Last week I began a Chasing Wisdom series based up my Skype interview with Nathan Foster, Assistant Professor of Social Work, Spring Arbor University, Spring Arbor, MI. In the first post, I focused upon how a private person, such as Nathan, wrote such an open book about his life, struggles, family, and vocation.
Today, we’ll explore
- becoming a wisdom chaser in higher education
- discerning the call to higher education
- being present to one’s family
Next week we’ll consider
- power in the classroom from the perspective of the teacher
- taking the first steps in teaching
- how InterVarsity Christian Fellowship can journey with academics
And in case you were wondering, Nathan’s keeping an eye on the series and would love to respond to your comments. So please, take advantage of the opportunity!
Thomas B. Grosh IV:  What do academics chase? Is it wisdom? Based on insights from your journey and that of your father’s, what would you say to encourage Emerging Scholars to become wisdom chasers?
Nathan Foster: Your question about education and wisdom is great. I worked at a place once and they didn’t like to hire people with advanced degrees. And I said, “That’s crazy. Why not?â€Â They thought [those with advanced degrees] become very arrogant and lost their ability to be teachable. Don’t get me wrong education’s great and I’m a huge fan of it. Personally I love to learn. But it’s good for me to remember that there are potentially negative consequences from education. We can get a little stuck up and we can lose some of our humility. My wife calls it professoritis. We tend to think that we’re right about things. Now part of that comes from certain expectations. When you’re teaching, people expect you to have the answers and they look to you to have the answers. And so we get used to being right. I’ve found it very seldom that students really challenge us on some of what we spout off.
I got a couple of good disciplines I try to practice to fight my professoritis. … [Read more…] about Chasing Wisdom with Nathan Foster part II