I am finding it hard to nail down, so this post is a necessarily inadequate attempt. I am hoping for responses which deepen this. So, here goes:
- There seems to be a far greater expectation that educators are 'service-providers' and students (and, where relevant, their parents) are 'clients'. The economic paradigm is corrupting at almost every level - though it is understandable given the huge price of education.
- Whereas in the past, students had to find their own articles and materials, and make their own way in attempting assignments, today there is an expectation that a task will be clearly spelt out with accompanying notes, and that specific articles will be provided direct to the student. Research in the library seems almost redundant.
- Knowledge of 'learning styles' has led to great student/parent awareness of teachers not addressing the different learning styles. On occassion, students even refuse to learn if their 'learning style' is not catered to!
- Teachers at secondary and tertiary level are weighed down with administration and reporting.
- There has been a strong reaction against exams as a form of assessment. The advantage of exams is that they are the least labour-intensive form of assessment from the point of view of teachers - meaning they are free to care for students in other ways.
- Vocational training has almost completely triumphed over the old, humanist-style (and Christian-endorsed) broad-based education in subjects which cannot be justified by appeal to 'relevance'. Like Latin, for example. Knowledge is almost never now seen as an end in itself. The complete victory of pragmatism?
- The postmodern to turn to perspectival approaches to texts means that students no longer develop basic skills in interpretation and exegesis of texts in their own language. Year 12 students are taught how to give a Foucauldian reading of a website, but not how to read it. (And hey, I like some things about postmodernism!) They are equipped with suspicion, and not naivety: and I think the latter is essential for good reading. The former only gets in the way.
- History is bunk, as far as contemporary education goes.
- We don't put up with people who are bad teachers (on the face of it) but great thinkers. And yet some of the best educational experiences happen with such people.
- The emphasis in high school on a final, standardised test/assessment has led to the dumbening down of educational standards, because of the need to compare apples with oranges. It also leads to very assessment-stressed students at tertiary level. Anxiety about assessment is palpable.
- Memorisation of anything is now just not done.
Any more?
24 comments:
Hi Michael,
I think these 11 points nail it. The only one that doesn't entirely resonate with my (limited) experience is point 8. I feel there's still a desire amongst students to be pseudo-'history-buffs'. Maybe just so we can name drop or have 'great' allies supporting our hobby horses.
Luke
Yup, better grades are being given to more people for less work:
http://www.gradeinflation.com/
Hi Michael
Let me play devils advocate for the sake of debate...and suggest there is plenty of good in what you have mentioned....
1) What's wrong with this? The students have come to learn - surely that's what they should expect?
2) Overstated - but there's plenty of truth to it. Do you think this may be an overreaction to assignment setting (and lack of clear expectations) in the past?
3) Whilst the extreme example is of course deplorable, addressing different learning styles has opened up education to a much wider audience.
4) True.
5) Yet in education theory, exams are some of the worse ways to check what people have learnt.
6) yes - prgamatism should be shot (seriously).
7) true.
8) I wouldn't know - who cares about history anyway? (kidding ;-)
9) If they are bad teachers, they can't teach, and shouldn't.
10) yep.
11) yep.
ok - so I could play advocate to some of your points - others just can't be argued against.
Mike
Hi Michael,
I'll dip my toe into this debate. I am a friend of your sister and your cousin.
I also work in university education.
1. What is the alternative to education being a service-provision industry? What was it before that? Was it perhaps not quite as blatant? Didn't students expect an education and expect the education provider to provide it?
2. Research in the library is redundant, but not only for the reason you state. I think that higher level study still requires more research (I certainly found that in my Masters) with less direction, and PhD's even more so. Research in the library is redundant mainly because most students these days don't go near the library, except electronically. Perhaps the exception is Moore College, and places like it. In my Masters, I went to the library in a strategic 15 minute block, to borrow the books I was expecting to borrow. I certainly didn't stay there to "research". Most of my "research" was done online. But I'm sure you know that.
3. I think variation in learning styles can only be a good thing - I certainly try to teach using a variety of styles. But students need to accept that they may have to learn in a non-preferred learning style. It's a big of a give and take with both students and teachers.
4. Definitely at tertiary level. Academics are overwhelmed.
5. The strong reaction against exams is more prevalent in the humanities. In the sciences and engineering, there is still a heavy emphasis on exams. And in assessment theory, exams assess people who are good at time-poor thinking and writing. Not necessarily what you want.
6. Yes, it's because students go to learn to get a profession. There is no merit seen in learning for learning's sake. However, in switched on students, they will learn outside the box because of the sheer love of learning. And who can blame students anyway? Even my undergraduate degree cost only about $10K. They are paying more, and paying more more visibly now.
7. I don't know anything about this to comment one way or another.
8. Well, the problem with the study of history in the pragmatic educational state we are in is that it only prepares for teaching history. So it is ignored (at its peril).
9. Um, yes we do in universities. Thinkers are still rewarded over good teachers, even though ALTC is trying to change that. Universities are still about good thinkers being academics, not good teachers.
10. I wouldn't say the educational system as dumbed down. I don't think it's that simple. Students are learning about a lot more different things now, to a less comprehensive degree. There's just more stuff that "needs to be learnt". A look back at our father's generation shows the vast expansion in information we are supposed to know.
11. Memorisation in education theory is a very shallow form of learning, so I think in general it's a good thing if memorisation is not emphasised. Knowing what to do with facts is seen as more important. I don't entirely agree with this. I think it's still important to memorise - poetry, literature, formulae that are intimately known and never forgotten. And most of all, of course, scripture.
I would add that students don't see uni as somewhere they go every day, so they don't see it as full-time (often to their detriment). They cram their hours into 2 or 3 days, and then work the other days. It makes it very hard to get students interested in anything extra-curricular, including things like Christian groups on campus.
Also, higher or further education seems to be increasingly seen as an absolute necessity, and there is very little emphasis on many people who don't hold further qualifications who actually have "achieved" in the real world. This is tied into the emphasis on "getting into uni" and the year 12 pressure.
This applies to secular universities (UNSW, USYD, etc) rather than Moore College, but will probably have some impact given that the majority of college students go to university beforehand:
#1 & #6 cut both ways. Timetabling and funding at universities mean that it's very difficult to have any sort of broad university experience other than the specific vocational training (from your service provider). There's no common lunch hour, semesters are crammed into shorter time spans, student groups aren't properly funded and find it difficult to meet.
I think students come with a mentality from the culture that they will get something from the university and then go home (an attitude evident in how they, in general, interact with academics/tutors/etc), but the universities are certainly reinforcing and hardening that mentality.
Sam.
goods obs
I am a fan of generalist education - particularly in theological education - but I wonder whether there isn't a place for outcome orientated learning at least in part.
or put another way - we need to learn to think, but also shown how to do .
education needs both theory and pragmatics maybe?
oh and if an educator is going to set up a commercial arrangement with their students, (i.e charge a shed load of money for a degree) you will have to always deal with market forces and having to be clear about what you are selling so that people know what they are or are not buying into!
ps you made the cut
This was true for me for university studies on the whole, but is contrary to my experience at Moore College.
Actually, the absence of some of these elements are some of the most complained about things by students that I have heard.
Eg. exams as the primary method of assessment (5), and the consequence of this - memorisation is important (11), or generally a single teaching/learning setting (lectures) that don't suit all learning styles (3)
You could argue that the curriculum is also counter cultural on the pragmatic/vocational scale (6) although this may be changing.
Interesting thoughts still...
Thanks everyone for these thoughts. Real quality here!
I tried to offer these points as observations, not as whinges. But certainly, as some of the Moore students have observed, there is now a mismatch between how students have been taught to learn at university and how we are used to teaching them at our smaller, less-resourced institution. I imagine smaller institutions will always be behind on educational theory and practice. Not an excuse, just an observation.
I do think that there is a better way to think about pragmatics... that is, good learning ought to inform real life at every level without being reduced to mere pragmatism. The premise being: if it's true, it works...
good learning ought to inform real life at every level without being reduced to mere pragmatismPerhaps that's what ought to be, Michael, but I'm not convinced it's what is. That is, I can write an A-grade 3,000-word essay on original sin, say, without having any idea how to pastor un/believing parents who've lost a baby to cot death. This is why the exegesis is not the application — most of us just aren't that good at joining the dots, and we need to help each other with this (as well as asking the Holy Spirit to help).
A couple of comments on theological education especially:
On #2: Theology is a massive field where heaps has been written on everything. Students need orientation to it, especially when there is a lot of assessment, and fairly broad-brushstrokes assessment. That is, if I have a bunch of 2,000-3,000-word papers to churn out, I can only do an overview of the topic. I don't have time to do lengthy, serious research. So I need help knowing what I should read for my overview. I remember getting an essay back in first year with the comment, "Anderson would have helped you, here." To this day, I don't know who Anderson is. (An extreme example, I know.)
On #6: I did a Philosophy degree, so clearly I believe in learning for its own sake. But taken to its extreme, this is a bourgeois indulgence — especially if we think Bible college is about learning how better to serve Jesus, his people, and his world. Doing theology is not just about information, but about skills. It's learning to cook, rather than memorizing recipes. So we should be teaching people the skills they need. I'll leave aside those parts of pastoring which are not academic for the moment, and imagine that Bible college is only training in academia. Even in this case, if we're imagining students in pastoral settings out the other side of college, we should shape the college programme to give them the skills they need (e.g. ability to interact critically with various theological viewpoints and apply them to real life). This will necessarily involve learning how bring the light of the gospel to bear on my culture, too.
On #5: Exams inevitably shift the emphasis from 'learning' to 'passing the exam' (hence students' propensity to use 'form guides' and cram). Perhaps a half-way house is the take-home exam. The few Philosophy exams I had at university were take-homes. These have a few advantages, and might even be easier to mark (because you don't have to negotiate the childish scribble of people who have never had to write anything by hand):
1. They use the skills required in real life: the capacity to think Biblically, to research and synthesize several points of view under some time constraints;
2. They allow access to normal real-life tools (commentaries, BibleWorks, the internet, et cetera);
3. They are useful to others: perhaps things have changed, but 'in my day' we never saw our exams again. How useful it would be to have crisp, 500-word answers to a broad range of questions on my hard-drive, so that when someone at church comes to me and asks, “What do you think of the emerging church movement?”, or, “Is there any Biblical basis for the idea that Jesus is God?”, I can e-mail them my take- home-exam answer, and use that to begin a conversation.
Thanks for that Stuart. I offered the list not as a position paper but as observation: educational culture has changed rapidly and we are feeling the tension. Some of it is good, some of it - well, it is worth questioning. There has been a shift in the character of knowledge: as you said, there is now a VAST amount of material out there on each topic. A generation ago, there would have been two commentaries on, say, Colossians, on the MTC book shelves. But now, there are two SHELVES worth of commentaries on Colossians. This changes everything.
I certainly think exams are not optimal forms of assessment. We have persisted with them partly because we want people to integrate the whole of the syllabus and not just focus on parts of it. The take-home exam is a good compromise.
And, you are right: we have for too longed assumed that students would join the dots vis a vis the practical end.
The point I was trying to make is this: in response to criticism that Moore isn't practical enough, it would be a great mistake to persue pragmatISM. This is just the opposite folly. Rather, we need to be convicted that truth works, and follow the line from deep thinking to wise living (under the Spirit).
I am not sold on the vocabulary of 'skills' - something in my (bourgeois?) heart revolts against that kind of word. I think the idea of wisdom - as we find it in Proverbs - encompasses both 'theoretical' and 'applied' knowledge.
So is the answer to practical application and "skilling up" an after-college apprenticeship scheme then? I don't think anyone here would argue that sound, biblical knowledge and ability to think biblically is critical, and from what I've heard (all hearsay) the Moore College curriculum is packed already.
Perhaps an extension of the work that Rob Smith does? (Not that I really know much of what he does... my ignorance is immense).
So perhaps a post-college apprenticeship focussing on learning the practical wise living applications of the theology?
And on a side issue, but one that worries me, is it true that Moore doesn't teach how to preach, other than perhaps giving one sermon per student over the degree?
No, it is absolutely NOT true that Moore doesn't teach how to preach. And we are at present rethinking how we do this. What we don't do is reduce preaching to a method or set of techniques. But it is also the case that preaching is best learnt in the pulpit and not in the classroom.
hey MJ,
how is preaching being rethought?
what are the issues - seems like a good casse studt in the theory/ pragmatics stuff.
also is there a D MIN on the horizon - like a masters or something that teachers aspects of 'wise' church leadership based on the wonderful theological foundation we are given in the BD ?
SCR
Thanks for that. I didn't think so. I just had heard that it didn't really.
Perhaps you could rethink here a bit about it sometime. :)
That's the thing about Moore College that goes beyond secular education. Working at a "secular" institution, I find it hard to work out how the vital word of God intersects with teaching and learning. There's such an immense responsibility that institutions like Moore hold! Scary.
A few remarks at random:
Memorisation, and trust, are both essential to learning, and to the extent that they have been discarded we are crippling the process. Knowing facts is not everything: yes, I know. Trust can be abused: yes, I get it; my trust has been abused times without number. But this does not made memorisation or trust bad things, and it does not change human nature in this matter. (Cue the song "It's just the way it is", in your favourite version.) We really should call "time" on this one.
As for training in preaching, and practical questions generally: there is an unavoidable tension between the academic calling of Moore and its role as the qualifying institution for Anglican ministry in this town. More essential than fixing any given problem, it seems to me, is (1) recognising that Moore cannot do everything, and (2) thinking clearly and openly about whatever the problem is. Examples:
(A) Looking beyond Moore for a moment, MTS meets a need, and MTS is there for a reason. MTS is also a rather particular model, whereas people and ministries are various. Someone else must have something to offer in this matter, but in organisational terms these people are ... where, exactly? Shouldn't someone see to this?
(B) Michael you said that training in preaching is currently being re-thought. On the street, I hear that recent practice has been to leave this to groups of students to train each other by their unaided collective efforts: if that's accurate, it sounds --- well --- obviously problematic. Is there some direction to the rethinking?
The on-the-street word isn't right.. we have at present preaching groups run by faculty - not assessed as part of the formal programme.
There are a number of things being floated - should we have a homiletics professor (for example)? Who could such a person be?
A few thoughts:
(1) I agree with Shane: if students are paying their institutions and teachers, how else are they meant to see them but as service providers? And is it that bad if teachers consider themselves not only to have a general duty to do their job well, but also to have a specific duty to ensure they fulfil their students’ reasonable expectations?
(6) Education and training are really two different things. The Americans seem to be much better at preserving this distinction: you study sciences or liberal arts first, with job-focused training later. However, I doubt that Australians and British people are prepared to pay enough (through the tax system or as parents) for an education/training system of this kind.
(7) This is cancerous.
(9) In humanities academia, you can get away without being much good at either teaching or thinking so long as you publish a lot. This is also cancerous.
(10) True, but what do you do about it? Demand for tertiary places outstrips supply, and other forms of assessment are not obviously better.
(11) Abandoning memorisation was a great loss. If you memorise something, you have it for life: your understanding of it deepens because it lives and matures with you.
Finally, to add to your list:
The argument that you should study subjects like Latin and History (or, of course, Theology) because they “teach you to think” is at best questionable. If they’re worth studying (which they are) it is because they are worth knowing for their own sake. You could “learn to think” by doing sudoku or crossword puzzles.
Shane asked about an MTC D.Min... as a member of the post-grad committee for the last 7 years, this has been raised and rejected for two main reasons:
1) its not "core" MTC business
2) not a perceived need.
Interestingly, it is the "set books" MA subjects that are most consistently filled, with Christian Thought and then Christian Ministry following. There are a smaller number of Christian ministry offerings, and apart from exceptions like church planting, are generally small in number!
Ironically, this is not because of some high-minded pursuit of more "academic" MA subjects by the MA market: feedback is pretty consitent that people (mostly minsters / workers with preaching / teaching responsibilities) take the "set books" classes because it gives them a pretty good preaching programme for the next 3-6 months!!!
So I think this is an interesting "case study" of MJ's original thesis!
On the street, I hear that recent practice has been to leave this to groups of students to train each other by their unaided collective effortsHi Michael
The "word on the street" is closer to the truth then you give it credit for. Though still wrong.
The on-the-street word isn't right.. we have at present preaching groups run by faculty - not assessed as part of the formal programme.
From at least 2006-2008 preaching was peer assessed for all years. In 2009, for fourth year at least, peer assessed preaching has been removed (I'm not sure about other years). Let me be clear: There is nothing assessing fourth year preaching as part of the academic programme.
From 2008, VOLUNTARY preaching groups are being run by faculty. These are excellent, but of course only attract people who have the time, and think it's important. And there is no formal assessment.
However, as you point out, none of this means preaching isn't being taught. And whilst there is room for significant improvement, the basics are rock solid.
A few final points:
- Good exegetical method is thoroughly taught, and rigourously tested throughout college. This is the core of good preaching. Without it - there's no point in preaching.
- Preaching is taught in every year formally through the congregational ministry subjects.
- Preaching is taught informally through Chapel, the Student minister programme, and other such opportunities.
- From (at least) 2006-2008 the final product of preaching - the actual sermon was peer assessed.
- In 2009, for fourth year, there is no formal, assessable sermon critiquing as part of the academic programme.
- From 2008 voluntary preaching groups are being run by the faculty. The final product of preaching (the sermon) is rigourously, thoroughly and vigourously critiqued. It's fantastic, and I highly recommend it.
Mike
Mike: Thanks for the precision of your summary; I feel I have a picture for what's going on now.
I'm glad you've benefited from the voluntary faculty groups: this sounds like it was a good initiative.
is there anything in the course to do with homoletical method?
is there anything in the course to do with homoletical method?I would say they all deal with homoletical method. Some more explicitly then others.
Mike
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