Proverbs 1-9 is an extended address on the value of wisdom from a father or elder teacher to a son or student that introduces the wisdom sayings of the remainder of Proverbs. In Hear, My Son: Teaching & Learning in Proverbs 1-9, Daniel J. Estes has taken a novel approach to this literature and written a monograph exploring the philosophy and practice of teaching and learning reflected in this instruction given in these chapters. It is part of New Studies in Biblical Theology (InterVarsity Press) series of … [Read more...] about Book Review: Hear, My Son
education
“Time” to be imitated?
The Marks of a Christian Scholar: A Vocational Description (Part Three)[1] Mark Eckel, ThM PhD, Professor of Leadership, Education & Discipleship Capital Seminary & Graduate School, Washington, D.C. By guiding attention we take in our hands the key to the formation and the development of personality and character. -- Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky[2] My first stint as an educator was chosen by a four letter word: time. My training was in pastoral studies. But I was being offered a position as a high … [Read more...] about “Time” to be imitated?
Owning education
The Marks of a Christian Teacher: A Vocational Description (Part Two)[1] Mark Eckel, ThM PhD, Professor of Leadership, Education & Discipleship Capital Seminary & Graduate School, Washington, D.C. The true function of the teacher is to create the most favorable conditions for self-learning. True teaching is not that which gives knowledge, but that which stimulates pupils to gain it. One might say that he teaches best who teaches least.[2] “I do not want you to believe anything I tell you.” My mantra was … [Read more...] about Owning education
Book Review: Desiring the Kingdom
Once in a while a book comes along that crystallizes the things you have been thinking and takes you further down the road. This was such a book. James K.A. Smith contends that we are primarily "desiring animals" who think rather than "thinking things" who happen to have desires. He thinks much of Christian education has followed the latter conception and crucially fails to shape Christians who live and think Christianly. This is because their approaches failure to consider the importance of desire and the practices … [Read more...] about Book Review: Desiring the Kingdom
Review: The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert
Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert (Pittsburgh: Crown & Covenant Publications, 2012). 154 pp. Rosaria Butterfield is the kind of woman she herself once bitterly opposed. The homeschooling pastor's wife and adoptive mother of four was not raised in the Reformed Presbyterian Church. She was a self-described “lesbian postmodernist,” (p. 41) a professor of English and Queer Theory conducting research on the Promise Keepers movement, when she encountered Christian hospitality at … [Read more...] about Review: The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert