Modern Education

It's been awhile, and so I decided to not only post, but to update my blog a bit. Someone around here needs a make-over, and I have a few pounds to go before I'm getting new clothes, so instead the blog is getting a spring wardrobe.

So much has changed over the past few months I was tempted to just start a whole new blog, but now that seems unnecessary. It's easy in the changes of life to chuck the old aside, hit refresh, and start over. But that's not the way stories go, and that's not the way God works. He erases our sins, but never the plot, and even the boring, tragic, or day-to-day chapters He makes glorious.

Which has nothing to do with this post. A companion of mine at EvCC left a brilliant journal in my mailbox, and I have been reading it instead of grading essays. I have also been staring out the window at sunshine and musing about teal-colored shoes. Which has nothing to do with this post. The journal is called the Intercollegiate Review, and it's published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), a conservative and fascinating group of crazy, anti-establishment traditional rebels.

It contains an article entitled "Liberal Learning Confronts the Composition Despots." It's fantastic - and I will mainly link to it, because it says everything I've been thinking much better than I have thought or communicated it. I love one of his opening quotes: "'Education,' in the original sense, is true to its ultimate Latin root word, educere, 'to lead forth,' 'to bring out.' Maturity, which is its goal, thus requires an emergence from or growing out of an undeveloped or incomplete condition: that self-centeredness that seems an innate element of the human condition."

Then, he rightly criticizes the current Education system in America, where "it ought to be clear that we are dealing not with the failure of an educational system but rather with fraud on a grand scale. We cannot 'reform' our system of education because it is not at all a system...but instead a curious and uneven amalgam of job training, indoctrination, and custodial care." He moves on to argue for the necessity of reading and history in true education, which is "not merely an accumulation of information or techniques; it is a comprehensive vision of reality, seeing beyond the immediate horizon while knowing the limits of its perception."

For the past few years, especially, I have watched students enter my class with less - less personal responsibility, critical thinking, and ability to formulate an English sentence. Possessive pronouns are becoming antiquated, apparently, because our schools current curriculum could've never focused on the importence of grammar. We need a return to tradition. We need to start reading books again. We need to teach BOOKS in composition courses. Really, just read the article. It's worth your time. And I need to go grade papers about weather or not Frankensteins monster is a human bean.