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 … [Read more...] about The Purpose of Education
The Purpose of Education
What’s the purpose of a university?
Here's Wendell Berry's answer: The thing being made in a university is humanity. Given the current influence of universities, this is merely inevitable. But what universities, at least the public-supported ones, are mandated to make or to help to make is human beings in the fullest sense of those words —not just trained workers or knowledgeable citizens but responsible heirs and members of human culture. If the proper work of the university is only to equip people to fulfill private ambitions, then how do we justify … [Read more...] about What’s the purpose of a university?
Colleges ignore life’s biggest questions
Last fall Anthony Kronman, Sterling Professor of Law at Yale, kicked off the academic year with a Boston Globe op-ed entitled Why are we here? Colleges ignore life's biggest questions, and we all pay the price. In response, Comment hosted an excellent on-line mini-symposium with several scholars including Steven Garber (Director, Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation and Culture), Dr. James K. A. Smith (Associate Professor of Philosophy, Calvin College), and Greg Veltman (Ph.D. Student, University of … [Read more...] about Colleges ignore life’s biggest questions