The Emerging Scholars Blog

What are you reading, watching, thinking about this week? As usual, here’s a few which have been on our mind. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them. 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.

1. What’s a book? How do you prefer to read? Verlyn Klinkenborg in Further Thoughts of a Novice E-Reader (NY Times Editorial, 5/28/2010) weighs in with some negative thoughts on digital reading, even with the I-Pad! Is this generational or do we loose something when not being able to page through pages of text? Might digital reading be fine to accomplish certain readings?

2. How do you define plagiarism? How do you deal with departmental conflict? Do you think Is It a Sin?” (Jack Stripling, Inside Higher Ed, 6/2/2010) has more to do with plagiarism or departmental conflict?

3. Have something to share about The Kingdom is Here, Where do You See it or Sustaining Small Not For Profits – How Do We Move Forward? — then swing by Blog with Me – An Invitation to Participate (Christine Sine, Godspace, 6/3/2010). Note: Tom will be participating in the first series. He would love to read a story about what you’re seeing and a part of.

God is at work, God is moving in our world transforming renewing and restoring and we want everyone to know how and where we see that happening. There is still time to participate. What seeds of hope do you see as you look out onto God’s world – it may be through the work of small seemingly insignificant ministries that are quietly changing your neighbourhood. Or it might be through movements that highlight concerns about child slavery, environmental degradation or poverty. — Blog with Me – An Invitation to Participate (Christine Sine. Godspace. 6/3/2010)

4. A few posts that Mike has been reading from Alan Jacobs’ Text Patterns blog:

• The past, present, and future of commonplace books
• 10 books that influenced Jacobs at various ages [happy to see one of the books was one of my own favorites, W. H. Auden's The Dyer's Hand - Mike]
• Jacobs shares his personal method for capturing quotes, links, etc.

Books

ESN member Robert Velarde (whose Conversations with C. S. Lewis we featured a while back) has a new book coming out on a topic dear to Mike’s heart: The Wisdom of Pixar. Learn more at the book’s website, and be sure to check out this Christianity Today interview with Pixar’s Pete Docter about the way his faith informs his work and art. [Hmm...I wonder if anyone has a book deal for The Gospel According to Hayao Miyazaki...]

An example of the intersection between Christianity and culture

I just ordered my copy of James Davison Hunter’s To Change the World, which our Faculty Ministry team will be discussing later this summer. (Full disclosure: I wasn’t impressed with Hunter’s Christianity Today interview, so i’m hoping the book will change my mind.) But ordering the book made me wonder:

What’s your favorite book about Christ and culture?

Maybe it’s a classic like H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture (one of the first books I read after becoming a Christian in college). Or something more recent like Andy Crouch’s Culture Making. Or a book connected to your discipline, or to the culture of the Bible.

What’s mine? Probably Dorothy Sayers’ Mind of the Maker. As a writer, her analysis of writers’ strengths and weaknesses helped me make sense of the craft during my college years, and I love the idea of using the Trinity itself as the explaining metaphor, rather than trying to find a metaphor to explain the Trinity.

So – what’s your favorite?

Photo Credit: The Playmobil Nativity Set, by The Spacebase via Flickr – is it cheesy commercialism…or a great way to help kids proclaim the narrative of the Incarnation?

Heaven - I mean, a used book shop

We’ve previously asked for your recommendations for the best books for undergraduates (which had a tremendous response) and best books for graduate students (who must be harder to shop for). Thus, it only makes sense for me to ask:

What are the best books for new faculty?

If you need help getting started, here are a few categories:

• Practical advice books
• Books to take your theology and spiritual life to the next level
• Books on “culture making” (there’s a leading category!), education, or other aspects of faculty life
• Comfort or counsel for those who are facing disappointment with their career
• Books about building relationships

Any suggestions?

Photo: Parnassus Book Services, Cape Cod, MA, by Lochaven via Flickr. Click for a larger image.

What are you reading, watching, thinking about this week? As usual, here’s a few which have been on our mind. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them. 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.

1.  Stand Up While You Read This! (Olivia Judson, NY Times Opinionator, 2/23/2010):  an evolutionary biologist warns her reader:

Your chair is your enemy.  It doesn’t matter if you go running every morning, or you’re a regular at the gym. If you spend most of the rest of the day sitting — in your car, your office chair, on your sofa at home — you are putting yourself at increased risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, a variety of cancers and an early death. In other words, irrespective of whether you exercise vigorously, sitting for long periods is bad for you. …

Probably much easier to address by those who work in labs, go into the field, pace as we think/present.  Some tips in the article for those who sit a lot.  Any to add?

2.   Academic Bait-and-Switch, Part 6 (Henry Adams, Chronicle of Higher Education, 2/25/2010).

… Today I wince at my naïveté. Studying literature doesn’t guarantee moral improvement any more than studying chemistry, economics, or plumbing does. I should have accepted that in my first year of graduate work at Elite National University, because the evidence was all around me, but I clung to my childish belief in the power of literature. In my second year, when my fellow teaching assistants elected me their representative to the first-year-composition committee, I even had a notion that I could help change the program for the better. …

The foundation of one’s vision for daily life, let alone culture making, when entering the messy milieu of any profession is vital.  What is yours?  Note: keep in mind that Henry Adams, the pseudonym for a professor of English at a liberal-arts college in the Midwest, shares his perspective in the Bait-and-Switch series.

3. Before you follow the link, take a guess on What They’re Reading on College Campuses (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2/25/2010) or maybe I should make the question What  bestsellers did Barnes & Noble and the Follett Higher Education Group sell in January 2010?  Where do you draw your up and coming must reads, someplace like the Weekly Book List (Compiled by Nina C. Ayoub, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2/22/2010)?

4. Do you practice the Examen? From our colleagues at The Well, Ann Boyd has written an excellent introduction to the Examen. This classical spiritual exercise was created by Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, and it has served Christians from many traditions well over the centuries. If you journal already, or you are looking for a new way to reflect on your life and God’s work, check out Ann’s article.

5. New website for Books & Culture: ESN partner Books & Culture has launched a new website. If you like what you see, why not head over the ESN Subscription Discounts page and subscribe to B&C for only $5 a year?

What are you reading, watching, thinking about this week? As usual, here’s a few which have been on our mind. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them. 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.

Photo Credit: Philadelphia’s Swann Memorial Fountain, blizzard-style, from Walking Philly via Flickr. Click for a larger image.

1. Is there a place in the academy for the Christian worldview? (Jesus Creed) RJS, a regular guest blogger at Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed blog and a science professor at a major research university, shares a recent conversation with a friend about the role of the Christian worldview in the university. A brief except:

If one accepts methodological naturalism consistently as the basis for academic inquiry and rational thought,  it follows that Christianity and religious belief have no place in the university, or in rational discussions, except to do autopsy on them.   We must concede that a scientific-historical understanding of Christianity must be built with no reference to the possibility that He rose from the dead.  We must accept that our own beliefs must be explained in evolutionary and neurological terms, without reference to the possibility that they are true.

The whole thing (and the ensuing conversation) is worth reading. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

A while back, I asked for your recommendations for the best books for undergrads, and you came through with a pretty impressive list. Let’s advance a few years.

What books do you recommend to graduate students, on God, on academia, or just about life in general?

There will probably be some overlap, but here are some common graduate school situations that might affect the list:

• Deeper exploration of a specific discipline or profession
• New life experiences (e.g. marriage, children, death of family and friends)
• Coping with failure and success
• The “quarterlife crisis“
• Growth and change in one’s spiritual life

What are your suggestions?

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.