from material in their soon to be published Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America.  As a resident of the rapidly developing (or should I say over-developed) Lancaster County, PA, I intend to place Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America on my to read list and see what insights might be transferrable to my context. 

Rural Road in Lancaster County, PA

Below are a few brief thoughts which I would be interested in discussing further.  Any takers? 

1. Although rural and small town America overlap, they are not the same.  
2. Pennsylvania, in contrast to some large stretches of Middle America, has a high number of regional state universities and liberal arts colleges which bring the educated back into small towns.  Pennsylvania even boasts a large state university intentionally built in a rural location several hours away from the distractions of urban life, i.e., Penn State University.  Note:  Some faculty on small town campuses commute from metro-areas, so that their families can take advantage of more opportunities.  In addition, many campuses find it difficult to serve/partner with their local communities even though quite a few started with that intention. 
3. I wonder how much the larger brain drain is a societal lack of interest in the value of education itself. I find the idealized desire for learning in films such as Music Man, referenced by the article, a rare commodity.  That’s why inspirational producations such as Music Man return year after year in small town/rural communities, but seldom become part of the lived fabric of the community. 
4. Simplicity.  Any interest in returning to living off the land as part of extended families or tightknit communities?  I hear and read about this as an ideal desired by many, but are the authors saying this is impossible?  Note:  Our family continues to seek to move more and more in this direction.
5. Local congregations have much to contribute in the discernment of vocation/calling, intentional commitment to one’s community, and the life of the mind.  Do you have positive illustrations and/or visions of possibilities to be offered in rural/small town settings?

Last week, Inside Higher Ed reported the launch of Futurity.org, a new website intended to provide a direct outlet for research universities to announce science news. It’s led by Duke, Stanford, and U. Rochester, and the 35 participating universities include some pretty big names.

Earlier this summer, ESN reader and commenter Dave Snoke sent us a couple of links and some good questions that, unfortunately, we weren’t able to get to until now. Dave was remarking upon this year’s big fossil story, “Ida,” which, while an important discovery by any measure, became the subject of an orchestrated media push billing the fossil as “the missing link.” To put it mildly, Ida failed to live up to the hype. Many science writers criticized the media circus, which was designed to sell books and raise interest in a television documentary. Dave sent us links to the two most important critiques, from Nature and Science.

From Science:

Many of the leading scientists who study primate evolution don’t think Ida lives up to Hurum’s billing as a human ancestor; most think she’s a relative of lemurs instead. After looking at photos and a description that Hurum and his collaborators published in an online paper last week, most researchers think the skeleton—though stunning—reveals little new information about ancient primates, much less human origins. Some worry that the publicity framing Ida as a human ancestor will backfire as her true identity and lowly origins are revealed. “A lot of articles say it is a missing link. That is wrong,” says paleoanthropologist Elwyn Simons of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. “It has no convincing links to monkeys, apes, and humans.”

Nature‘s editorial concludes:

In principle, there is no reason why science should not be accompanied by highly proactive publicity machines. But in practice, such arrangements introduce conflicting incentives that can all too easily undermine the process of the assessment and communication of science.

Dave asks a couple of very good questions. First, regarding the ethics of public relations:

1) I have been involved with press releases to the media, and invariably the story gets mangled. Some of this is not the scientist’s fault. But in the stories below it seems clear that the scientists wanted the PR. They paid big bucks ($750K) for the fossil, with an aim to movie rights. Recently CERN in Geneva was also happily involved in promoting the Angels and Demons movie. What should be our ethic in regard to PR “opportunities”?

Second, about how this kind of hype surrounding scientific discoveries affects the public’s perception of science:

2) Is it any wonder that the public views scientific claims (especially in the area of evolution) with suspicion when they see stories like this? Does making claims like this, which so often are eventually refuted or retracted, help the case for evolution, or would it be better to present a story of careful weighing of pros and cons? In the public arena, evolutionists have worked hard to suppress any attempts to introduce “weighing of evidence for an against evolution” in school curriculums. The argument is that allowing arguments against evidence for evolution would promote an “anti-science” attitude which would hurt science education. Or is the “selling” of science theories actually hurting science more than a presentation of careful weighing of facts would?

So, what do you think? (Please note that the question isn’t whether evolution is true or whether this fossil proves or disproves evolution. Dave is asking, do overhyped stories like this one help, or hurt, the cause of evolution proponents? A similar question could be asked about the way health findings are promoted in the media.)

Norman Borlaug’s Nobel Prize Lecture – The death of Borlaug, one of the founders of the Green Revolution, sparked numerous tributes (NY Times, WSJ, Guardian). Gregg Easterbrook in the WSJ estimates that Borlaug’s agricultural work has saved more than 1 billion lives and counting. Leave it to GetReligion, however, to highlight the link between his Lutheran roots and his agricultural work. In his 1970 Nobel Prize lecture, Borlaug cites Genesis 41, Isaiah 8 and Isa. 35, Joel 1, and Amos 4 as justification for both his work and his hope in its success. [It reminds me of Walter Bradley's work that won the Bosscher-Hammond Prize at Following Christ. ~ Mike]

The Game of Ghost Writing – Doug Lederman at Inside Higher Ed reviews a couple of new studies that examine the practice of scientific “ghost writing”: journal articles written by pharmaceutical companies or other corporate interests but published under the names of academics who had little to nothing to do with the research. (Mike’s note: I agree with the commenter who observes that “ghost writing” is hardly the term for this practice.)

Maimonides on Trustworthy Sources (Harper’s) – Reader David O’Hara sent us this great quote from Jewish medieval philosopher Maimonides.

More on the challenge of humility.  What does it mean “to serve” and “put the interest of others” ahead of one’s own in the context of higher education?  Bearing the Burden reviews some recent posts on how

the service burdens are unfairly distributed, falling mainly on academic do-gooders, “who work hardest for the institution” yet “reap the fewest material benefits because they publish at a slower pace.” … academic do-gooders need to learn to just say no. … “those of us who overwork are covering up for and enabling those who under perform. Most universities have no mechanism for forcing tenured people teach better, teach more, show up at office hours, give students responsible advice about their program of study, or do the committee work they have been assigned” – Gabriela Montell, Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/18/2009.

Lots of provoking material in Academic Bait-and-Switch, Part 2 (Henry Adams, Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/15/2009).

1. Freshman disinterested in reading, mastering the basics of writing sentences, and earning their grades as the “interesting distinctions between the worldviews of freshmen and graduate students at Elite National U.”
2. A summary of the graduate student’s encounter with a parent over the “F” he had awarded their son.
3. The final sentence of the essay reads, “If the Blunts didn’t want their son taught by a TA, I wondered why they sent him to Elite National U, but I thought it wise to keep that to myself.”

Rob Jenkins, an associate professor of English and director of the Writers Institute at Georgia Perimeter College,* proposes The Five Characteristics of Successful New Faculty Members.  The first one on his list is humility, which includes the importance of seeking out an experienced faculty mentor.

You might be surprised at how many new hires show up believing they’re smarter than their colleagues, or thinking they already know more about how the institution ought to function than do people who have been there 20 years.

You should assume that, as a rookie, you know nothing about the culture of the institution or the way it runs, much less the way it ought to run. Spend the first few months watching and listening to the people around you, observing how they conduct themselves and how others respond to them. From that you will learn much about how to behave—and how not to.

Seek out an experienced faculty mentor, someone who’s been at the college at least three or four years. Avoid members of the “old guard” who appear jaded, disillusioned, and burned out; you don’t want their attitudes to rub off on you. Look for someone who knows the ropes but hasn’t yet considered using them to hang himself/herself.

(Note: Your department chair may assign you a mentor, but if that relationship is unsatisfactory, feel free to seek out another one on your own. You may very well start with a mentor and end up with a friend.)

What do you think?  Is humility the most essential feature of becoming successful as a new faculty member?  How have you seen humility taught/understood, learned, and/or lived out in higher education?  Note:  For the rest of Jenkins’ list visit The Five Characteristics of Successful New Faculty Members.

*Another one of his articles is highlighted in the ESN post Dumbledore as a model admin?

Over the weekend, I started reading Stephen Carter’s The Emperor of Ocean Park. Carter, a law professor at Yale, made his name with nonfiction books like The Culture of Disbelief, and he also wrote a column for Christianity Today for several years. He’s now successfully transitioned into a career as a bestselling novelist. The novel’s narrator, Talcott Garland, is an African American law professor at a fictional Ivy League-type university (like they say – write what you know!), and a number of scenes are set within the academic world: departmental politics, classroom teaching, even pick-up basketball with fellow professors.

Reading this novel got me to thinking: What are the best novels about the academic life? To qualify, the novels would have to be good novels themselves, but they would also need to represent the academic world truthfully. I start with one that I’m certain should be on the list, and a few others that I enjoyed reading, though I’m not sure how truthfully they represent the academic world. Do you agree with my choices? What are your suggestions? Read the rest of this entry »

It's the Top 5!

Our Week-in-Review feature has returned, with a new format.  We know there’s way too much to read out there already, so we’re going to be highlighting the top five articles, books, websites, etc., that we’ve been reading or thinking about the past week.  If you have items you’d like us to consider for the top five, add them in the comments or send them to Tom or Mike.

Welcome to Your Quarterlife Crisis – Kevin Offner, who works with InterVarsity Graduate and Faculty Ministries in Washington, DC, tipped us off to this article from Toronto’s eyeweekly.com.  Are you in your mid- to late-20′s, feeling unfulfilled and insecure in your career or graduate education, wondering what you’re supposed to be “when you grow up”? You might be experiencing a “quarterlife crisis.”

God and Math – At Books & Culture, Timothy Larsen reviews two recent books that explore the long history of connections between theology and mathematics.

Theologians & Economists: The Economic World of the Bible Versus Now – I (Mike) was just recently introduced to Michael Kruse’s series Why Don’t Economists and Theologians Get Along? by Jeff Gissing, InterVarsity GFM staff at Wake Forest. This is, I think, a good example of how other academic disciplines can contribute to theology and Biblical studies.  Understanding the cultural context of Biblical texts goes far beyond knowing your Greek. (Kruse has also just started a series on basic economics at Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed blog. If you’re like me – mostly ignorant of economics that don’t begin with the word “Freak” – I hope you’ll learn something. If you’re an economist yourself, I hope you’ll keep Kruse honest!)

Academic families – A tribute from an Inside Higher Ed blogger to her husband’s recently deceased PhD advisor. A great example of the role that a good advisor can play in a person’s life, far beyond the professional aspects.

Doubly Marginalized, Part 1 – Blog reader and Assistant Professor of Physics W. Brian Lane has started a series on his blog, Corner Interactions, about the “double marginalization” of Christians in the university. Part 2 is here.

Bonus: Don’t forget to order your copy of George Marsden’s Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship (Amazon, Abebooks, B&N, WorldCat).  We’ll be discussing it in October for our 2nd ESN Book Club.

Photo: number five by Hilarywho, via Flickr

Last week when Dr. Joe Kearns, MD, Emergency Medicine, presented on Keys of Thriving (Not Just Surviving!) in Medical School and Beyond at PSU-Hershey’s Christian Medical Society lunch lecture, I couldn’t help but think this has ESN written all over it. Below are a few main points which I culled/distilled from his presentation.  Let me know what you think of their relevance to your graduate school/professional experience.  Feel free to highlight, expand upon, or share a story in relationship to one or several points.

1. “Life is going to get better after…”  This is just not true.  Life doesn’t get any better after you finish your degree, it only changes.  Note:  it is particularly important to keep in mind the growing complexity of commitments/responsibilities with family, friends, community, church, workplace, professional societies. …
2. We must feed upon the Word of God.  We need to learn how to live between Genesis and Revelation.  As Jesus answered the tempter, by quoting Deuteronomy 8:3, “It is written, ‘Man doesn’t live only on bread. He also lives on every word that comes from the mouth of God’ “ (Matthew 4:4, NIV).  Do not forget as you treat your patients [translate to your vocation/profession] that although the creation is broken, God created it all good.  Furthermore, part of our mission as members of the Kingdom of God is to restore the creation.  And one day God will bring full restoration in a new heaven and new earth.
3. Dwell in the wisdom literature, i.e., Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon.  Why?  Because in school you’ll get a lot of knowledge, but you’ll not engage with wisdom directly.  Soak up the poetry, songs.  A lot of life is vanity.  Don’t take yourself so seriously.  It’s important to keep yourself in perspective.
4. Be troubled by the account of the rich young ruler (Matthew 19:16-30).  Why?  Because being rich is a mixed blessing.  The more you have, the more trouble you have.  And having everything doesn’t make you happy.
5. In summary, the two things necessary to thrive in school and after graduation:  read/query the Word of God AND have fellowship with the people of God no matter the work load.  If you can’t do the two above, then quit school.  Don’t become narrow and seek accolades.  Before moving for your job, make sure there is a good match with a local congregation.  Don’t focus on making money, limit your hours to be involved with community, church, family.  Take time to interact with your patients (translate to your vocation/profession).
6. Jesus came to give life and give it abundantly, not just to survive in school.  Without a relationship with the Creator, you don’t know who you are.