I was just reading Hebrews where the author is chastising the people for how they should be teachers now, but they can’t because they are still eating baby food. I have seen this so often first hand, where we spend class after class, speaking about Jesus and Christian living but we never really get into it, because we are using some watered down study material.

It is this fact which has really encouraged me to create my own teaching, getting deep into the text each week. I am tired of messing around with shallow studies, and so I have created some deep rich teaching time. I am only one person though. I worry over how this such an pervasive problem, in a nation where access to the materials is so readily available, though they easily get lost among all the other offerings which the publishers produce quickly & easily—it is easy to write fluff. It takes a lot of work to create a work of lasting worth. The same is true of education, I guess until more people take their knowledge & understanding of the divine seriously bad theology will rule the day.

Though Caputo doesn’t say much more in relation to this example, I find it all so very interesting. It is so easy for me to forget how one is embedded into a certain way of learning which inherently limits how they learn.

I couldn’t help but stop and wonder about how I myself learn, or even how my children learn and how I teach them. Though deconstruction is so very stimulatig, it makes some many things so very difficult. What certain things need a different context from which to be studied? What things have I maligned by studying them from my armchair?

Just a few more weeks of this, and then I am due for a break…

Well I spent a majority of yesterday working out a syllabus for my Romans class. I had been putting it off for few weeks now. Partly the reason was I needed to finish working through the text so as to get a big picture of what is going on, but that was mainly an excuse for my procrastation.

I’ve got most of it done, but I have a little bit more formatting stuff that I want to do.

I haven’t messed with making a word doc in a while, I forgot how frustrating that program is. That is whenever you want to do anything even mildly creative, it seems to laugh in your face. When I used to work the computer store, I used InDesign a lot; I got used to being able to infinitely tweak the formatting.

It seems in the process of dumbing everything down for the average user, they {Microsoft programmers} have made advancing formatting virtually impossible.

Maybe I am expecting too much from the program, but when I {a fairly advanced user} can’t figure out how to move a table around on the page, then something seems very wrong.

</rant>

Whenever I get the finished product posted on FUMCclass.com, I’ll post a link.

{update: I have finished the syllabus, here it is.}

The university is the great institution of legitimation in modernity whose task is to convince us that the way things are is the way they have to be.

The very divisions in which theses disciplines are now configured reinforces the presumption that the role of education is to maintain the status quo. For example, the idea that you can separate economics from politics and create departments of economics and departments of political science that are separate from one another reinforces the presumption that economic relations are fundamentally relationships of exchange that don’t have anything to do with questions of the overarching and common good. Hence, this structure never leads you to the idea that human and social relations—whether they be of the economic or political sort—don’t have to function the way that they currently do. For example, the explanatory models for understanding relationships between nations and foreign policy in terms of balances of power write into those narratives the necessity of war so that you don’t even know how to begin to think of a world in which war is not a necessity.

I think that the reason I was initially drawn to philosophy is because of the understanding historically of thinking of philosophy as first thought on such a variety of topics, basically at one time philosophy was all of the liberal arts & sciences. There is still a sense within the discipline of a connectedness of thinking. But it is still entrenched into that status quo as much as any other department none the less. It seems from what I have seen of academia, that the inter-discipline conversations are the exception definitely not the rule.

I don’t think it’s primarily in regard to economics and political science. More so, I think it has to do with the priority of science and the scientific disciplines as having overriding veridical (or truth-bearing) status. There’s a presumed importance given to these disciplines because in a sense we tend to think of them as “really true” in a way the humanities are not. I think that this veridical status has much to do with reinforcing the idea that the legitimacy of the modern state resides in its responsibility to keep people safe from death just as the sciences seem to offer a way to postpone the inevitable and control the uncontrollable.

This idea definitely follows out in the world. When you meet someone who is a doctor, of whatever kind, everyone is enthralled by them. There is a certain weird mystique about doctors. Recently my wife and I were at the store, we saw the doctor who delivered our recent child. I had this weird feeling over me, she had some kind of weird rock star type aura about her. I mean this is the one who allowed this baby to come into the world.
This is linked to this idea of medicine and the r & d behind it being the only avenue for health. That puts the doctor in a position of divinity in society, they have the keys—no longer do we need to talk to the reverend, he’s been replaced.

After hundreds of years of slavery and segregation, on the heels of the civil rights movements, African Americans now have the legal protection to move to the suburbs, have two cars, three TVs, and not to have to worry about Jews moving into the neighborhood! It’s all an attempt to forget the past in order to let things remain as they are. This allows white folks to quickly move on by saying, “What was a little slavery between friends?” The upshot is that we don’t have to come to terms with the continuing challenge of the injustices embedded in the memories we fear threaten to bring future violence.

I came across a statement about Obama’s election recently, stating how we shouldn’t consider now that we have voted a black man into office that the work of minority rights over. It is exactly the same situation as he is talking about above. You give a little here, to pacify them, so you don’t have to really change anything fundamentally.

Inclusivity is a way of forgetfulness. I often suggest that egalitarianism is the opium of the masses. This is simply because inclusivity is often nothing other than the direct attempt to eradicate difference. Therefore, I think that the presumption of inclusivity is exactly a way of preventing the conflicts we need to have in order to have healthy communities. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but I just think that’s the way it works.

I have been reading Caputo lately, who draws heavily on Derrida. Two themes of Derrida which have come up so far are hospitality and friendship. In both cases Derrida central concern is with keeping the otherness of the Other intacted.
I had a conversation recently with some friends about church, during this conversation I said about the trouble with so many churches is that they are trying to be everything to everybody and in the process watering down what is most important to who they/we are.
It is okay that we are different, even to the point that we will argue and fight about it. But, and this is an important but, at the end of the day we need to be able to still come together as friends in our complete otherness giving the gift which can’t be given (to use some Derrida garble).

I really do think it’s not just that theology needs to have a place in the university, but that the church has to have confidence enough in our practices to change the very notion of what knowledge looks like in economics, political science, and possibly, even biology.

If there ever was a place for me, I think this is it. I haven’t been able to put my finger on it much, but I know that is because it isn’t currently there. I know my place is to be in the middle of where culture/philosophy/new theology meets the church or rather where the church meets those areas. There definitely needs to be more of this stuff going on. I would love to be on staff with a church doing exactly this kind of work.

I think it is absolutely crucial that we are serious in terms of the formation of students in these knowledges, and this may well make them extremely dysfunctional and unsuccessful. We have to create dysfunctional graduates, that is, dysfunctional with regard to the fact that they will have been formed in such a way so as to not easily fit into the modern economic and institutional projects of the state. Education itself is a practice concerning the formation of lives, and that’s what we’ve got to get very serious about.

I am definitely one of those Hauerwas would call dysfunctional, not easily fitting into the economic & institutional projects around me. Since graduating I haven’t been able to get a full-time job at all, and only jumping from part-time job to part-time job. I feel very capable, just not into the forms that I am expected to fill.

There is a front page article in the New York Times today about a creationist scientist who has recently finished his doctoral work in geosciences from U of Rhode Island. The catcher is that he doesn’t really believe in the work that he did. The way he describes it, he was working from a certain scientific paradigm; he can just as easily switch paradigms to Christian one and get very different results.
Basically from what I gathered from the article is that he is working the system. Playing the game to get a certain accreditation to back up his creationist work later on–he is now teaching at Jerry Falwell’s college. This is a pretty interesting case, which from the article seems to be normal situation for many Christian scientists these days.
So they write a dissertation holding evolution to be true to get a degree while they don’t really believe what they write. I don’t really know if I can think of this as being ethical. This would seem relate to people working for companies doing jobs they don’t agree with. Recently a friend and I have talked back and forth on his blog about his current work situation which directly relates to this.

Firstly my post wasn’t thinking about what the “christian” job choice would be when I was writing before. I’m not sure if my post has been influenced subconsciously or not by the moral influences of the current day. I would say the influence is definitely at least indirect. Let me explain this. For the majority of the cultural, their is an emphasis upon a person’s results, judging by a person’s fruits, i.e., are they “saving souls.” People are pushed into an ideology where unless you are Billy Graham you are probably one step away from hell it seems. This kind of ideology can easily be where my worries stem from. For me, I feel that there is satisfaction in working with one’s hand because of the concrete visual representation of one’s work. As in the church no one is congratulated for their hard work trying to understand a certain piece of scripture unless their is some known end insight, i.e., saving some poor soul. The same would go for the college life–who goes to school for the enjoyment of learning, isn’t it just to get a good job? It seems that the ingrained idea is that one goes to college only as a means to the white collar job.

Their is a line by many educators of how knowledge does so much for people. I just wonder what it is, it actually does–besides allowing for higher skilled employees in society. What can an education really do for someone? Many go to college believing and participating in their local church. They leave without a faith because of frustrated professor who killed their Santa Clauses and Jesus Christs, worried only about their work and family lives forgetting about the majority of the world living in poverty, and in the wake of the years of school having worsened livers & lungs from too many parties and pretentious attitudes to the laborer because they are know their boss.
The belief that education is the solution to all problems is as old as Socrates. When I look at the intellectual community it’s hard to convince myself that there is a reason for any of it sometimes.

This would be a great excuse, “sorry Professor, I would of totally done better but this semester system got me again, what am I to do?”