The Emerging Scholars Blog

Michael Ruse’s Do We Need Philosophy? (Chronicle of Higher Education. 8/15/2010) masterfully weaves together reflections on the death of his colleague David Hull*, transitions in philosophy, the increasing costs of higher education, and lamplighting in philosophy.  A significant part of the piece focuses upon Mark Taylor’s** NY Times Op-Ed recommendation to consolidate philosophy departments at Columbia and NYU (Academic Bankruptcy. 8/14/2010).*** Ruse eloquently concludes:

I think that David’s life was truly worthwhile. But was he a bit like a lamplighter, someone who had a good career in his day but for which we no longer have need? Are we getting to the point where philosophy, if it is to be taught at all, could just be a subgroup within an English department? (Wouldn’t they just love that, with their obsession about Heidegger!) ****  And if philosophy goes, what about classics and more? What about departments of religion?!

Quite apart from the economic worries I expressed above, I cannot but feel that something will be lost if universities do just become glorified technical institutions, or business schools. Personally, I don’t think you can claim to be an educated person if you have never done any philosophy. With Socrates I agree that the unexamined life is not worth living, and unlike the average scientist or engineer in my experience (Richard Dawkins being at the top of my list), I don’t think you can do philosophy on your own after work in the pub. I think that knowing something of the great thinkers of the past is vital.

But then don’t forget that I am only five years younger than was David Hull, and, like him, I have had a full-time career as a philosopher. Maybe you are just hearing the sad lament of another lamplighter.

So, what do you think, “Do we need philosophy?”  Is the economic downturn (and/or shifts in our culture) leading toward the end of various specializations in philosophy?  Should the focus of philosophy be upon ensuring each student has a class (or 2) in living the examined life and/or informing the faculty of each class in how to incorporate reflections/musings upon living the examined life? Reflecting upon my studies at Grove City College, the core curriculum provided a glimpse of philosophers and worldviews in the context of following Christ.  I took logic as an elective.  All of these classes, and the others in the core curriculum, have been foundational in providing perspective for my daily work on campus and the blog.  In addition, the material in these classes (and my other classes in general) have been a “para-academy” gift to offer in many ministry contexts.  So, “yes, we need philosophy.”  Of course maybe, I’m actually arguing for a certain stream of philosophy founded upon Building a Christian Worldview (developed further in Revolutions in Worldview: Understanding the Flow of Western Thought. What do you think?

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*For more by Ruse visit Philosophy of Science Association.

**Mark Taylor is the chairman of the religion department at Columbia University.  In addition, he’s the author of the forthcoming Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities, click here to check out a Chronicle of Higher Ed Commentary (8/8/2010) adapted from the book.

***Related article of interest: Stop Admitting Ph.D. Students (Inside Higher Ed. 8/18/2010) by Monica J. Harris, professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky.

****Update (8/18/2010, 8:50 am): I just finished reading Okla Elliott’s Guest Review: Logic: The Question of Truth (Translated by Thomas Sheehan. Indiana University Press, 2010) for Inside Higher Ed (8/17/2010). Anyone have insights to share regarding the question of truth?

Janine Giordano

Read Part 1, “Where Did You Find Your Megaphone?” and Part 2, “On Fitting In-With the Scholarship”

Recently, in a discussion on civic engagement and the historical profession, my advisor made a statement that catalyzed language for some of my struggles at the heart of this blog series. In his encouragement to graduate students and other faculty about why they should get involved not just in national events and national problems but in the very local banalities of our lives in Urbana- Champaign, he mentioned the old Sweedish socialist saying: “dig where you stand.” Read the local newspaper, he said, and write letters to the editor when you feel they are leaving something out. Get to know the local leaders on various local concerns. “We don’t live in New York or Berkeley,” he said. “We live here, and this community is what we make it.”

And yet, if I only stood in time and space, this challenge would seem much more manageable. I instead reflected on the separate and even warring cultural movements that I very precariously stood upon. The image that flashed before me was of myself standing on two different horses, both of them charging forward at full speed, but both knowing they would have to veer either left or right to avert the large tree straight ahead. Indeed, all politics are local, but we live in a culture that is increasingly national. Seemingly everything from news websites and entertainment media to sermon series and Vacation Bible School programs is becoming more uniform across localities. We don’t just stand in a place these days, but in a matrix of culture. And so, I wondered: If I’m not standing in the church, and I’m not standing on the leftist/progressive platform, and I’m only banging on the door to get into own field of academic scholarship, then what am I standing on?  In the transient and global world of Urbana-Champaign, who is my “local” community?

The way we define our community shapes the way we identify ourselves as researchers, teachers, and people. And, the way we define our community shapes the audience we anticipate as scholars. In the case of my own historical research, this question of audience really matters, for the very essence of what I study depends on who is listening. I will try to explain.

I study working class Christians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and their struggles to get the Churches, and/or the Labor Movement, to shout their critiques of unbridled capitaism. I find that these working class Christians found very little support in mainline churches in the late nineteenth century, and while some Christian Socialists launched campaigns to get the churches to hear them, others built their church in the labor movement. Yes, in the early 1900s, I find that the Labor Movement—especially located in the community “Labor Temple”—in many places served as a church, or the church, for working class Christians. Upton Sinclair describes this in beautiful, satirical detail in his 1922 They Call Me Carpenter. Christian Socialists, those who claimed that Jesus would not have supported the class stratification as it was, and especially those who endorsed the de-privatization of huge monopolies and trusts, insisted that most Christian Churches had colluded wrongly with the rich against the poor.

As anyone would imagine, the movement did not sit well with mainline Protestant, or Catholic, church leaders. In 1912, Charles Stelzle and several other high church leaders launched what they called the Men and Religion Forward Movement, an effort of churches in collaboration with the American Federation of Labor, to stamp out socialism in the labor movement by declaring that Jesus would never have advocated socialist radicalism. Nevermind that most Christian Socialists did not advocate violent radicalism, and in fact many of the more vulgar Marxists called them bourgeois for their different take on revolutionary class consciousness. Mainline Protestants, expressed through the Federal Council of Churches, tried to unseat the Christian Socialist movement by declaring it unchristian. Vulgar Marxists on the eve of Bolsevist Revolution, meanwhile, would try to unseat the Christian Socialists by declaring them bourgeois and not really Marxist. By the end of 1919, the movement would be undermined by its two most potentially powerful allies: the evangelical movement and the Socialist Party. However, I follow the movement through the 1920s and ‘30s and find that this working class Christian parachurch, often meeting in union locals organized in and through Labor Temples, does not go away. In fact, groups with very similar ideas—and under different names—rally in the Protestant Churches in the 1920s, and then in Catholic Churches in the 1930s. What keeps this cultural movement alive, and how does it transition so easily between Protestantism and Catholicism? What does it tell us that these working class Christians moved so easily between calling their claims political and secular (“the labor movement”) and religious (The Church)?

I find these questions fascinating, and am quite happy for them to occupy my days and evenings. However, when I wake up every morning to write, there is one, perpetual question before me: “Who ELSE cares?” Who am I most trying to persuade of the potential of alliance with the other? Clearly, the work is intended for more than one type of audience. My labor history colleagues and my evangelical friends should be drawn to different pieces of the work. However, the context for my arguments, the prefatory material, and even the title of the project need to reflect my interests in how the work will be read and understood, and I often feel like I’m riding two horses that aren’t even running in the same direction. Moreover, the process of finding communities of scholars to workshop this work leads is harder than you would think. Some people want to know if I’m really a socialist labor historian, and others want me to know that the churches weren’t really as terrible as many socialists claimed.

So, I would really like to dig where I stand, but first don’t I have to figure out where I stand? Where do you see yourself standing and digging, and how did you come to this decision?

Read Part 4, “Finding our Voice; Building our Megaphone”

Related to our series on Education for Human Flourishing: A Christian Perspective (Paul D. Spears and Steven R. Loomis, InterVarsity Press, 2009),* below is an email I received regarding the purpose of education.  Agree/disagree?  Thoughts/reactions?

The purpose of education is to learn how to learn, some say. … I’d say, to learn how to teach yourself. … The teacher is a coach to assist in the process. …”Dead Poets Society” and other movies picture the teacher as this mother bird throwing out worms to hungry little mouths, taking in the teacher’s great knowledge. … That’s ridiculous. …  At high school I had to learn to teach myself. … I can’t learn from someone talking to me, unless I can dialog with them, and ask a thousand questions. … I have a German type mind, until I see how all the pieces fit together, I don’t understand. … When I teach a new topic, I often have to meditate on the concepts for many weeks before it’s internalized, and I have almost a mental picture and feeling for the totality of the topic. … Then I’m ready to move around, answer questions, give analogies, examples. … and feel comfortable. … Poor math teachers just stand there and give procedures: do this, then this, then this. … Don’t ask any questions. … Just do it. … It’s terrible…

Comment:  I must confess it’s hard for me to knock Dead Poets Society (1989), a film of my high school years which depicted what I lacked for a stretch of my education, but found in a significant form during my years at Grove City College.  Upon further reflection, I think that at Grove City College I entered some classes (by accident and others by intentional deliberation) of self-motivated students coached/taught well by self-motivated, inspirational faculty who served as excellent mentors in/out of the classroom.  Furthermore, this experienced Mathematics Professor describes my mode of learning/teaching.  Still processing and very much interested in your comments.

*In order to return to the series, I will probably give it a particular day in the week so Wednesdays can have another topic of consideration.  Stay tuned.

Education for Human Flourishing, Cover

Find yourself in blizzard conditions as you reflect upon the larger structure of education, but can’t quite figure out why or the proper direction for next steps?  In Chapter 4:  The Information Economy of Education, Paul D. Spears and Steven R. Loomis move from tracing

several important knowledge traditions vital to Christian thought and indispensable to a complete education … [to] an exercise in the ontology of education as a social institution. — Education for Human Flourishing: A Christian Perspective.* InterVarsity Press, 2009. p.125) .

Put on your snow (I mean thinking) cap, review the topics given below, and let me know some of your responses to these concerns.  In particular, what is unique about what the mind/Way of Christ, which influences the follower of Christ as he/she is salt and light, has to say regarding these concerns in the fragile institution of education?  What are the hidden persuaders which are in tension between the manner in which the world versus the people of God understand, view, practice education? Read the rest of this entry »

Education for Human Flourishing, Cover

After rattling the reader’s cage by exploring Have you been properly educated?, Paul D. Spears and Steven R. Loomis argue:

Most of the abilities that we associate with knowledge in the educational field turn out to be mostly a capacity to recite. … As humans we are constantly engaged in mental activities.  We constantly access and categorize everything around us.  We experience the world around us and we have beliefs about the world, some of which are true and some of which are false.  We justify our ideas through our rational capacities, by which we set up a system of understanding that arbitrates what can be constituted as knowledge, what is and is not an accurate depiction of reality.

To claim we know something implies we have sufficiently good reasons to say the things we believe are as we say they are.  Knowledge is justified true belief. Each of these categories — justification, truth and belief — plays a necessary but not sufficient role in determining knowledge, and each should be explained in order to see how belief, justification and truth form an integrated concept of knowledge. – Education for Human Flourishing: A Christian Perspective.* InterVarsity Press, 2009. p.103-4) .

Questions …

• Are Paul D. Spears and Steven R. Loomis on track with their definition of knowledge?  Note:  earlier they distinguish three types of knowledge
  • technical knowledge or what is more commonly called know-how
  • propositional knowledge, which is knowledge of facts
  • knowledge of acquaintance, which is knowledge about something in direct awareness (78-80, 103).
• How do you define knowledge and describe it’s acquisition in general, in your discipline?
• What scholars/resources/books have you found most helpful in shaping your understanding of knowledge?

*Find the title appealing? Then check out the Preface & Precis of Book and Chapters.

Education for Human Flourishing, Cover

Educational standards are the foundation of the modern educational endeavor.  Statements about educational success imply standards.  Measuring whether or not students are being properly educated involves testing them in particular subjects with its prescribed set of grade-appropriate standards that they must meet or exceed (Paul D. Spears and Steven R. Loomis. Education for Human Flourishing: A Christian Perspective.* InterVarsity Press, 2009. p.100).

The battery of standardized tests which Spears and Loomis go onto describe and critique in Chapter 3:  Who Knows?  Education and epistemology are not just applicable my fourth grade twin girls, as I hear a variety of students/educators in higher education discuss standardized tests with some frequency (particularly at PSU-Hershey Medical Center).   Here are the questions Spears and Loomis bring to our attention:

• What do such tests actually tell us about the student’s intelligence, ability, creativity, insightfulness or grasp of reality?
• Do current standards provide an accurate way to assess a genuine education?
• What does it mean to be educated?
• How do educators determine the success or failure of our educational project? (p. 100)

Any responses?  Do the “answers” vary depending on the level, sphere of education

• Fourth graders
• Medical students
• Undergraduate History major prepare to teach Secondary Education versus preparing for Graduate School
• Computer Science PhD student headed to Microsoft versus a Faculty position involving Research/Teaching
• Vo-Tech student

As you’re mulling these things over, here are the three types of knowledge the authors discuss in chapter 2 and remind the reader of in chapter 3:

• technical knowledge or what is more commonly called know-how
• propositional knowledge, which is knowledge of facts
• knowledge of acquaintance, which is knowledge about something in direct awareness (103).

More coming from Chapter 3.

*Find the title appealing?  Then check out the Preface & Precis of Book and Chapters.

Education for Human Flourishing, Cover

In Chapter 2 of Education for Human Flourishing:  A Christian Perspective* (InterVarsity Press, 2009), Paul D. Spears and Steven R. Loomis draw attention to the importance of foundational categories and philosophical thinkers for the development of educational theory.  Furthermore, they argue modern educational theory, influenced by modern philosophy, has led to some of the pitfalls of our prestigious institutions of higher education (p.71).  Spears and Loomis begin Chapter 2 with these comments:

Educators are inundated with myriads of competing educational theories, and these theories dictate the methods and goals that are actualized in the classroom on a daily basis.  These educational theories are a product of a commitment to a certain philosophical paradigm.  Teachers are overwhelmed, understandably, with the amount of work it takes to properly manage the classroom. … This doesn’t leave a teacher much time (if any at all) to reflect on educational theory — let alone the theories’ underlying philosophical commitments.  If teachers are going to be properly equipped for their task of education, they must begin to grapple with the historical development of educational purpose.

Broadly speaking, modern education lacks a unified purpose or goal to direct its curricular and pedagogical commitments.  This lack of unity exists because education has many competing allegiances to different educational methodologies, which are driven by a variety of diverse philosophical commitments.  Education is no longer understood in terms of training that enable us to pursue a true conception of reality.  Formerly, education was conceived as a tool by which we came to properly understand our humanity, ourselves and our right role within society.  Education was about pursuing and understanding objective value, as C.S. Lewis points out:  “the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and that others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are.”  Today, education is not so much about truth or morality as it is about tolerance and contributing to the nation’s economic growth. — p.69-70.

Questions to ponder/discuss:

• Do you feel overwhelmed by competing educational theories, whether as a student, researcher, a professor, or an administrator?
• What do you consider the purpose/goal/end of education?
• What training in foundational categories/philosophy is necessary for followers of Christ to work out their faith in the complex market of educational theory/practice?

*Find the title appealing?  Then check out the Preface & Precis of Book and Chapters.

Two recent articles on the profession of education worth consideration:

1. In Search of Education Leaders, by Bob Herbert, NY Times Op-Ed, December 4, 2009
2. The Ph.D. Problem: On the professionalization of faculty life, doctoral training, and the academy’s self-renewal, by Louis Menand, Harvard Magazine, November-December 2009.  HT: Miller.

Anyone willing to take a stab at why the educational system is so leaky and how we find/develop educational leaders which serve their department, discipline, campus, education in the United States/beyond?

Questions which come to mind with the Harvard degree program, topic of In Search of Education Leaders, “Will this program include the philosophy, purpose, and joy of education? Or are these unable to be expressed in the pragmatic, secular context of trying to keep up because we need to?”  With regard to ‘residency’ models, these already exist in education, e.g., the undergraduate student teacher model. Stronger cross-grade & inter-generational mentoring with the potential for long term relationships would profit the whole educational system.

HT:  Nick who responded to my Facebook musings by referring to Diane Rehm’s discussion of Women in Science with

1. Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, Morris Hertzein Professor of Biology and Physiology at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Blackburn was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, along with Carol Greider and Jack W. Szostak.
2. Dr. Carol Greider, Daniel Nathans Professor of Molecular Biology & Genetics at The Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Greider was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, along with Elizabeth Blackburn and Jack W. Szostak.
3. Melody Barnes, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, and special assistant to President Obama

Yes, higher education is leaky pipeline for women in the sciences.  Any responses by those part of the system?

According to Louis Menand in The Ph.D. Problem: On the professionalization of faculty life, doctoral training, and the academy’s self-renewal, the educational system is leaky in quite another way for the Humanities, but with a particular internal end in mind. Can/should higher education in the Humanities add practical skills and develop a specific graduation time line?  What about those who went through the system? Will they allow such changes (Note: Reminds me of the reduction of hours in medical training)?  Will the motivation for students in the Humanities become the pursuit and exploration of knowledge for the rich or those seeking direction later in life?  Even though the article seems focused upon the Humanities, especially English, does the article apply to all (or let’s say most) of higher education?

Exploring Campus Ministry

1.  Do you remember the mention of Benson Hines in the May 8 Week in Review? Yesterday, I had the opportunity to chat with Benson during Road Trip 13 and bring him along to a gathering of the PSU-Hershey Christian Medical Society.  If you haven’t already read Reaching the Campus Tribes, I’d encourage you add to your Thanksgiving Break To-Do List

• swinging by Reaching the Campus Tribes to download, skim, and enjoy the pics in Benson’s free on-line book exploring campus ministry in the USA.
• sharing your thoughts on/reactions to the piece from your role in higher education.  As you may remember, I posted some initial reflections here and more here.
• suggesting blogs to add to my big list of college ministry blogs (so far).  In particular, are there followers of Christ from the academic sphere which have particularly insightful blogs on higher education?

David Kinnaman

Melinda Lundquist Denton

2.  On January 28, Messiah College (Grantham, PA) will be hosting the Next Generation:  understanding its faith practices and impact upon faith communities.  The conference speakers will be David Kinnaman and Melinda Denton Lundquist.  Can’t wait to have the opportunity to interact with both the author of unChristian and the co-author of Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers on the below questions. …

- How are teens and young adults approaching matters of faith today?
- What impact is this emerging generation having upon churches and other faith-related institutions?
- How can Christian leaders better engage this generation?

If you’re available/interested, please join me for the conference.  If you’d like to come, but can’t, please let me what questions you’d like explored and I’ll try to bring back some “responses.” Note: I’m exploring the possibility of some interviews to go along with my early February conference summary.

Souls in Transition: The Religious & Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults

I’ve just begun reading Christian Smith’s new book (with Patricia Snell), Souls in Transition: The Religious & Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults, and it’s already proving to be a useful resource. This is the follow-up to Smith’s last book (with Melina Denton), Soul Searching, which examined the religious lives of teenagers (ages 13 to 17). Technically, the term “emerging adults” applies to ages 18 to 29, but Souls in Transition only looks at ages 18 to 23. The rest of the “emerging adults” spectrum will be the focus of a planned third book. For an overview of Smith’s findings, check out this recent Christianity Today interview with Smith.

To set the stage for discussing religion and spirituality, Chapter 2 examines “The Cultural Worlds of Emerging Adults” – sex, relationships, morality, and so on. There’s lots of interesting stuff in this chapter – for example, Smith makes the case that emerging adults seem to be living out simplified versions of the philosophies of Jacques Derrida, Stanley Fish, Richard Rorty, and G. E. Moore – but today I’m going to highlight emerging adults’ views of education. As you might imagine, with so many either in college or aspiring to college, education forms an important part of their world view, but their view of education leans strongly to the pragmatic, instrumental value.

Many, though not all, emerging adults believe in the importance of finishing high school and getting a college education. Large numbers want to go to university, do well in school, get a degree, and put it to use. But for most, the motivating reasons behind their valuing higher education seem to have almost entirely to do with the instrumental advantages it produces — as well as the fun one can have while in college. What matters is getting the credits, earning the diploma, and becoming certified as a college-educated persona so that one can get a better job, earn more money, and become a good salary earner and supporter of a (materially) comfortable and secure life. Not very many emerging adults talk about the intrinsic value of an education, of the personal broadening and deepening of one’s understanding and appreciation of life and the world that expansive learning affords. Few talk about the value of a broad education for shaping people into informed and responsible citizens in civic life, for producing leaders and members who can work together toward the common good of all in society…For most, higher education is good instead because — besides the fun one can have while in college — it promises to help secure for individuals more rewarding jobs, higher income, and so greater personal prospects of materials and psychological well-being and security. (Smith, 54)

This attitude is not necessarily new (“Plastics,” anyone?), but elsewhere in this chapter Smith writes of emerging adults’ cultural relativism, desire for material comfort, lack of political or community engagement, and low expectations for changing the world. ESN’s mission is to see Christian scholars become redeeming influences, and InterVarsity’s Vision seeks “world changers developed,” so we are fighting against the current of the culture, according to Smith’s analysis. Since ESN encourages Christian students to pursue academic vocations, this attitude toward higher education can be a challenge to work against; important fields like the humanities can be, well, materially challenging.

Do you agree with Smith? Do emerging adults, ages 18-23, see higher education as primarily a path to middle class security? Have you seen exceptions to this? And, maybe most importantly, do Christian students mirror the culture, or are they a “counterculture for the common good”?