Spiritual Life and College

In a presentation to our Greensboro College faculty, Chaplain Robert Brewer shared information about the spiritual lives of our students.  Over 60% feel the college supports their spiritual life (important note – we are a small, Methodist affiliated college). In addition to reporting on our students, Chaplain Brewer shared information from national studies of the spiritual life of college students.  He seemed dismayed.  I was not surprised.

Religious affiliation of college students declines during the college years. According to a survey of several thousand students, only 11% entered college claiming no religious affiliation, but 24% left college claiming no religious affiliation. Christian students showed confusion and ambivalence toward their faith.  They associated Christianity with good values and principles, but also believed Christians are judgmental, hypocritical, anti-gay and too involved in politics. Other studies of college-age Christians found their core beliefs can be reduced to "being nice", and that being nice entitles them to comfort and happiness. The studies also showed that college students find their Christian faith does not help them withstand the “storms” of life, and that it is a faith that does not last beyond high school.

My response to the chaplain was that he was describing a stage of life that should not surprise him.  After all, the studies focused on a time in life where young people step outside their familiar circle of family and friends and embark on a spiritual journey with new powers of reasoning that make it easy to be skeptical of absolutes and confused by the contradictions in their faith. After all, his own report acknowledged that the faith of childhood does not prepare young adults for complex concepts like forgiveness, loving your enemies, compassion, sacrifice, concern for others and justice.

Let me personalize this:

Nine years old: I lay on my back in the grass, sunlight fading away, a sliver of moon above the eastern horizon, a few early stars glimmering in the violet sky. Where was God?  Maybe the stars were portals in the dome of the universe and, if I had a spaceship, I could get close enough to see through a portal into heaven. The preacher said God was watching over us and could see all that we do, that if we had faith in Him and did our best, we would go to heaven.  Where was heaven? On the other side of the dome?  On Sunday mornings, we pursued God and heaven.  Days ended with homage to the pursuit. Mom knelt by my bed as I prayed. “Now I lay me down to sleep . . . if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”  Rote speaking, difficult to ponder.

Going to church was a weekly ritual. We all went to church, and I mean ALL - mom, dad, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. Church was about sin and salvation. Sermons were pointed and fierce. Backsliding within the family was easily recognized and much talked about.

I wanted to be in the circle and safe from Hell. But I wasn’t always good.  I stole candy bars from the service station on the corner.  And prayed about it. I wanted to be made new and better. After being immersed in the baptismal waters, I checked my status the next day. I pinched my arm, wiggled my toes and waited for God’s voice to confirm that I was a new boy. An inkling of confusion came upon me when I could not discern any difference. From that day until now, life has been occasional moments of holiness interrupting a steady-state of non-holiness and backsliding.

My spiritual journey took its first detour during my college years when I became un-churched. I might be wrong, but I think that is the way it has to happen for some of us.  We have to step outside the circle of what we have inherited and find out where we really belong.  Maybe some of us belong within our spiritual inheritance, but I don’t think we know until we step outside of it and test it’s strength. College empowered me to be more fearless about matters of faith.

Many in my family would say I have lost my faith. I have long since accepted my spiritual state.  Backsliding is now someone else’s term.  I’m not a holy person, but I find spirituality, sometimes in a church, but often in a book, or in colors and textures of the earth and the sound and feel of water and wind. I have known people of many different faiths, Christian and non-Christian. I have friends who never speak of religious faith, but in their capacity for love and forgiveness I sense something strong and good. In the places I have been and the people I know, I am confident I belong to something bigger and more eternal than myself. That may not be satisfactory for you, but that’s between you and God.

Learning and the Soul

As we approach the start of another school year let’s consider some wisdom from our old friend Socrates. 

The power to learn is present in everyone’s soul.

Socrates located learning in the soul. He and his contemporaries viewed the soul as the essence of the human. For the Greeks, the soul included the functions of reason, emotions and “appetites” (desires).   For Socrates, the soul was the engine of learning. This is not a modern idea.  At least in the domain of secular education, the soul is out of bounds.  The brain is the body’s organ responsible for learning.  I am a student of modern education.  I believe in the usefulness of modern theory and practice about teaching and learning. It provides scientific information about how teachers teach and learners learn. Would-be teachers are advised to study it carefully.  I also believe Socrates was correct in indentifying the soul as the agent that powers learning.

We are, regardless of age, in charge of our own learning.  Good teachers draw students’ attention to their lessons. They ignite memory, understanding and action. Good teachers control many aspects of learning, but they do not control the soul of a student. It is difficult to connect with a soul that is fearful or depleted. If the body is hungry or is lacking sleep, learning is impeded. If the mind is distracted or addled by desire, learning is delayed. Learning happens under the conditions of hope, curiosity and a yearning to understand.  Teaching based on authority and technique may have short-term benefits for some, but true teaching reaches deeper and balances reasoning, emotions and appetites.  True teaching empowers the soul to continue learning in the absence of the teacher.

Here is the larger context of Socrates’ statement about learning and the soul:

The power to learn is present in everyone’s soul. The instrument with which each learns is like an eye that cannot be turned around from darkness to light without turning the whole body. . . Education takes for granted that sight is there but that it isn’t turned the right way or looking where it ought to look, and it tries to redirect it appropriately.

Notice the turning from darkness to light metaphor - from blindness to seeing, from ignorance to understanding.  Notice the reference to turning the whole body, which explains why schooling in ancient Greece began with physical training and the arts.  And finally, learning is re-directive.  The soul that believes it is on the right path and has no need for more knowledge is not the learning soul.

Another piece of wisdom from Socrates:

The virtue of reason seems to belong above all to something more divine, which never loses its power but is either useful and beneficial or useless and harmful, depending on the way it is turned.

Socrates refers to our ability to reason as a divine endowment - but with qualification. Our endowed reasoning can become either a beneficial tool or a harmful tool, “depending on the way it is turned”.  Socrates placed the responsibility for directing and nurturing the soul on parents and educators:

Good education and upbringing, when they are preserved, produce good natures, and useful natures, who are in turn well educated and grow up better than their predecessors . . . Those in charge must cling to education and see that it isn’t corrupted without their noticing it.

It is a vital responsibility we have. It leaves me mystified. I have tried to be a good parent. My children have become good adults, but I think I was lucky to have children born with “good natures”. The outcome of my teaching has been mixed.  I’ve helped many children improve their reading and writing. Many of my college students have become good teachers with enduring careers.  But I admit: I have lost many souls. Students have not always been attentive. Their minds have wandered. I have no evidence of their turning.

Think about that. And more frightfully, think about the indirect but harmful results of education: weapons of mass destruction and deceit, clever but greedy souls manipulating laws and economies, obfuscating technologies, industry destroying the natural order, and a soulless culture addicted to entertainment.

If you object to the inclusion of the soul as the agent of learning, then you must find some other comparable concept or mechanism that empowers learners to learn.  And to seek the good in themselve and others.

The quotes are from Plato’s Republic, (1992), translated by G.M.A. Grube, published by Hackett Publishing Co., Indianapolis, Indiana.

Algebra: What's the Point?

Image from http://www.zazzle.com/

The NY Times ran an op-ed piece by Andrew Hacker titled “Is Algebra Necessary?” Since I had such a memorable high school experience in Ms. Collins’ Algebra II class (see last post), I’ll weigh into this fray. 

Hacker makes at least two main points: (1) The current algebra curriculum has little practical relevance for students, except for the 5% entering the work-force in careers like producing animated movies, developing investment strategies or setting airline ticket prices. (2) Proficiency in algebra is a major stumbling block to high school graduation and success in college.

Hacker’s proposed revision of the math curriculum would involve better teaching of practical math for our personal and professional lives.  Instead of pure algebra and calculus, students would be taught the history of math and how math is applied to professions.  The standard math achievement (for the 95% who will never directly apply algebra) would be mastery of basic math needed for personal finance, measuring, estimation, and “citizen statistics” (understanding the reliability of numbers and how we use numbers to describe important issues).

Many who oppose Hacker’s view argue that algebra plays an important role in developing reasoning and problem solving skills. They suggest it is a form of mental training. Like an athlete who lifts weights to improve physical performance, students study advanced forms of intellectual disciplines to improve thinking and reasoning. I’m not sure about the accuracy of this analogy.  The brain is not a muscle. But, if we’re going to have schools, we should aim to develop advanced thinking skills.  We don’t just need advanced thinking skills for work, we need them to solve complex problems at home and in our personal lives.  I doubt we can develop those skills without putting students through a rigorous math curriculum.

The debate should not be about whether or not to teach algebra, or to whom.  We can teach math to young children in ways that lead to success in algebra. Children manipulate objects to solve problems. They sort, group, count and rearrange things when adding and subtracting and learning geometry. Algebra is the use of symbols to represent unknowns in math problems. In the equation x + 2 = 7,  “x” represents the unknown. Algebraic reasoning allows us to find the numeric value of “x”. Algebra is thinking symbolically about the physical realities of the universe.  Sal Kahn provides a more thorough and inspiring explanation in his introduction to algebra.

Here is a relevant story from my recent observation of kindergarten mathematics:

A teacher began a math unit with a pretest that required her 20 kindergarteners to solve two types of problems: (1) If I have 3 apples and you have 4 apples, how many apples do we have together? (2) If together we have 5 apples, and you have 3 apples, how many apples do I have?  She read the problems to the students and gave them paper apples to help work the problems. Five students solved the first problem, but only 1 of 20 solved the second problem.

After several days of practicing similar problems, always using objects to arrange, group, add and subtract, the teacher gave another test. Eighteen of 19 students solved the first problem and 11 of the 19 students solved the second problem.

The teacher was disappointed in the results, but I was surprised by how many students solved both problems.  Some of the students were only 5 years old. Previously, kindergartener math instruction taught children only to recognize numbers and count objects.  Addition and subtraction were first grade math. In 2012, good kindergarten teachers show children how to add and subtract by thinking “algebraically”.  The children do it surprisingly well if the teacher demonstrates the process and provides plenty of practice.

We should rethink the context and method of teaching algebra.  Without the manipulation of objects and without the application of algebra to the real world, many students will miss its purpose - to think logically about how the universe works. 

Algebra is not the only tool for abstract reasoning. Grammar is an abstraction of language.  “Subject + predicate = sentence” is an abstraction of a simple sentence structure. Obviously, we can learn and use language rather well without knowing its grammatical structures and principles; but, learning grammar and using it to fine-tune our use language is relatively easy as long students are capable of thinking abstractly about language. Failing grades in grammar results from the same flawed teaching methods that makes algebra difficult to learn – instruction that relies too much on the students’ memory of “rules” and not enough on students’ understanding of the relationships among things.

The highest level of schooling, whether it occurs in high school, college, university or graduate school, should produce learners who can think and reason abstractly.  Algebra and grammar are tools of abstract reasoning and we’ve got to teach those disciplines at the times and in the manner that nurture thinking, reasoning, and abstracting about the natural and human world.  Teaching algebra in the context of real objects and real-world problems must be added to drilling students in proper mathematical procedures.  Teaching grammar in the context of meaningful and interesting language is the only effective way to teach grammar.  But we cannot set a precise deadline by which all students show mastery of these abstract disciplines.  We must allow for the natural variations in human ability. Believing that all students can apply abstract reasoning (without the use of real objects or meaningful language) by a particular age is the flawed belief of people who never mastered algebra or grammar.