Quote of the Day: Lazy American Students

From an op-ed piece in the Boston Globe:

We’ve got a knowledge gap, spurred by a work-ethic gap.

Kara Miller, professor at Babson College.


I think that describes large segments of American society, not just the students. We have a big sense of entitlement coupled with a disdain for personal responsibility.


If you're at all concerned with the decline in performance of American students compared to international students and how that might affect the global marketplace of ideas, then I highly recommend you read the whole essay.


HT: Rich B via Facebook

Subjected to Futility in Hope

After meeting many grad students and young professors at SBL this year, I've been musing a bit about the long-term job prospects for many of us. It's a depressing subject. I was reminded of a couple of posts from Chris Brady on the subject of grad students and maybe not getting a PhD. More depressing.

In honor of the universal experience of grad students in the humanities everywhere, I've paraphrased Romans 8:19-21 (building on an off-the-cuff quip using the biblical anthological style I made at 5:30 am on the way to the airport on Tuesday - yes, it was a bit early for that, Wen!).

For the students wait with eager longing for the conferring of degrees. For the students were subjected to futility, willingly, and through the professors who subjected them, in hope that the students themselves would be set free from their bondage to coursework and obtain the freedom of the glory of the tenure-track.

P.S. If you're interested in Aramaic, early biblical interpretation, issues in Higher Education, and religious studies related comics and you don't follow Chris's blog Targuman, well, shame on you - subscribe right now.

If I'd Only Known . . .

Too bad I didn't know about this before I invested time and money into years of graduate school studying the Bible in the original languages.

From www.christianbook.com:

Biblical Language Library, 4 Volumes
Hendrickson Publishers / Hardcover

Product Description

If you're serious about studying Scripture in its original language, then this is the resource you need! Four classic references are coded to Strong's numbering system, so you don't have to know Hebrew or Greek. All you need is yourStrong's Concordance. Set includes The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, The Englishman's Hebrew Concordance, The Englishman's Greek Concordance, and Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon. Hardcovers, from Hendrickson.

All you need is BDB, Thayer's, and Strong's Concordance! Wow! If I'd only known . . .

This reminds me of another question that I've been musing about this week.

Who makes a better interpreter of the Bible? The scholar who's invested years in formal education in biblical studies or the good-intentioned average layperson with no formal training, a set of the Biblical Language Library, and the "illumination" of the Holy Spirit every time they crack open the Word?

Hmm . . . that's a tougher question than I thought. Does the illumination of the Spirit trump formal education? Those of you lacking in formal education will say yes. Those of us with the training will say no. "Illumination" strikes me as a form of special pleading where those in a community of faith can exempt their interpretations from the scrutiny of those who don't share them. It could also be used to claim authority and privilege interpretations that are otherwise not acceptable in academic circles.

Amateurs acting like they're experts or arguing with experts. That's just one of my pet peeves.

"Self-taught, no lessons. Thank you very much, Pop." (from The Wedding Singer)

Update: My honest question pet peeve makes me an elitist according to Nick. -Sigh-

Teaching the Bible in Public Schools

USA Today recently published an opinion column discussing the issue of teaching biblical literature to public school students. Like it or not, the Bible has had a profound influence on history and culture throughout the world. Several of my students taking biblical poetry last semester were English majors, only there to raise their biblical literacy enough to catch and understand more of the biblical allusions in classic English literature. Time magazine ran an article a year or so ago that explored the issue of teaching Bible as an elective in public schools. Their article looked specifically at what was being done in some of the states that had added the Bible elective to their curriculum. Here's an excerpt from USA Today. I recommend reading the whole piece.

"Students who want to do serious study of Western civilization need to know the Bible," says Barbara Newman, Northwestern University professor of English, Religion and Classics. "They need to know the Bible, even if they do not believe the Bible."

Harvard professor Robert Kiely, for one, agrees. In 2006, he participated in an academic survey of professors from many of America's leading universities — including Yale, Princeton, Brown, Rice, California-Berkeley and Stanford. The survey — commissioned by the Bible Literacy Project, which promotes academic Bible study in public schools — found an overwhelming consensus among top professors that incoming college students need to be well-versed in the stories, themes and words of the Bible.

"If a student doesn't know any Bible literature, he or she will simply not understand whole elements of Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser, Milton, Pope, Wordsworth. One could go on and on and on," Kiely told Concordia professor Marie Wachlin and her research team.

"Knowledge of the Bible can be a key to unlocking other subjects. . . especially literature, art, music and social studies," say Chuck Stetson, co-editor of the visually stunning high school textbook The Bible and Its Influence, and founder of the Bible Literacy Project.

And knowledge of the Bible can be a key to understanding much of today's pop culture. Like Stephen Colbert's irreverent humor on Comedy Central. Or Jim Carrey's screwball spirituality in Bruce Almighty. Or the devilishly clever title of the band White Stripes' release, Get Behind Me Satan.

Not surprisingly, students growing up in non-religious homes are often behind the curve. "Many of my students are quite secular and have very little knowledge of the Bible," Northwestern's Newman says. "This is a major disadvantage."

Indeed, Newman says that trying to appreciate biblical allusions in literature without an underlying knowledge of Scripture is like trying to appreciate a good joke when someone has to explain the punch line. You might eventually "get" the joke, she says, but by the time you do, "it's not funny anymore."

More Pastors Need PhDs

In light of my last post on how a certain uneducated pastor butchers the Bible every time he goes to preach, Brian's post today about the need for more people with PhDs in biblical studies or theology to serve churches instead of staying in academia seems all the more relevant. It makes sense that any religious community will be better served by well-educated leaders whether priests, pastors, or rabbis.

We Don’t Need No Education

. . . to rightly divide the Word of Truth. At least, some people don't think education is important when it comes to reading and interpreting the Bible.

I was briefly distracted from my studies the other night when I saw this link that Ken Brown noted on Twitter (posted earlier by Brandon Wason). The link directs to an article titled "Why Bible College is Unscriptural and Wrong" by the infamous Pastor Steven L. Anderson (of "pisseth against the wall" Youtube fame), fundamentalist, King James only, uneducated . . . and proud of it.

I was baffled by his attempt to write-off "college" because the Bible doesn't mention "college" except once in the KJV and it's associated with . . . <gasp> a female preacher! More precisely, it relates to the prophetess Huldah in 2 Kings 22:14 (and parallel in 2 Chron 34:22) who lived "in Jerusalem in the college." Of course, if Anderson knew anything about Hebrew or used any other translation than the KJV, he would have known the word the KJV translates “college” is ha-mishneh “the Second Quarter” of Jerusalem; it has nothing to do with higher education. I’m really not sure where the translation “college” came from, unless it was just an anachronistic assumption that the prophets and prophetesses lived together in the same area (used religiously in the “college of cardinals” sense). I have to admit that I stopped reading at this point. I’d seen more than enough to recognize the work of a crank.

Then to my surprise, the crazy exegesis of Mr. Anderson popped up again yesterday in my RSS feeds. Darrell Pursiful and Dr. Claude Mariottini (also here) fearlessly take up the cause of pointing out how ridiculous Anderson's interpretation of Deut 22:5 really is (the part where the Bible says cross-dressing is wrong).

His completely ignorant, anachronistic way of reading Scripture can only be explained by the fact that he believes formal biblical training in college or seminary is somehow wrong and unscriptural.

Yes, we’re all incredulous at his assertions. Yes, he’s serious. He might be crazy, or at least slightly out of touch with reality. He definitely needs to take 1 Tim 2:2 about respecting the government more seriously.

I think he should be in the running for the next Worst Preacher Ever competition. There are many more examples of how bad he can be on his Youtube channel with over 400 videos uploaded. Education? He doesn’t need it.

Teaching Method

Ken Schenk has posted more today about the creation of a seminary at Indiana Wesleyan University. At first, I passed over the post unread, but now I'm glad I returned to give it a read. He has some very insightful observations about classroom pedagogy that those of us who intend to enter the teaching profession need to think about. Having had the experience this last semester of leading my own lecture course, I'm definitely thinking over how I could do things better next time. Most of the time I lectured, and I think Ken's right that it's one of the least effective methods. The best class I had was when I switched formats and we had a discussion integrating and evaluating different interpretations of Song of Songs.

Brooke (Anumma) also brought up the topic of teaching this week. I never knew there was a Teaching Carnival. Apparently, there's a whole branch of academia that is solely concerned with learning about how to teach more effectively . . . who knew? Isn't it ironic that a PhD is the main teaching credential for colleges and universities and you can get one without ever learning how to teach?