This is Fascinating

Here's a video on education that is really interesting, artwork aside (which is so good, it is almost distracting).

In a country with a failing education system, there are some thoughts worth considering here.

Thinking about a PhD?

A PhD graduate without a teaching position, without even a job interview in three years has some interesting comments here. Among other things, he says,

Read books. Start a blog and write articles. You don’t need to get a PhD to know about your subject. Actually you would only go after a PhD if you already knew your subject well enough to say something lengthy about it.

Or as someone once told me, “Study yourself into expertise on something and then write about it.”

I am a big fan of education, and if I were doing it over, I would do it all differently.

But I’m not. And I can’t.

But here’s what I have heard: there’s a glut of PhD’s out there who do not have jobs in the area of their studies, particularly in academia. And I, for my part, don’t see that getting better.

Formal education is great. And, in my opinion, it is necessary to a certain level. But the reality is that almost everything you get in a doctoral program is something you can get on your own if you have the will and the discipline to search it out and study it.

The exception to this is the peer interaction, both with fellow students and professors. There’s simply no substitute for face to face contact with people, passing conversations in the library, or long debates over coffee. Try pulling up a chair in a professor’s office on the internet. You can’t do it, and therefore will miss out on what should be one of the greatest components of education. I know you can email him or her. It’s just not the same. And we all know that, or at least our spouses do.

So get a PhD if you love study and want a PhD. A lot of people should get them. I loved the PhD classes I took.

But get a real one. And don’t make the mistake of thinking it will get you much. You may end up knowing an awful  lot about something no one cares about, and you may be highly qualified for a job for which no one is hiring.

It makes me wonder if the final question on the PhD oral defense ought to be, “Can you be clearly understood on the intercom when you say, ‘Would you like to super-size that?’”

Cold, isn’t it?

P.S – As I was finishing this up, my four year old son just called. He told me he dialed the phone by himself, and said he wanted to talk about cars … “about axles and stuff.”

A PhD can’t prepare you for that, and it can’t give you more joy.

So I am off to tell my son everything I know about cars.

I’ll be back in five minutes.

Machen on Education

In discussing the fight for Christianity against liberalism (which Machen rightly considered two different religions), Machen closes with four points of action, the last of which is the “renewal of Christian education.”

He says,

In countless cases, Christianity is rejected simply because men have not the slightest notion of what Christianity is. An outstanding fact of recent Church history is the appalling growth of ignorance in the Church. Various causes, no doubt, can be assigned for this lamentable development. The development is due partly to the general decline of education—at least so far as literature and history are concerned. The schools of the present day are being ruined by the absurd that education should follow the line of least resistance, and that something can be “drawn out” of the mind before anything in put in. They are also being ruined by an exaggerated emphasis on methodology at the expense of content and on what is materially useful at the expense of the high spiritual heritage of mankind (Christianity and Liberalism, p. 176).

Machen sparks two thoughts centered primarily on pastoral training.

First, Christian education, even of pastors, seems woefully deficient. A man believes he is called of God to pastor and believes that the call alone makes him qualified. So he gets to work at the task of pastoring. But he has never taken time to learn first. It is a tragedy foisted on an unsuspecting church. And all are the worse for it. Such a man may believe he is called, and he may well be. But zeal is no substitute for knowledge. Nothing can be drawn out until something has been put in.

Before you pull out the line that the disciples were uneducated men, remember that they spent three years with Jesus day after day.

Second, a man who learns primarily methodology will soon find himself past his “use by” date. Methods are constantly changing. The methodology you learn in seminary today will be out of date before the next class graduates. A sound biblical theology will never be out of date. A man who goes to seminary and learns theology and languages will find himself well ground to learn methodology later.

A seminary filled with methodology will train a man to pastor for ten years or so. A seminary filled with theology and the languages will train a man to pastor for a lifetime.