Tag Archives: Jamie Smith

The Dethroning of Modern Science: Part 2

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newtons-rainbow

As promised in my last post, this is my stab at what we might call the “distinctives” of a classical and Christ-centered approach to the teaching of science.  These are still lofty, theoretical ideals, and the fleshing out of them in the classroom is where things should prove interesting.  I will share with more detail some of my attempts at forming actual lessons around some of these ideals in a future post.  But, for now, let’s live in the clouds . . .

A classical, Christ-centered approach to teaching science:

1) Rejects many of the philosophies which are fundamental to the pursuit of modern science in the secular arena.  I will not attempt to list all of them nor will I define any of them here, but this list should include a) scientism, b) positivism, c) naturalism (both ontological and methodological), d) reductionism, and e) pragmatism.

2) Embraces the tension between the immanence of creation and its dependence on a transcendent Creator–what Jamie Smith refers to as a “participatory ontology.”

3) Embraces a charitable rather than coercive disposition towards creation; the exercise of responsible dominion looks more like cultivation of creation than control of creation.

4) Examines closely the philosophical and theological implications of scientific thought, and situates the milestones of scientific development within their corresponding philosophical and theological milieu.  In other words, teaches science as if it was done by real people who lived in real time and space.

5) Seeks to redeem the coherence between science and Christianity, noting the vital role that Christian thought played in the scientific revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries and can play now within the ever-unfolding mysteries of the quantum world.

6) Considers theories of cosmogony and ontology through a lens of both general (the “scientific” evidence) and special (God’s ontological truths as revealed through Scripture) revelation.

7) Embraces a radical and humble epistemology–we must answer the question: what are the limits on what scientific investigation can tell us about the world?

8) Embraces a normed approach to scientific study: more important than the question of can we do something is the question of ought we to do something.

9) Affirms the study of creation as a form of worship, and accordingly situates scientific exploration and instruction within doxological bookends.

It annoys me that I could not come up with one more point to round out my list at ten items, so feel free to add #10 in the comments if you have a good suggestion.

The Kingdom of Heaven is NOT like . . .

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At what seemed like a teachable moment in math class earlier this week:

Me: “If you had to be completely honest, would you say that you are concerned about how well your classmates are doing in math, or are you just focused on yourself–your own understanding and performance?  Be honest.”

Several students (under their breath): “Ourselves.”

Me: “Okay, good.  Thank you for being honest.  Now, let’s compare this to our Christian community.  Should it be our concern if our fellow brother or sister is faltering in his or her faith or just generally needs some support in life at the moment?  What about someone we know but whose faith we don’t know about?  If they are struggling somehow in life, should we care?”

Several students: “Yes, of course.”

Me: “So how is that perspective different from how we view our learning in school?”

One student: “Actually it’s the exact opposite.”

Me: “Does it have to be that way?”

I got mostly blank looks after this question.  I think a couple of students may have mumbled, “I don’t think so,” but not because they were convinced; rather I think they probably felt like that was the appropriate Sunday School response.  One thing became very painfully clear, though: no one in the room had spent a lot of time, if any, imagining that the academic part of school might could (or should?) look more like true Christian community.  No one had spent a lot of time worrying about how his or her classmates were doing in school.

If Jamie Smith is right when he says that “all habits and practices are ultimately trying to make us into a certain kind of person1,” then what kinds of persons are the academic climates in our schools making?  In particular, what kinds of persons are the academic climates in our Christian schools making?  If the answers to these last two questions are not really that different from each other, then we have a big problem (or, I guess I should say “opportunity”) in our Christian schools.

If chapel and Bible class and prayer are the only ways in which our Christian schools look different from secular schools, then I think we are completely missing the point.  If we are not looking different–radically different–on the level at which the students live–in their daily reality, their economy, where they are told by the world (and us teachers) that things matter, where they are working day in and day out (and this reality in school is academics, where the currency is grades)–then we are making no difference, and actually we may be doing more harm than a secular school because we have set up a dualism that is more despicable than paganism.

Now one could make the argument that our students’ reality is actually at the level of relationships and acceptance and “likes,” and there is much truth to this and much work to be done in this arena as well.  But I want to focus on the reality that our Christian schools and us teachers have most direct control over, and with which we too easily acquiesce to the modern secular culture of individualism and competition–and that is the reality of academics.

Before this tirade gets out of hand (and please know that I’m implicating myself here as well), I’ll end with a quote from Alfie Kohn:

“Lending an even more noxious twist to the habit of seeing education in purely economic terms is the use of the word “competitiveness,” which implies that our goals should be framed in terms of beating others rather than doing well. When the topic is globalization, it’s commonly assumed that competition is unavoidable: For one enterprise (or country) to succeed, another must fail. But even if this were true–and economists Paul Krugman and the late David Gordon have separately argued it probably isn’t–why in the world would we accept the same zero­sum mentality with respect to learning?”2

– – – – – – – – –

1  Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation, Jamie Smith, 2009

2  Against “Competitiveness”: Why Good Teachers Aren’t Thinking about the Global Economy, Alfie Kohn, 2007.

Truth is a Person

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truth

We make the worst mistake in Christian education when we forget that Truth is a Person.

If we teach our students to learn from a purely objective point of view, to hold Truth (“knowledge”) at a distance, to study it in order to master it so that they can use it to get what they want out of life (good grades, good college, good job, good car, good retirement), then why do we act surprised when our students regard Jesus in the same transactional, utilitarian manner?

If our aim is to inform rather than to transform, we will graduate moralists rather than Kingdom bearers, prisoners rather than free men.

Storytelling

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My two-year-old daughter Alice sits at the kitchen bar table eating a snack.  I am standing in front of her exhausted from a long day at school and 100% occupied by a jar of toasted almonds.  My wife Anne (who is not only my better half but also the more conversational parent by far) has just left the room.  The sounds of crunching and smacking are all that fill the room.  Alice pauses from eating what appears to be just a mustard-soaked piece of bread from what used to be a turkey sandwich and looks up at me: “Hey Daddy? . . . ”  “Yeah, baby, what’s up?”  “Hey Daddy, will you talk to me?”  “Sure sweetheart!  What do you want to talk about?”  “I want to talk about Daddy and Alice.”  So I start with, “Well, Daddy loves Alice,” then proceed to recount some recent stories that involved her and me.

After this interaction with Alice I thought to myself, “This little conversation has nothing to do with this blog, but I just have to share it.”  However, the more I thought about our snack time conversation and the setting in which it took place, the more I began to think that perhaps it has everything to do with this blog.

As Jamie Smith argues in Imagining the Kingdom, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”  He goes on:

“Narrative is the scaffolding of our experience . . . Stories ‘mean’ on a register that is visceral and bodily, more aesthetic than analytic, ‘made sense of’ more by the imagination than the intellect.  Stories are something we learn ‘by heart’ in the sense that they mean on a register that eludes articulation and analysis.  A whole world(view) can be compressed in even the most minimal narrative because the story is ‘working’ aesthetically–it means in its cadence and rhythm, in what is said and what is left unsaid, in its tensions and resolutions.  I ‘understand’ a story in ways I don’t know.”

Are we telling our children stories?  What stories are we telling them?  I thought it was so beautiful that Alice wanted me to talk about “Alice and Daddy.”  Don’t we all want to hear stories about us and our Daddy?  And don’t we all ultimately want to hear stories about us and our Heavenly Daddy?  I do think it’s true that the Bible is best read as a love story written to us by our Heavenly Father.  I think we all want to hear that Story, whether we know it or not.

But Smith goes on to argue that the most transforming stories are not those that are told discursively in a “once upon a time” manner, but those that are wrapped up in “all the mundane little micropractices” or “liturgies” that we engage in every day.*

So, what story was I telling Alice by the fact that she had to wake me out of my zombie-almond-eating state and request that I talk to her?  “Will you talk to me?” is such a sweet, innocent request, but so loaded with meaning, is it not?

If we are too busy or too tired (or too hungry) to talk to our children, to tell them stories, we will still manage to tell them a story, but a much more significant, formative one.

Parents, what stories are we telling our children in those little, seemingly insignificant practices that we engage in (or don’t engage in) every day?

Teachers, what stories are we telling our students in those little, seemingly insignificant practices that are a part of our classroom culture and atmosphere?

The Gospel of Luke tells us “to be faithful in the little things.”  Even (especially?) in the little things we are to reflect the Gospel.  Are we paying attention to the little things?  Are we telling good stories?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

*Smith develops these arguments beautifully in both Desiring the Kingdom and Imagining the Kingdom, and the practical applications are countless for anyone hoping to cultivate Christian virtue and wisdom in themselves or those around them.  I am thankful to my colleagues in classical education for recommending that I engage Smith’s work; I passionately recommend these two titles, especially to teachers who want to do more with their students than just pass on information.

The Lullaby of Intellectualism

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“In sum, if we are going to be agents of the coming kingdom, acting in ways that embody God’s desires for creation, then our imaginations need to be conscripted by God. It is not enough to convince our intellects; our imaginations need to be caught by – and caught up into – the Story of God’s restorative, reconciling grace for all of creation. It won’t be enough for us to be convinced; we need to be moved. Otherwise we’ll just be reading Wendell Berry in Costco; we’ll be convinced but not transformed.”

– Jamie Smith, Imagining the Kingdom (emphases original)

Lord, forgive me for all the ways in which I have been convinced but not transformed.  Forgive me for all the ways in which I embrace the Truth with my mind but not with my bones.

Capture me, Jesus – all of me.  Wake me up.  Stir me.  Move me.

Fur Coats vs. Fir Trees: Part 2

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A friend of mine recently sent me the following video. It’s about 10 minutes long, so if you can take the time, please watch it. I will share my thoughts below the link.

http://www.upworthy.com/the-earth-shatteringly-amazing-speech-that-ll-change-the-way-you-think-about-adulthood-4?g=2&c=cp2

I think you would agree that there are a lot of truths in this video, not least the picture that is painted of the self-centered rat race reality of so much of so many of our adult lives and how quickly dismissive we are of those around us. Perhaps you even felt convicted by some of these truths – I certainly was.

But then the crux of the message presents itself, the “alternative” to this way of interacting with the world:

“If you are aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to think differently . . . it’s hard, it takes will and effort . . . but if you really learn how to think, how to pay attention, you will know you have other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer hell type situation as not only meaningful but sacred . . . ” (emphases mine)

So what’s wrong with this approach? What’s wrong with paying attention, with making conscious choices that come as the result of right thinking? After all, Jesus tells us to pay attention or “keep awake” in not one but two parables (Matthew 24 & 25), and Paul exhorts us to “be transformed by the renewing of our minds” (Romans 12). So clearly attentiveness and right thinking are important. We take this to heart at my school where we actually train our students in the habits of attention and critical thinking.

So what is wrong with the thesis of this video? I think what is wrong is that what is presented is a near-truth, and near-truths are more dangerous than lies.

And here’s the near-truth, as I see it being presented (note this will not sound as poetic as the narrator puts forth in the video): “Your interaction with the world does not have to be this way. You just need to wake up out of your zombie state and choose to think differently. Sure it’s going to be hard, but it is within your power and will and effort to change.”

In other words, “Just man up and be a better person! It’s just a matter of choosing to change the way you think about the world.”

Oh, and by the way, the narrator calls this “real freedom,” “real education.”

But does this account accurately describe how we learn, how we change, how we are transformed, how we are “perfected” into God’s image?

Let’s say that I meet an adult who is admittedly very racist against black people. Maybe he is even consciously ashamed of this disposition, but he explains his racism by saying that he grew up in a white home in a white neighborhood where there was an obvious yet unuttered fear of black people, that he went to an all-white school that was “on the other side of town” from the nearest school that housed black kids, and that once he had a friend who was robbed at gunpoint by a black guy.

I guess I should just tell this guy, “Listen, I know this is going to be hard, but you just need to change the way you think about black people.” If he laughs incredulously at this suggestion, I just need to engage his intellect with logical arguments for why racism is evil and how it does great violence to the human soul.

I think you see my point. Again, I am not suggesting that critical, logical thinking has no place in the formation and transformation of a human soul. If that were the case, this blog and a large part of my job as a teacher would be pointless. But what ultimately forms us and our perception of the world is something much closer to our center of being, much more closely linked to what burns in our hearts and stirs in our imaginations, something that often defies logical articulation, something that has been inculcated within us due in part to our experiences, but due also to the fact that we are naturally and primarily loving, desiring beings.

And this brings us back to James K.A. Smith’s thesis which he establishes early on in Desiring the Kingdom. I will quote him again, this time from a different location and said slightly differently:

“. . . education – whether acknowledged or not – is a formation of the desires and imagination that creates a certain kind of person who is part of a certain kind of people. The facts and information learned as part of the process are always situated and embedded in something deeper that is being learned all along: a particular vision of the good life.”

The fictional (yet to some degree, if we are honest with ourselves, representative of some part in all of us that passes dismissive judgement against some class of people, rather it be because of race, religion, social standing, education, the kind of jeans she wears, etc.) racist character I created above received an “unacknowledged” or “implicit” education that painted a picture of the “good life” as “life without black people in it.”

The point is quite simply this: what seems to “stick” in a person’s core identity are those “teachings” that have been directed towards his heart and imagination, and often times this type of learning actually bypasses our conscious, thinking minds and goes straight to our “second nature.”

Said another way by Charlotte Mason, “Education is an atmosphere.”

So what does this mean for education in a Christian school? Everything. The stakes are perhaps even higher because we are Christian. Symmetry in our “being” and “thinking” is paramount. I will leave you with one last quote from Smith:

“Could we offer a Christian education that is loaded with all sorts of Christian ideas and information – and yet be offering a formation that runs counter to that vision?”

Fur Coats vs. Fir Trees: Part 1

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NarniaWardrobe

I am currently reading James K.A. Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom, upon the recommendation of a colleague and friend.  I am about a third of the way through the book and I must say that it is already transforming the way I view education.  Smith’s book is one of those that you don’t even bother picking up a highlighter for, because every other sentence would be yellow.

I am sure that I will be referencing this book in probably multiple future posts, but today I want to throw out a quote from his Introduction:

“What if the primary work of education was the transforming of our imagination rather than the saturation of our intellect?  What if education wasn’t first and foremost about what we know, but about what we love?”

There is so much wrapped up in this quote that it’s hard to know where to start.

So let me pose a couple of questions: To what part of our students’ nature are we making our appeal?  Are we filling their minds or engaging their imaginations?  Are we primarily honing their intellects or is the stewardship of their hearts a priority?

The great early 20th century educator Charlotte Mason said, “The question is not, — how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education — but how much does he care?”

In Desiring the Kingdom, Smith goes on to posit that humans are by nature “desiring” beings first and foremost, rather than “thinking” beings or even “believing” beings.  What all humans desire, Smith maintains, is “the kingdom,” which most generally (i.e., not biblically) translated, means “their particular vision of ‘the good life’ or ‘human flourishing.'”  Much of the balance of the book is then spent dissecting the implications of this common desire on education, specifically Christian education.  There is much more to say about these implications, but that will have to be another post.

What I want to park on at the moment is Smith’s conclusion (informed heavily by St. Augustine and Martin Heidegger) that humans are first and foremost “desiring” beings.  Smith continues:

“It’s not so much that we’re intellectually convinced and then muster the willpower to pursue what we ought; rather, at a precognitive level, we are attracted to a vision of the good life that has been painted for us in stories and myths, images and icons.  It is not primarily our minds that are captivated but rather our imaginations that are captured, and when our imagination is hooked, we’re hooked (and sometimes our imaginations can be hooked by very different visions than what we’re feeding into our minds).” (emphases by Smith)

Again, there’s a lot we could unpack here, but I want to focus on Smith’s statements about our imaginations.  I think he suggests that the type of teaching that truly forms (and transforms) who we are is the type of teaching whose focus is trained on our hearts and imaginations, rather than solely our intellects.  In other words, what truly “sticks” in one’s soul – what truly informs how and what he will love – is what he is taught from the heart up, rather than the other way around.  And one way to get to our hearts is via our imaginations.

C.S. Lewis clearly got this.  His Chronicles of Narnia are so beloved by children and adults alike because the truths embedded in that wonderful series are aimed first at our imaginations.  And I believe that true learning – true “education,” true “drawing out” – happens when the hearts and imaginations as well as the minds of our students are engaged.  Said another way, what we are feeding the hearts and imaginations of our students (whether explicitly or implicitly), must be consistent with, must shore up what we are feeding into their minds.

I must pause here to make something very clear:  This is in no way saying that we should throw the baby out with the bath water and diminish the value of sound thinking and logic; this is certainly a both/and situation rather than an either/or.  After all, much of this blog will hopefully be aimed at “the renewal of our minds,” which I believe comes largely from engaging in intellectual discourse.  As our pastor often says, “We need to have a rigorous faith,” to think about why we believe what we believe, to engage in deep theological study, to read challenging books.

As my students will tell you, I constantly exhort them to think more critically and rigorously.  But why do they take me up on the challenge?  I think it’s because I go after their hearts and imaginations first.

But most modern (progressive) education has redefined our students as merely brain-holding containers, which must be filled, rather than spiritual, loving persons, whose natural desire to love must be stewarded.

In other words, what I think I’m saying here (and I have to believe that Smith would agree with me, or worse, find this blog and post to the comments section: “You’re just stealing my ideas and putting them in your blog!”) is that it might be more important to teach our students how and what to love than to teach them how to think or what to believe.

For those of you who teach, we’ve all had those moments in the classroom when we feel like we are just hitting a wall with our students.  Sure they may be thinking, they may be processing – and I’m going to go out on a limb here and propose that they may even be thinking rigorously –  but they are not wholly engaged.  Formation of their minds might be happening, but transformation of their souls and spirits may not be happening.  In the extreme case, they are simply becoming “more clever devils,” as C.S. Lewis would say.

But then we have those moments when we see the hearts, the true identities (the God-reflections) of our students breaking through to the surface, discussions are charged with life (not just intellectual and rigorous in thought), e ducere is really happening.  Our students are being their most human selves.  Those are the transformative moments, I believe.  And I really don’t believe those moments happen without the hearts and imaginations being involved.

I have a good friend who teaches high school math at another Christian school in the area, and he refers to these moments as “the Narnia moments.”  “But then,” he goes on to say, “we all have those days when we just hit the back of the wardrobe.”

Like all good teachers do with good ideas learned from other good teachers, I’ve since stolen his analogy – hence my desire for my students to grasp at fir trees rather than fur coats.  If I could put an early 20th century London lamppost in my classroom I would.

So what does this mean for our teaching?  Those of you who tire of philosophical discourse and crave practical application, here it comes.

I’m talking to teachers out there now: I don’t know about you, but every teaching methodology/mode that I have read about or been taught remains in the realm of theory until I actually see it work in my classroom in this big “Aha!” moment that I almost always have to giddily share with my students.  That’s right, I share some of my teaching secrets with them – they just love being invited “behind the curtain.”

The other day I had one of those “Aha!” moments, and not because I had never used this technique successfully before, but because – for the first time, perhaps – I took notice of what I was doing and realized what was actually happening and why it was working.

So here’s what happened: every year around this time our students start practicing for an end of year performance.  It has been the tradition that the middle school students have the responsibility of setting up the risers on the stage every week for practices, and the 8th graders have the distinct honor of being the leaders of the crew.  Now why these kids love hauling heavy wooden boxes from the bowels of the sanctuary and setting them up is beyond me, but literally these practice weeks are one of the highlights of the year for them.

But this year our administration decided to get dads to do the setup (maybe the child labor laws were discovered??).  Well I had to break this (bad?) news to the 8th graders one morning, and you would have thought I had taken away P.E. class for the rest of the year.  They were up in arms.  Oh the injustice!  How could anyone dare rob them of this pure enjoyment and esteemed honor??

Well they were going on and on, which I let them do for a few minutes, as I typically like to do anytime they are airing their grievances (I mean, you learn so much about them during those few moments), but our science test was only a week away and I just had to get on with the business of teaching them vector diagrams.  But it was very clear that this type of transition was going to be nearly impossible.

Younger teacher me would have pulled the authority card and said, “Alright, alright, I get it.  You’re upset.  It’s so unfair that manual labor has been taken from you.  But we have to get to work, so take out your notes and let’s go.”  I would have then wrote on the board, in all CAPS and with deliberate and firm pen strokes, “Vector Diagrams,” underlined, of course.  Then I would have started teaching from my notes.  And sure, because my students do respect me and are very well behaved, they would have done just what I asked them to.  They probably would have even engaged their minds.  But oh, the irresolution and angst remaining in their hearts!  At this point I would have most certainly been simply dumping ideas into their brains.

And I have done just that so many times.  Students, please forgive me.

But this particular day I took a different route.  While they were still very much in the midst of their gripe session, I drew on the board a picture of a riser sitting on a stage.  My drawing skills are mediocre on the best day, but I guess they could tell what I had drawn because they quieted down and look intently and with anticipation.  “So here’s one of your risers sitting on the stage, one of the heavier ones, you know.  Now, the way I have this riser drawn, is it going to fall off the stage?”

And despite the fact that I was using rectangles to introduce vector diagrams (could it get more plain than that?), they were captivated.  No, I wasn’t resolving their dilemma of injustice, but I was still talking about those silly risers.  And the doors to their hearts stayed open, and the doors to their imaginations stayed open, and boy did we ever learn about vector diagrams that day!  I think it might have been one of the most enjoyable discussions we’ve had this semester and let’s face it: vector diagrams aren’t that particularly fascinating.

Now maybe this was just a coincidence, you say.  Or perhaps I was just leveraging the energy from their cries of injustice to fuel the discussion of an otherwise dry topic.  Maybe so.  But I can tell you this, when our vector diagrams morphed from a riser sitting on a stage into a dinosaur walking a turtle who was running after a cobra . . . well, I think there was some imagination involved – oh, and some thinking going on too.  And somehow the riser issue fizzled away naturally – well, at least for that day.