Tag: Education

Christian Education: Transformed Minds

Classes begin today. This will be the start of my 25th year of teaching at the college level and my 8th at SEU. My two courses today are the American history surveys—one from the colonial era through the Civil War, the other post-Civil War. Yet I give both sections the same introduction because there are some basics the students need to be reminded of. First, I offer a brief testimony of what the Lord has done in my life and… Read more »

Snyderian Truism #3

Some of my “truisms” come from personal experience in the classroom. As I embark upon my twenty-fifth year of teaching at the college level, I can attest to the accuracy of Snyderian Truism #3, which states, Ignorance can be corrected, but apathy makes learning impossible. The word “ignorance” sometimes gets an undeserved image. To be ignorant is not to be immoral or foolish or stupid or anything necessarily negative with respect to character. It simply means to be uninformed. I… Read more »

Education vs. Thought Control

Universities hold to the fiction that they are temples of reason where honest debate takes place and students hear all sides of an issue. In reality, they are bastions of liberal/progressive thought with little tolerance for Biblical perspectives or political conservatism. Surveys consistently reveal, particularly in the liberal arts, psychology, and sociology programs, that something like 90% of the professors self-identify as either moderate or liberal. Of course, their definition of “moderate” has to be taken into consideration—a moderate in… Read more »

A Teaching Ministry: Worth the Effort

As August draws near, my thoughts are beginning to turn once again to the new academic year. All my courses are ready and syllabi complete. I have to admit I always look forward to the fall semester. Fresh new faces showing up in the classroom, very welcome “old” faces, and the opportunity to share God’s truths make it all worthwhile. I am privileged to be at a university like Southeastern where I have liberty to teach without censorship or threat… Read more »

Lewis on Education: Go to the Sources

Not all of C. S. Lewis’s writings are explicitly Christian, yet he brings a clarity to any subject that is drawn from his Christian convictions. One of his favorite subjects, naturally, was education, since he spent a lifetime teaching and tutoring students at Oxford and Cambridge. I find this particular Lewis commentary in an essay titled “On the Reading of Old Books,” to ring true. See if you agree. I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if… Read more »

Obama’s Skewed View of Christian Education

Earlier this week, when he was in Ireland for the first leg of his European trip, President Obama made a speech that didn’t garner a lot of attention at the time, but now part of that speech has raised some very real concerns among Christians, not only in Ireland but in the U.S. Essentially, the president criticized religious education as divisive and a contributor to violence. That’s startling to those of us who are deeply committed to providing a Biblical… Read more »

Lewis: The Learned Life Is a Duty

For me, as a university professor, this quote from C. S. Lewis is one I would think of framing and putting on my office wall. Please don’t skip over any of it; each sentence is truly weighty, if you stop and ponder as you should. I’m particularly drawn to phrases about “good philosophy” answering “bad philosophy,” our need for an “intimate knowledge of the past” (well, I am a history professor, you know), those trendy ideas that Lewis terms “temporary… Read more »