Devotion to the Subject

Posted on August 10, 2012 by Matthew Phillips

“Devotion to the subject is the one factor which inspires both sound learning and sound teaching.  If one is really keen on a discipline, one’s enthusiasm will usually communicate itself to the students.  Even if they do not share it (perhaps because they will find the subject itself dull and repellent) they will at least become aware of the wider possibilities of intellectual adventure.” Gilbert Highet. The Immortal Profession. New York, 1976. 

Gilbert Highet taught classics at Oxford and Columbia for forty years during the mid-twentieth century.  Based upon his experience as a professor, this book contains his wisdom on teaching and learning.  This quote demonstrates the significant role that the teacher’s passion for the subject plays in the classroom.  Professors must model devotion to their discipline for their students.  Notice, the professor does not direct his or her devotion primarily to the student but the subject.

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God never stops teaching

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Matthew Phillips

…and Christians never stop learning.

“God Himself is not ashamed to teach these things daily.  He knows nothing better to teach.  He always keeps teaching the same thing and does not take up anything new or different.  All the saints know nothing better or different to learn and cannot finish learning this.  Are we not the finest of all fellows to imagine that if we have once read or heard the catechism, we know it all and have no further need to read or learn? Can we finish learning in one hour what God Himself cannot finish teaching?  He is engaged in teaching this from the beginning to the end of the world.  All prophets, together with all saints, have been busy learning it, have ever remained students, and must continue to be students.” Martin Luther, “Longer Preface,” Large Catechism, sec. 16.

Traditional late medieval catechisms contained the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and other daily prayers. Luther continued this traditional format and added his own explanations. He completed his catechisms with sections on Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and Confession and Absolution.  Here Dr. Luther exhorts Christians to continue learning and listening to God’s Word and the catechism.  The image of God as the consistent and constant teacher reflects Luther’s pedagogical emphasis on repetition of texts and the need for sinner/saints to be continually learning.  In the school of Christ (a medieval monastic idea) one never graduates.        

 

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Grades, Teaching and Learning

Posted on July 16, 2012 by Matthew Phillips

 This post differs from most of my posts here.  The quotes below are from a recent article from the Chronicle of Higher Education on the topic of grading and the college student.

“Consider a car’s speedometer. It is a tool that performs two interrelated functions: (1) It measures speed, and (2) it communicates that information to the driver. In a somewhat similar way, grading is a tool that also performs two interrelated functions: (1) It assesses academic performance, and (2) it communicates that information to the student. When driving, you glance at the speedometer to determine the speed of the vehicle—if it is what you want, you try to maintain it; if not, you make appropriate adjustments. That is analogous to how students are supposed to use, and benefit from, whatever it is that their grades are telling them.” [Italics in original]

“Since grades have only instrumental value—rather than any intrinsic value—they must be treated as only means to some end, and never as ends in themselves. I tell my students: If your primary goal in college is to receive good grades, you will probably view the required work as an onerous obstacle and you’re not likely to feel very motivated to do the work. But you are most likely to receive good grades when you are so focused on learning that grades have ceased to matter.”

“Learning is never directly caused by anything that a professor does. It happens as a result of the student’s own activities (reading, thinking, writing, etc.), while the professor can only facilitate that process. Since the responsibility for learning lies with the student, so does the burden of demonstrating that he or she has actually achieved that learning.”

“I try to help my students realize that learning is its own reward. No amount of accolades, trophies, diplomas, and money can equal the worth of one’s actual learning. It is impossible to reduce the full richness or value of a genuine learning experience to something as bland as a letter grade.”

Author: Ahmed Afzaal, http://chronicle.com/article/GradingIts-Discontents/132789/

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Life, Liberty and Possessions

Posted on July 2, 2012 by Matthew Phillips

“But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of license; though man in that state have an uncontrollable liberty to dispose of his person and possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it.  The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges everyone; and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that, being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.  For men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent and infinitely wise Maker–all the servants of one sovereign Master, sent into the world by His order, and about His business–they are His property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during His, not one another’s pleasure; and being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for ours.  Everyone, as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station willfully, so, by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.” John Locke, An Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent and End of Civil Government, ed. Edwin A. Burtt, The English Philosophers from Bacon to Mill (New York: Random, 1939), p. 405. [Emphasis added]

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Greediness Pretends to be Liberality

Posted on June 29, 2012 by Matthew Phillips

“There are, though, many especially those greedy for renown and glory, who steal from one group the very money that they lavish upon another.  They think that they will appear beneficent towards their friends if they enrich them by any method whatsoever.  But that is so far from being a duty that in fact nothing could be more opposed to duty.  We should therefore see that the liberality we exercise in assisting our friends does not harm anyone.  Consequently, the transference of money by Lucius Sulla and Gaius Caesar from its lawful owners to others ought not to be seen as liberal: nothing is liberal if it is not also just….for those who want to be kinder than their possessions allow first go wrong by being unjust to those nearest to them; they transfer to strangers resources which would more fairly be provided for, or left to, them.  Usually there lurks within such liberality a greediness to plunder and deprive unjustly, so that resources may be available for lavish gifts.” Marcus Tullius Cicero, On Duties I. 43-44. eds. and trans. M.T. Griffin and E.M. Atkins (Cambridge 1991), p. 19.

In this text Cicero is discussing the virtue of liberality, or generosity.  Although he called liberality a virtue, Cicero set forth significant caveats regarding the apparent practice of liberality.  Here the great orator of late Roman Republic warns against those who appear to be liberal (generous), but only with others’ money and property.  If our liberality causes harm to others, it cannot be truly liberal.  In this case, avarice wears the mask of liberality to carry out its nefarious design.

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Reading for understanding

Posted on June 26, 2012 by Matthew Phillips

“A student who doesn’t want his work to go for nothing ought to read and reread some good author until the author becomes part, as if were, of his flesh and blood.  Scattered reading confuses more than it teaches.  Many books, even good ones, have the same effect on the student.  So he is like a man who dwells everywhere and therefore dwells nowhere.  Just as in human society we don’t enjoy the fellowship of every friend every day, but only of a few chosen ones, so we ought to do in our studies.” Martin Luther, “Table Talk no. 2894a,” Luther’s Works, volume 54, p. 179.

Luther advises students to carefully read and examine a text until it becomes part of them mentally.  This advice follows the classical and monastic tradition of reading and meditating on significant texts.  How could this advice change the way we approach our studies?

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Humanity, Social Life, Justice and Animals

Posted on June 22, 2012 by Matthew Phillips

“A social instinct is implanted in all men by nature, and yet he who first founded the state was the greatest of benefactors.  For man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with arms, meant to be used by intelligence and virtue, which he may use for the worst ends.  Wherefore, if he have not virtue, he is the most unholy and the most savage of animals, and the most full of lust and gluttony.  But justice is the bond of men in states, for the administration of justice, which is the determination of what is just, is the principle of order in political society.”  Aristotle, Politics, Book 1, Chapter 2.

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The Stomach of Your Memory

Posted on June 15, 2012 by Matthew Phillips

“We ought, therefore, in all that we learn, to gather brief and dependable abstracts to be stored in the little chest of the memory, so that later on, when need arises, we can derive everything else from them.  These one must often turn over in the mind and regurgitate from the stomach of one’s memory to taste them, lest by long inattention to them, they disappear.  I charge you, then, my student, not to rejoice a great deal because you may have read many things, but because you have been able to retain them.  Otherwise there is no profit in having read or understood much.  And for this reason I call to mind again what I said earlier: those who devote themselves to study require both aptitude and memory.” Hugh of St. Victor, Didascalicon, Book 3, Chapter 11. [Emphasis added]

For this reason, the word, rumination, has the various meanings.

 

 

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Education as the remedy for evil

Posted on June 10, 2012 by Matthew Phillips

“People by nature possess many common vices.  We are born with a large measure of barbarity.  Historic periods, peoples, undertakings have, as well, their own characteristic false morality and each individual man is fashioned by his own peculiar nature.  Finally, we imprudent men have lapsed into the worst habits through this very morality.  And unless a remedy is found for these evils, what, in the future, can be uncorrupted or enduring in the state?  Therefore I regard it absolutely necessary to restore to the states the ancient education which will then destroy, group by group, whatever is evil in morals, nature, habit, age, opinion, or ability.  For just as lawfully constituted states must have different kinds of artisans and artists, so they must have separate kinds of education.” Johann Sturm, “The Correct Opening of Elementary Schools of Letters (1538),” trans. Lewis W. Spitz and Barbara Sher Tinsley, Johann Sturm on Education (CPH: St Louis, 1995), p. 71

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Martin Luther and the Continual Teaching of Righteousness

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Matthew Phillips

“But this most excellent righteousness, the righteousness of faith, which God imputes to us through Christ without works, is neither political nor ceremonial nor legal nor work-righteousness but is quite the opposite; it is a merely passive righteousness, while all the others, listed above, are active.  For here we work nothing, render nothing to God; we only receive and permit someone else to work in us, namely, God. Therefore it is appropriate to call this righteousness of faith or Christian righteousness ‘passive.’ This is a righteousness hidden in a mystery, which the world does not understand.  In fact, Christians themselves do not adequately understand it or grasp it in the midst of their temptations.  Therefore it must always be taught and continually exercised.”  Martin Luther, “Lectures on Galatians (1535),” Luther’s Works vol. 26, pp. 4-5.  [Emphasis added]

*Disclaimer: this post is more theological than usual, but I am a Lutheran historian at a Lutheran university.*

Some pastors today want to focus their preaching less on salvation, or justification of the sinner (what Luther calls passive righteousness here.)  These pastors say things like, “we’ve heard all about justification and Christ’s love for us, now let’s move on to sanctification and doing good works.”  I’m paraphrasing a Lutheran pastor (fairly recent graduate from an LCMS seminary) here.  This pastor meant well and he clearly confessed the doctrine of justification by faith in Christ.  However, this particular presentation revealed a fatal error.  Sinners, who are also saints by faith and baptism, don’t ever move on.  They must contiuously and constantly hear the doctrine of justification by faith in Christ. Dr. Luther understood this very well from his study of the Bible and his own experience.  He expressed similar sentiments as those above in a sermon for Ascension Day preached in the early 1530s.

“This doctrine of faith and salvation is the crucial one, and it cannot be mastered in a moment, but must rather be continuously taught and nurtured.  For grace and its blessings are so great that the human heart is terrified when it hears God wants to open the gates of heaven so wide, and that when you believe in Christ there no longer is any sin or wrath of God, nothing but pure righteouness.  That is why the doctrine of faith must be constantly reveiwed, constantly emphasized, so that, as St. Paul says in Ephesians 4:15, ‘[we] may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.” Martin Luther, “Second Sermon for Ascension,”  ed. and trans. Eugene Klug, Luther’s House Postils vol. 2, p. 134.  [Emphasis added]

Christians (saints/sinners) don’t graduate to learning active righteousness as a new level of their spiritual life.  First and foremost, they need to hear about God’s act of justification and passive righteousness.  Notice, Dr. Luther points out that Christians mature by hearing about justification by faith in Christ.  That’s right, Christians become more mature through passive righteousness.  More preaching of the Law or exhorting Christians to active righteousness will accomplish nothing if we “move on” from the doctrine of justification by faith in Christ.  It is the Gospel, not just the first step toward some active life of discipleship.

 

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