Borg’s Blog

I am troubled by the resurgence of a fundamentalist attack upon the grand theory of evolution. My school is a Catholic institution within the Bible Belt of the great American mid-west. Religion is integral part of our general education core but so is Science. There are many of us in the academy who do not see a natural conflict between the teachings of faith and Charles Darwin. Who can say with certainty evolution is not part of God’s plan?

Consider this film. It is the story of the Scopes Trial. It reveals the debate as one based upon the dark emotions of man rather than reason. Who knows the mind of God? Remember the Greeks considered pride the most serious of sins. Are we not guilty of hubris when we condemn something we don’t understand?

Personally I do not believe man will ever evolve to the point where he will understand the true nature of God to such an extent that he can become judge and jury over His thoughts and deeds. I do believe we have minds with which to question and learn. Failing to do so is not only a waste of intelligence but a sin against the nature of man. To ban the teaching of evolution is just such a sin.

Educators do not seek to tell the clergy what to preach in their churches. What right do the religious possess to influence the work done inside the classroom? Let’s not limit the thoughts of our children. Rather let’s have faith in their ability to think critically and recognize truth.

I received the following message from my brother in response to sharing the film’s link. “Do you really believe in evolution ? It is greatly overrated. Impossible to prove. Requires great faith to accept. I doubt that it even qualifies as a theory.” This is from a learned surgeon who I have respected since childhood. Yet his words hit me like a slap on the face. How could a man of medicine and science be so unaware of the great advances in computational biology and genomics which reveal close relationships between the various species?

That’s the problem with evolution. Its so slow!

“Adults are ready to learn those things they need to know in order to cope effectively with life situations.”

This assumption begs us to turn an examining eye toward curriculum. Are we teaching the skills needed in today’s world? Consider this Associated Press report from August 1.

Things aren’t so good for the economy now. We’ve lost 463,000 jobs so far this year! The unemployment rate is at 5.7% and rising, 20.3% for teens, and that doesn’t represent the entire out-of-workforce. It hasn’t always been so. I’ve been involved in higher education since 1984 and enjoyed 100% placement of my computer science graduates every year until 2005. As a hiring manager at Zenith Data Systems and Gateway 2000 I couldn’t find enough qualified talent. What happened?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting the educational system is responsible for our current economic situation. Rather I’m suggesting we can be part of the solution. How’s that?

I teach at a small Catholic liberal arts college so what I’m about to suggest is not going to make me popular on my campus. We need to focus on career skills. The truth is its easier to enjoy the arts when you are warm, fed, and safe. I believe our greatest responsibility then is to give students employable skills and a lifelong hunger for learning.

The good sisters at Sacred Heart Monestary must have known that when the created Mount Marty College. Although we are a liberal arts college our strengths are our fine Nursing and Education programs both of which are occupational programs. We also offer occupational programs in Graphic Arts, Computer Science, and more. This cohabitation of occupational and arts programs are not a dichotomy. Rather they are like two sides of a coin. You need both sides.

Good writing is just as important to a computer programmer as a foundation in programming logic. A graphic artist needs to know about balance and composition so they can apply them to photo editing. A math teacher must be able to speak well. Our nurses must be able to understand a patient’s need for care. And we all need to be good citizens. These are just a few of the necessary contributions from the liberal arts side of the equation. But we fine tune the curriculum to take advantage of those teachable moments when liberal arts can enhance occupational education.

Occupational educators need to have real world experience. Too many of us have never worked in our field but are rather a product of academic inbreeding. Our ivory towers honor works which are unproductive in our fields and do not recognize true contributions to our disciplines. For instance, we hire new faculty in Computer Science because they published in scholarly journals but never stop to consider they ought to have been coding applications instead. We honor unpaid presentations to closed-minded conference attendees while ignoring the fact that talented individuals are too busy earning $150+ an hour addressing the needs of open-minded business executives and helping to build their strategic plans for the future. This is the kind of information you will never see published in a “scholarly” journal until long after it has lost all of its strategic value. First-hand experience is as essential to the occupational educator as the air we breathe and our hiring practices must begin to honor it.

Occupational educators must be current in their field and there is no better way than continuous practice. We need to keep involved by working as well as teaching. Working in the field needs to be recognized as a valid form of academic research. We must also bring our new knowledge back into the classroom in order to make our students more competitive on the job market.

We must keep an eye on the future as well. What new career paths are emerging? What will people in those careers need to know? How can we best teach them? These are the questions we must constantly ask to avoid obsolescence.

Our task then is to keep occupational programs current and forward looking, create the occupational programs needed in the near future, and give our students employable skills in every area.

Let’s get to work!

What are we really doing inside the classroom? Are we regurgitating facts or are we teaching students to face the unknown challenges of their lives? Are we boring them to tears or engaging them in conversation and research? How many empty seats are there at 8:00?  Isn’t it time to give some serious thought to what and how we teach?

A vision of students today should make you think about your work and its affect.

I believe its time for a radical change in how we work before the ivory towers disappear. Its time to reach students with rich content where they live and work. Why does learning have to occur inside a specific space? Why must it happen only on arbitrarily determined day? In limited time blocks? For a specific range of time?

The personal computer was Time Magazine’s Man of the Year for 1982. There were only about 100,000 of them in use then. There were over 168 million PCs in the United States at the end of the last millennium. To what use are we putting this intellectual tool?

How many of your students own an MP3 player? What is the potential of this tool to teach?

The World Wide Web is a vast information jungle rich with information and knowledge waiting to be gleaned. Do your students know how to effectively use it? Do you?

Technology is advancing at an incredible rate but teaching practice remains much the same as it was hundreds of years ago. Why? Society looks to us to lead the way. We are expected to introduce the future to the populace. Instead we are being dragged kicking into the 20th century. Yes, I meant 20th.

Yes, much of what we do works so let’s not discard it. Rather let’s make it better by making it available in new ways. Let’s think about how technology can help us improve learning. Let’s once again practice thinking outside of the box. That’s what I’m doing. Please join me!