I was in Disney World last week, which means I had a great time with my family, but I didn’t get much research done.
Here is my research update for this week:
3 links:
In this article from Barry Schwartz, he argues that nurturing “intellectual virtues, and not job training, is what university education should be for.” I found this particular quote encouraging:
How do university teachers display intellectual virtues? What questions they ask in class teaches students how to ask questions. How they pursue dialogue with students models reflectiveness. Professors teach students when and how to interrupt—by when and how they interrupt. Professors teach them how to listen by how carefully they listen. If they see their teacher admitting that she doesn’t know something, it encourages intellectual honesty as well as humility. Teachers are always modeling. And the students are always watching.
I enjoyed this podcast discussion from The Classical Mind on A.G. Sertillanges’s The Intellectual Life so much, that I went out and purchased a copy as soon as I could.
If you aren’t subscribed to The Raised Hand, then you are really missing out. In the most recent edition, Elizabeth Corey offers the following assessment of higher education in 2022:
This busy achievement culture fails to consider the fulfillment and happiness of individual students, and we as teachers and administrators are very much to blame. We assign inordinate amounts of work, tell them that every grade matters, hold them to standards they can never meet, and then wonder why they become anxious and depressed. The intellectual life is no longer a joy but a burden. It is a forced march through fall and spring semesters until students can breathe in the summer—though not for long, because they need to shadow a doctor or accept a Washington, D.C. internship. It is, to quote Hobbes, a “perpetual and restless desire for power after power, that ceaseth only in death.”
2 books
Books Received - Earlier this week, I received a copy of Jason Baehr’s Deep in Thought: A Practical Guide to Teaching for Intellectual Virtues. I am particularly interested in his chapter on assessing intellectual virtues. I suspect it will serve as a fundamental resource for me.
On a related note, I am at Wake Forest University for the next two days attending a conference put on by the Program for Character and Leadership entitled Educating Character Across the University. I am looking forward to sitting in on Dr. Baehr’s workshop on intellectual virtue.
Recommendation - I recently finished Wendell Berry’s Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997. This was gifted to me as a graduation gift from my pastor. I couldn’t have asked for a better gift. This was my first encounter with Berry’s poetry and he quickly climbed the ranks in my mind as one of my favorite modern poets. I think Berry captures the image of the philosopher-poet. He will call your impulses and desires into question, and ask you to consider the real cost of your affections. For this season, it was exactly what my soul needed. tolle lege.
1 thought from me
Building off of the quote from Elizabeth Corey above, I am concerned that the anxieties of the students she describes is a direct reflection of the education we have been giving them. Our students, at least the students I am around, are experts in the pursuit of achievement. When I meet with students, they consistently tell me how behind in life they feel. These are 18- and 19-year-olds who feel as if life is getting away from them. And the question I keep asking is, “who taught them that?” In our emphasis on the resume virtues (see Brooks) of grit and grind, are we cultivating students who excel in skill but struggle to flourish? One of the strengths of virtue education is the emphasis it places on educators as the model of a meaningful intellectual life. Perhaps this sort of emphasis is the missing link in the development of our students. If so, then what sort of habits and postures must educators possess in order to cultivate students who flourish in a culture that always demands its pound of flesh? It’s worth thinking about.