Life In "Concordia Land"

The University of Wittenberg in the 19th century

Martin Noland notes: "In Germany, Scandinavia, and the Baltics, the Lutherans had–and still have–great universities that produced some of the leading thinkers, scholars, authors, inventors, scientists, engineers, etc. in the 16th to 20th century." What about Lutheran higher education in the States?

If you're dying to find out, read Noland's little essay on life in "Concordia Land." It's on one of our favorite blogs, Steadfast Lutherans. To bookmark it, click the link on the right.

Which Way Forward?

The liberal arts have fallen on hard times. We all know by now what the battlefield looks like. Consumerism in the "education marketplace" leads the charge, and then all the soldiers fall in line: the liberal arts are outmoded; the delivery system is antiquated; most students choose a college for its prestige, not the education it affords. On the left flank, we've got price tags that are far too high; on the right, the ages-old canard of the uselessness of liberal education.

Alexander Mosaic; Darius III, right, faces Alexander

Meanwhile, liberal arts colleges face the onslaught with all the hand-wringing of Darius III on the eve of Gaugamela. Darius' solution in the face of the tactically superior Macedonian forces was to overwhelm with numbers. He threw more of what didn't work at Issus at a problem that was the same as what he faced at Issus. It didn't work.

In his Chronicle of Higher Education piece, "When Trying Harder Doesn't Work," Dan Lundquist argues that the twenty-first century liberal arts colleges of the States are doing much the same thing as Darius: trying harder. But not necessarily smarter. And not with any apparent gains in withstanding the onslaught.

That's because, so Lundquist, there's been no real, wholesale re-thinking of the critical issues of access, affordability, curriculum, and pedagogy.

He's right. And part of that has to do with the fact historical perspective is lacking. As a result, the liberal arts colleges have had a difficult time articulating, extramurally, just what it is that they do and don't do; and internally, how the liberal arts at the center should drive decision making. 

So which way forward? Return the liberal arts to the center. Center curriculum on the liberal arts. Externally, make promises that can be kept and disabuse of misunderstood promises. Internally, make the education offered more affordable by reducing administrative costs, exiting the higher ed arms race, and making the teacherly task of the liberal arts college central once again. 

Luther and Hercules

Lutheranism & the ClassicsII (L&CII), "Reading the Church Fathers," is only a few weeks away. But there's still time to register. You can even do it online here.

There's a lot that L&CII means. But it also means we can officially start talking about L&CI. Now, supposing you planned on making it to L&C II but very much regretted having missed L&CI. What could you do?

Due to the good offices of our friends at Logia: A Journal of Lutheran Theology and its kind editor, Michael Albrecht, the proceedings of L&CI are available for all to read. Oh, to be sure, you'll miss Carl Springer's wry manner as he recounted the name and epithet of the great Viking Ragnar Shaggypants. You'll have to imagine, as you read, the booming voice of John Nordling explaining how to sing modern American Jesus-camp songs in ancient Greek (χαίρετε, κτλ). And you'll need nothing to restrain you when tempted by Diane Johnson's siren-voiced reading of Johannes Posselius' heroized, versified Gospel lectionary. Viva voce was great. But, as I say, if you missed it, you can read it in Logia. The editors inform us there are still copies. If your bent is modern, the ever-enterprising Logia continues to come out with ways to access that important journal electronically.

The one thing the Logia XXI.2 (Eastertide 2012) has in scads over the live event? Its cover depicts Lvthervs Germanicvs as Hercvles, clad in the pelt of the Nemean lion. He is Hercvles redivivus--Hercules resurrected--this time doing battle not against the Stymphalian birds, not against the Hydra (nine heads), but against the seven-headed beast (Rev. 13), known in the German cartoons of the day as das siebenhauptige Papsttier. Luther qua Hercules' battle entailed not only retrieving Scripture from Nicholas of Lyra, but the entire academic method lassoed to idiosyncratic readings of Aristotle, represented here by the papal beast. For his efforts Luther was credited with extirpating all that was good, including the good arts. Wrongly as, it turns out--rebuttal, Kopff, in the aforementioned volume. In the church of the Reformation Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, Vergil--all had their place in court. The Wittenberg Reformation just put the Queen back on her throne. But this was no corporate downsizing. The Queen retained her courtiers in Wittenberg. Without the arts, Luther said, no theology. 

Oh, and did I mention that Logia XXI.2 contains nearly all the papers from L&C I? So if you missed it, it's not too late.

Lutheran Education: From Wittenberg to the Future

Can you actually be what you think you are without history? In the what-do-you-have-that-you-did-not-also-receive world of Lutheran thinking, the answer to the question is an emphatic No. Our now is our past; our weal in our now is our faithfulness to our past; our way to future is mapped out on the chart of our past.

Of course, this leads to some Rip Van Winkle moments in the life of the Church of the Augsburg Confession. An uncomfortable illustration, one so close to home many who are now reading will stop: our dads tell us that the general confession of sins at the start of the Common Order is our heritage from the Reformation. Somehow they were able to map the practice over Article 11 of the Augsburg Confession. But the Fathers tell us a different story: Lutherans during and after the Reformation retained private Confession and Absolution. 

So it goes with Lutheran school and higher education, as well. Without the perspective of history, when asked, "How do you know it's Lutheran?" a well-meaning parent's or teacher's response amounts to something like, "Because it is..." "Because that's what our sign says." "Because we have synodically certified teachers." "Because we have chapel every Wednesday."

Tom Korcok devotes an entire volume to answering the question, "How do you know it's Lutheran?" by examining the historical record, tracing a line from Luther and the Reformation through Walther and the North American renaissance of confessional Lutheranism up to today. Lutheran Education: From Wittenberg to the Future is full of Rip Van Winkle moments. But no parent with children in a Lutheran school, no Lutheran school teacher, no parish pastor with a Christian day school should pass up the opportunity to imagine the future of Lutheran education by reading the map of its past in Korcok's perceptive little book. Intensely and intentionally rooted in Christian vocation, Korcok argues, Lutheran education uses the tools of the good arts (of the trivium and quadrivium) and catechesis (yes, Luther's Small Catechism--not as a book of doctrine, but as a devotional text) to shape the baptized into thoughtful, deliberate Christians living simultaneously in God's two realms, of the Law and of the Gospel. Korcok develops his thesis especially in contrast to modernist and progressivist educational thinking. If you're not sure what that means, you'll have to read Lutheran Education to find discover the ideological, philosophical and, yes, theological gulf that separates the two approaches to the education of children.

Our present present may bear little resemblance to our past; but Tom Korcok hopes his book can help us to use our past to move with confidence into our future. 

Lutheranism & the Classics II

"What do you have that you did not also receive?" So intones the apostle to the unruly Corinthian congregation. The deposit of the Faith comes with the implication of great humility. It must. That's the nature of the Gospel. We are beggars; God is the great Benefactor. And this Faith, and all the goods that come to men through it--the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation--Paul reminds us, are nothing if not gift. Those who possess it dare not brag.

That was the mindset, too, of the Wittenberg Reformers. No re-invention of the divine Deposit was their proclamation; they could lay claim to the Gospel as nothing other than what had been given them. And that's why the Reformation is best thought of as the Reformation, and not the Revolution. The very name suggests that its impetus was to "form" the church "back," to return the Church to the doctrine and practice of its faithful teachers who had gone before. That's why the languages mattered--because the faithful teachers taught in Hebrew and Greek and Latin, because God communicates by His Word, proclaimed and read and taught and confessed. And that's why, too, perhaps unlike any other reform movement of the 16th century, the Wittenberg Reformation above all was conscious of its debt to the Fathers of the Church. "Nun komm," a favorite among Luther hymns even today, is nothing but a German translation of Ambrose's "Veni, redemptor gentium." The Augsburg Confession aligns itself clearly and knowledgeably with the Ecumenical Councils, and rejects the arcane heresies that formed the crucible in which the confession of the Fathers was forged. The Catalog of Testimonies, treated today as something like an appendix, but in actuality the fundamental evidentiary basis for the Formula of Concord, foregrounds the work of the Fathers' faithful confession of scriptural doctrine.

In that spirit, Concordia Theological Seminary, Ft. Wayne, offers installment two of Lutheranism & the Classics, "Reading the Church Fathers." Why? Because "what do you have that you did not also receive?"

Here's what the organizers have to say about it:

"Although the fathers of the church occasionally erred, Lutherans have always had the highest regard for such ancient teachers as, e.g., Augustine, Jerome and Chrysostom, as well as the old Lutheran theologians Chemnitz, Hunnius, Selnecker, Calov and others. Concordia Theological Seminary is pleased, therefore, to offer the second Lutheranism and the Classics Conference under the theme, “Reading the Church Fathers.” The conference features three plenary papers, a banquet address and 20 sectional presenters on the Reformation-era reception of the Latin/Greek fathers, classical authors, ancient Christian hymnody, cultivation of neo-Latin and pedagogy. Latin will be used in three worship settings. The presentation by Joanna Hensley is intended especially for classical educators and homeschoolers. The conference celebrates Lutheranism’s engagement with the church’s greatest teachers of the past and to their value for the propagation of the faith to present and future generations."

With "Reading the Church Fathers," Lutheranism & the Classics continues its important work of reminding the contemporary Church of the Augsburg Confession that its future lies in its past. 

So reclaim what's yours, mark your calendars for 28-29 September, and plan to attend Lutheranism & the Classics II.

Malthus or the Cliff?

Thomas Malthus

Are we in a Malthusian moment or is that an edge over there? You be the judge. More info in Jeff Selingo's "The Financial Cliff for Higher Ed" from The Chronicle thereof. 

There are so many good arguments that emerge from the very belly of confessional Lutheranism for recalibrating Lutheran higher education along the lines of what Ren Mus has been arguing for--let's call it the Lutheran argument. But perhaps nothing will compel change like forced change. Let's call it the...?

Can the Lutherans Lead with Price--and Education?

The second annual Education Department reports on college tuition costs are out. Leading the pack again is Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY, at over $42K per annum. That's tuition alone. Go figure. There are, of course, low price leaders as well. Berea College in Kentucky, for example, has $910 per annum tuition cost. All students there are on work study. That means they mow the diamond they play ball on and sweep and clean the halls their rooms are on. I imagine it's as or more tidy than most other private college residential halls. 

Which raises the question: can, or could, Lutherans deliver a higher education that is Lutheran and has Lutheranism at its core and lead the pack in low price? I'm not certain it's possible to scrape along the bottom like Berea, but who knows? There are just a few simple things a college needs: a place, a faculty, a curriculum, the bare wherewithal to administer it, and students. 

So how to address each of these to maximize benefit and maximize cost reduction? 

Place: there are many small towns and many environs outside of small towns that would welcome the purchase of 40 acres or the purchase, renovation, and occupancy of some older buildings downtown. Of course, it wouldn't do much directly for their tax base, but it would bring in traffic. I think the small town or rural solution holds a great deal of promise in meeting the challenge of the cost of place. And there are creative and interesting ways to build nice--not extravagant, but nice--buildings at a reasonable cost. Then there are those once thriving now sputtering religious communities....

Faculty: a good, committed, teacherly and scholarly faculty, teaching and studying at the heart of the Wittenberg way is not difficult to pull together. Today in our country we have an embarrassment of Ph.D.s, and the Lutherans aren't lacking. Ironically, however, just as so many Lutherans went off to read in disciplines at the heart of Lutheranism because they are at the heart of Lutheranism--history, the Western humanities, philosophy, theology, New and Old Testament, classics, rhetoric--the colleges in the last four decades have retreated from the disciplines at the heart of Lutheranism. What used to be central has become peripheral, and what used to be left to the so-called state university system (not the flagships, but the regional universities) has now become the bread and butter of the Lutheran colleges. The point is, the faculty are out there. The pay they demand, especially if the location's right, will often be below market, and with the right student:faculty ratio, fielding a solid core of Lutheran faculty at the heart of the Lutheran disciplines will not be difficult. I hate to put price tags on these things, but I think it's reasonable to think that $75K-$85K per annum package--salary + benefits--would be adequate remuneration. 

Curriculum: that's partly because there's no need for a Byzantine curriculum. A tight curriculum, with no or virtually no electives, that serves the purpose of producing, as we've said elsewhere, a theologically conversant, eloquent, and learned laity and clergy (this is the Church's interest in higher ed), not only serves students best, it keeps down costs. It eliminates administrative difficulties. It might, in fact, eliminate student recruitment costs--such an institution simply draws by reputation, and draws, at the end of the day, only those who want what it has to give. 

Administrative wherewithal: the reduction in administrative costs is gained on the back of a simplified, but rigorous, curriculum and a faculty made capable of administration by this simplicity. 

cui bono?

The AAUP just a few weeks ago issued a statement in defense of the humanities. To which, you might think, we at Ren Mus would gladly tip our hats. After all, in the face declining humanities enrollments disproportionately taught by adjunct faculty, a statement from a force as large and well-known as the AAUP should be welcome.

Mark Bauerlein doesn't think so. I encourage you to read all of his Brainstorm blog entry, "The Adverserial Humanities." Generally, his answer is that the humanities suffer--and the AAUP's defense of the humanities suffers--from the fact that the answer to cui bono is deficient. The humanities, understood by Bauerlein and Ren Mus, serve society and don't detract from it. The AAUP's defense seems to suggest that the humanities should be preserved to harbor the very advocates of destroying the society that makes humanistic education possible.

A Modest Proposal: Lutheran Higher Ed of the Faculty, by the Faculty...and for the Students

A series of recent articles in The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed has pointed out that the burgeoning costs of higher education are frequently related to the explosion in the size of administrations. If you’re in higher ed, I’d love to hear from you. Look back a decade, look back two: what’s the size of your administration today compared to what it was then—and how does that compare to the size of the student body? I estimate, based upon anecdotal evidence, that there’s been a nearly three-fold increase in the size of administrations in the last 20 years. I think that’s a conservative number. And it’s no secret that the Lutheran schools are not immune to it.

What’s behind all this? A number of things. First, the push for “productivity” as measured by research and publication. Let’s face it: most undergrads—even Ivy League undergrads—benefit very little or not at all from their professors’ publication and research. In fact, one could say there’s an inverse relationship between faculty productivity (so conceived) and student benefit. Nevertheless, this kind of productivity is a driving force in the rising cost of higher ed in the States and among the Lutherans.

Why? you might ask. Because faculty loads are computed by courses, and to get more research time means reducing course loads. Suppose that in 1992 your history department ran 12 sections a year of American History. Staffing needs would have run 1.5 FTE (4 courses per term per prof). Today, with course load reductions, the same 12 sections now require 2 FTE (3 courses per term per prof). That’s an increase of 25%. But that’s not the only place the increase in research time has been felt.

Research has also placed demands on what is called “service.” Service is made up of those student-facing, committee, and administrative tasks that all faculty do, today less than before. If teaching faculty no longer have time to advise students, advisers must be hired and advising offices created and administered. If teaching faculty can no longer serve as registrar or assistant dean, then a full-time registrar and full-time assistant dean must be found. You get the picture. The basic needs of a college are, well, very basic. But when those who are there don’t attend to those needs, others have to step in to do it. So that’s the impact of the research thrust.

Another, equally devastating force that has been brought to bear on higher ed, from which Lutheran colleges are by no means immune, is that of legislation and accreditation. This has led to a dramatic increase in administrative overhead, simply because of the complexity of the entire thing. There’s FAFSA and FERPA; and there’s SACS and NCA and state boards and the Department of Education, and the list goes on. To address problems created by bureaucracy, they bureaucratize. And bureaucratization means nothing if it doesn’t also mean more bureaucrats, meaning: administrators.

Now, this isn’t to say that all administrators are bad. They aren’t. Most of them are good people, but most of their jobs are just, well, unnecessary. Which isn’t to say that all administrative positions are unnecessary. We still need presidents and deans and registrars—just not so many of them, and just not so many who don’t also teach.

In short, higher ed, whose only goal it has to be to educate students, as well and as cost-effectively as possible, has relinquished its control to others who have other concerns. Let’s face it: if the English prof who’s working on the next article she hopes to get into PMLA doesn’t—can’t—care about the rigor of her writing class, the dean of admissions sure doesn’t, either, because rigor frequently doesn’t mean happy students (that’s just an example; multiply your own). When the faculty have relinquished control and relinquished their responsibility, the responsibility for the enterprise falls into the hands of bureaucracies. But as high-minded as bureaucracies can sometimes sound, bureaucratic high-mindedness must (it’s a law of bureaucracies) give way to what is “sensible,” and “sensible” doesn’t always, and frequently fails to, equate with what is best—even, and especially, for the student. If you don’t believe me, consider how we got to a place where students today do 50% less homework than they did 20 years ago, are faced with a tuition that, in inflation-adjusted dollars, is 100% greater than 20 years ago, and leave college saddled, on average, with nearly 200% more debt than 20 years ago.

This is why we need a Lutheran higher education of the faculty (that’s a subjective genitive) and by the faculty—so that, at the end of the day, it might also be for the student. What that means is that faculty will control the curriculum—not just the part of the curriculum in which they teach, but the entire curriculum.

Of course, this requires a faculty dedicated to higher education the Wittenberg way, not a faculty patched together to meet the fleeting needs of social and economic ephemera.

And in the end, what would it look like? It’s hard to say. I imagine a simplified, concentrated curriculum. I imagine an almost embarrassingly low tuition. I imagine students who seek an education for the education, and not the chimaera on the other side of the valedictory speech. I imagine a dedication to the Lutheran way that is unabashed and unapologetic. I imagine an education that is challenging and rigorous and instructive in timeless things and not ephemera.

And I imagine the time is coming. The mavens of higher education understand that the status quo of the last 40-50 years (see above) just cannot continue without falling in on itself. If I may be permitted, I’d like to put in writing what I’ve said many a time: the next “bubble” that will burst is higher ed. The question is whether the Lutherans are going to follow the Pied Piper or have the foresight to do something dramatically different (see above).

I hope we’ll choose the latter, because what I really hope for is a Lutheran higher education of and by the faculty and for the students, with all that really entails.

Newman Redux

In a response to an article by Roger Scruton, in which he employs Newman as a lens for examining the contemporary university, The Little Professor (Dr. Miriam Burstein) reminds her readers of how complicated the reception of Newman's ideas may be:

http://littleprofessor.typepad.com/the_little_professor/2010/09/the-ideal-of-a-university.html

Indeed, we can peg Newman as both a conservative and a radical. A lot of inside baseball? Perhaps. At the same time, Newman's problematical legacy provides much to consider for those who care about Lutheran higher education. In what ways is it beneficial for our institutions to embrace this paradox? How might we both conserve the past, challenge the present, and change the future? To what extent does an educational institution committed to confessional Lutheranism provide the perfect foundation from which to negotiate between these two extremes?

Happy New Year!

Over the semester break, I have tried to catch up on some reading, and I came across an open letter that Gregory Petsko posted as a response to the cuts that SUNY Albany is making to its foreign language and classics programs:

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/11/22/petsko

Now, I don't agree with every point Dr. Petsko makes. For example, I don't think a student has to come into contact with a Russian department to appreciate Dostoyevsky or that meeting a set of distribution requirements automatically gives students a rich liberal education. At the same time, anyone who has hung around the colleges affiliated with the old synodical conference knows that this is just not how people on those campuses talk to each other. But, I quibble. If you can move past those issues, I think it's important to note a couple of Dr. Petsko's points:

(1) I love his emphasis on the concept of universitas. The university is a place where the humanities contribute to the education of the "whole" person.
(2) I appreciate his articulating the serendipity of the educational process. The person who has been educated in a more "whole" or complete manner is well-prepared to meet the changes and chances that life brings. The best laid plans, etc.

The older I get, the more I think these are important issues to push when students walk through the office or classroom door.

A Monitory Lesson

The Chronicle of Higher Education takes up the curious case of the now-defunct Founders College, what happens when what you have is a great idea and what you don't have is all your ducks in a row. Read more by clicking here. 

Why Not Accept the Status Quo? An Open Letter to Ray, a Skeptical Lutheran Reader

Ray, a reader of RenMus, has left some provocative comments on the last post, “Well, Of Course.” The present post attempts to address them, and, as you can see, I’ve organized these thoughts around answering the question, “Why not accept the status quo in contemporary confessional Lutheran higher education and, by implication, work with and within it?”

Coat of Arms, Wittenberg

The answer to this question is, in some sense, the entirety of this blog. But let me try to condense things as much as possible. First, the status quo in confessional Lutheran higher education hardly resembles anything distinctly or even noticeably Lutheran. I don’t think there’s any big secret here. In the vast majority of its programming, what the average synodical conference college does differently from, say, Cardinal Stritch (just to take an example with which Ray will be familiar) is so minuscule that students, especially those in satellite campus and evening programs, have to make an effort to discover any unique residuum of Lutheranism. This, by the way, puts the lie to the notion that opening the doors of Lutheran institutions to all comers is really “missional.” This is a pious self-blandishment and -deception at so many levels. First, it’s an extremely expensive way for the church to fulfill the Great Commission. Second, because the residuum of Lutheranism is so scant, it’s frequently the case that most non-Lutherans can enter and exit a great many Lutheran colleges without so much as a brush with the bracing claims of Scriptural, Lutheran theology. Third, as it’s sold it’s a terrible bait-and-switch scheme, even though the “switch” never really occurs (see “Second,...” just above). One might add that while the church certainly is and must be engaged in works of love toward the world (charitable and human-care undertakings), it is not clear to me that higher education, especially with a steep price-tag attached to it, is such an offering. The church’s charity is charity (“Come, buy without money!”), not “charity” on the back of student debt.

That’s the Lutheran theology element of the critique. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that there are not Lutheran theologians at the Lutheran colleges. I’m not saying that those theologians do not teach Lutheran theology. But that also does not mean that I am saying that all of the Lutherans are really Lutherans, either, nor that all the faculty are actually Lutherans, much less ones who can give what could be identified as a reasonably articulate account of Lutheranism. But therein lies the problem.

Ray wonders whether eschewing such professional-preparation courses as pharmacy or exercise science or what have you is a wise move on the part of those who advance a Wittenberg higher education. In other words, the question is “Why can’t RenMus and the professional and pre-professional courses of study just get along, i.e., exist side-by-side, in the same institution?” Answer: Because they can’t. Please note, that’s the “can’t” of impossibility, not the “can’t” of “uneasy, but liveable relationship.” There are many reasons for this. First, students are important to other students’ education. In fact, some educators identify “peer-group” as the single most important factor in a student’s college-years intellectual development. The peer group in a “multi-versity” is so broad and uneven that it has a corrosive effect on the entire student body. If one’s experience in higher education has been with high-quality liberal arts colleges, this factor will hardly have been apparent. However, it is a reality. A conversation can be only as good as its weakest link. If higher education is something like a sustained conversation between students and students and students and faculty, etc., the impact of the recalcitrant is utterly destructive. It would be like going to a Star Trek convention only to find that more than 50% of the people there wanted to talk about Desperate Housewives.

Second, when an institution of higher education, especially a Lutheran one, develops programming that is not characteristically Lutheran, that is, that lacks an account for why Lutheranism needs that program, the motive is always the profit motive (despite our pious self-blandishments; see above). This motive opens the floodgate to an Iliad of evils, not least of which is prizing and prioritizing the new programming over the “old standard.” Not only is it the case that the concerns of the Evangelical Lutheran Church are represented in an attenuated way or not at all in major curricular decisions (such as core requirements), but now the entire curriculum is shifted to meet the needs of what I like to call “grabby” professional and pre-professional programs. The argument might go something like this: “A legitimate business major doesn’t have room for a heavy distributive core. Now, since everyone at institution X earns the B.A., the B.A. requirements across the institution need to be curtailed to accommodate the professional programming.” Again, the church’s interest is derailed. Not only that, but as mentioned above, this places serious students of, say, theology or history or chemistry in a class with students who regard all of those courses as hoops to jump through (Desperate Housewives fans in a conversation with Trekkies about Star Trek). Again, the impact is corrosive on the student body. One might argue, even, that theology fares even worse in this scenario than the students (and therefore the students with it): as Robert Benne has well pointed out, the marginalization of theology on campuses has the effect of reducing it to what he calls a pietism, wherein religious feelings are expressed in the vaguest of terms (“God is great, God is good.”) and not brought into real converse with the intelllectual project or academic disciplines of the institution [see the post Worth Reading]. Thus to put a RenMus program in an existing institution is something like throwing the lambs to the wolves; there’s that bit about pearls, too.

Third, a Lutheran skeptic might wonder why a RenMus higher education could not or would not benefit, financially, from being attached to an institution with income-generating (?) programs [on this see Steve Gehrke’s monitory words in several comments on earlier posts]. In other words, why not use, say, a pharmacy program to underwrite a Wittenberg humanistic education? First, see the arguments above. Second, if generating income to support core programming is the goal, I can think of many ways to make money more effectively than by skimming the slim margin off tuition payments for a professional program that, in any case, provides a distraction from the institution’s purpose.

There are more universal concerns here, too, and unfortunately this post has grown way too long. But let me add a couple of points. First, the professional programming mentioned above is animated by an entirely different value system from that that underlies Wittenberg higher education. In Wittenberg higher education, that is, the higher education that the Evangelical Lutheran Church has at its heart, the goal is theologically learned and conversant laity and clergy. The education itself, while ordered to the goods of the church, state, and individual, takes what looks to us today like an indirect route to those goods: it mines the past for the present and the future. Carl Springer in his recent talk at CTSFW [click here, and then click on Listen/View Conferences and Events; then click on Lutheranism and the Classics; then click on Wise, Steadfast, and Magnanimous] points out that Lutherans, by habit and even by confession, “back” into their future. The future is unknown, except for the eschatological horizon when Jesus will return. The past is known. And we approach the present and future on the basis of what is known, using (again, a quaint notion) the best that has been thought and written in the past. In other words, the notion of utility that partially animates Wittenberg education should not be confused with utilitariansim, which is what animates professional programming. Second, it is always the case that the proliferation of programming takes the eye off the ball. Efforts at an administrative, curricular, financial, admissions, development, and PR level that can and should be aimed at advancing and fostering an ongoing encounter with Lutheran theology, developing awareness of the Wittenberg reformational approach to the life of the mind, foregrounding the Christian life of vocation (not vocationalism) become so scattered that what is said about the important core purpose of the institution becomes something like background noise—perhaps at most a kind of mood lighting or light God-“musack.”

Penultimately, given the reality on the street, even approaching an institution that presently exists in order to create something like a Wittenberg curriculum would require showing up money in hand. In other words, it is not the case that present institutions will simply divert funds from what they are already doing to develop a Wittenberg curriculum. Since that’s the case—that is, since it requires starting from scratch anyway—it’s best to keep it at a safe remove from what history has shown to be the inexorable progresss of a typical confessional Lutheran institution of higher education.

Will this mean teaching a handful of students in a trailer park in Northern Wisconsin? No, it must not; for it all to work properly, architecture, location, curriculum, faculty, governance, financing, admissions requirements, student body, etc., must all work together, that is, be expressive of the same animating idea or ideal. As I’ve tried to show above, just one element being out of whack can and most frequently does have a long-term and irreversible deleterious impact.

Finally, I express my thanks to Ray for putting his finger on and pressing the issue. Much of what has been said here has been alluded to or touched upon lightly in other posts; the fruit of Ray’s prompting, “Why Not Accept the Status Quo?” attempts to draw a line from RenMus’ critique of contemporary confessional Lutheran higher education to the envisioning of a better way. 

Well, Of Course

It is time to get rid of the humanities as unproductive, useless money drains. Gradgrind has been making the case for years. The numbers! The facts! And now we have this from the maven of humanism, Stanley Fish, in an Opinionator column of his in the New York Times several weeks ago [click here for the article]: “I have always had trouble believing in the high-minded case for a core curriculum—that it preserves and transmits the best that has been thought and said—but I believe fully in the core curriculum as a device of employment for me and my fellow humanists.”

Thomas Gradgrind

Well, there you have it. Milan Kundera has one of his characters, Paul, say that Europeans will never be able to fight another war because they don’t believe in anything anymore. That is, the French can’t and won’t fight for the French way of life because they don’t believe in it (at least against other nations; I’m not saying anything about torching their neighbors’ businesses and bashing the windshields out of tante Yvette’s car, an altogether understandable way to preserve one’s way of life). Nor can perhaps the most-listened-to (or heard) of the humanists in the U.S. today make a case for the humanities that is anything else than a French temper-tantrum at his friends losing their jobs.

But let me put it to you: why would you do anything else—if you didn’t believe in it?

This is what has been slowly choking the life out of the humanities. Once the Gradgrind argument became vogue—that is, once we bought the idea that facts, numbers, etc., should determine the good of the humanities—it was only a matter of time.

Ironically, the humanities have in some sense been a millennia-long protest against a view of the world that is “just the facts, ma’am.” Their very existence, their very own articulation of their raison d’être, is that they give access to some other non-quantifiable, qualitative dimension of human life: that of the soul, that mysterious thing we all know we have but whose existence we cannot prove by empirical measure.

Humanism, in fact, and Wittenberg humanism in particular, prizes this unproven thing, this thing whose existence has no demonstrable measure, as the center of human life, as the definitional element of humans. Luther defines the human being by his aristotelian potential in his Disputatio de homine: hominem posse justificari—man has the ability to be justified. Here he lays a theological finger on the distinctive element of human beings as overagainst all other creatures. Humans have the ability either (failingly) to justify their own existence before God, or to receive from God the justification for their existence. All other things have their account. It is humans alone who seek—and either make up or blessedly receive—an account. In other words, it is humans alone who are possessed of a soul, a soul caught in immeasurable existential Anfechtung or temptatio. And that’s why we need the humanities—to help us live in this strange place, between God and the animals, between good and evil, between infinite beauty and unspeakable horror amidst the truths and deceptions, the scant justices and barbarous injustices involved in human life.

That’s what we think. But if that account makes no sense to you, at least the humanities keep a few of Stanley Fish’s friends employed. 

World-Class Liberal Arts for Lutherans

The point RenMus has been attempting to make—with some success, we hope!—is that a new way in Lutheran higher education can and must be found. Worn out are those attempts to turn essentially parochial institutions into the multi-use, “everything-to-everyone,” institutions we see today. In fact, the success rate for Lutheran colleges that have become everything to everyone if only they might win a few for their coffers is dismally low. The Church’s interest in higher education really cannot be anything other than “a theologically conversant and literate laity and clergy.” All other “objectives” of higher education can be met by large state universities. So let’s leave those objectives to them and attend to our own interests.

Liz Reisberg makes a similar point in today’s Inside Higher Ed in an article titled, “If not a world class research university, then perhaps world class liberal arts?” The piece hinges on two arguments. First, world-class research university is coterminous with big bucks; liberal arts education is relatively much less costly. Second, given the tortuous route of a typcial worker’s “career” these days, liberal arts education is poised today as at no other time to be useful.

Mutatis mutandis, the same arguments Reisberg makes can be directly applied to Lutheran higher education. Chasing the latest professional program is always going to be much more costly than sticking with a solid liberal arts curriculum—and the payoff disappointing to the effort given. And since Lutheran higher education educates for one’s vocation, Lutheranly understood, and not one’s “vocation,” understood as “career,” it uses the human arts (artes humaniores) to that end on the premise that one learns to be a human better by reading Thucydides than by learning the precepts of marketing.

While the first point is one going to the proper management of limited resources, the latter is really a theological, not a merely aesthetic, issue. The Wittenberg Reformers were convinced that the higher education entailment of the Lutheran Reformation was a radical approach to the Western intellectual tradition through the sources themselves. To be sure, other approaches to higher education were wildly popular at their time; Melanchthon could complain with the best of us that students eschewed the liberal arts and chose instead what was “universally more saleable.” But for the Wittenberg Reformers, higher education was a matter of best preparing students to live under God’s call in a world and under orders created by God for men and their benefit. It was not, finally, business prowess or bureaucratic advancement that made for a life well-lived in the Wittenberg way; rather, a life well-lived in the Wittenberg way was one with a deeply cognizant sense of being located in a specific time and place, gifted with a certain wisdom handed down from antiquity and with an eschatological horizon that meant that this world was not all there was. That was the end to which the Wittenberg Reformers put the artes humaniores.

And that’s the end to which their modern heirs should continue to educate. Indeed, Thucydides is still the father of political philosophy, and the eschatological horizon hasn’t changed a bit. It’s only that we heirs of Wittenberg seem to have lost our way between our past and our future. But by approaching things like Wittenbergers, that is, by understanding what we ought to do now based upon where we have come from, based upon what we already know, we can find our way again. 

Lutheranism & Classics a Huge Success

The dust has finally settled, and I can offer a report on Lutheranism & the Classics. Attendance at the conference numbered over 150, and the response by those in attendance has been overwhelmingly positive. The conference drew together Lutherans and non-Lutherans alike (I ate breakfast one morning with a public school teacher from Colorado, a Methodist, who thought the conference sounded interesting and so decided to come!), clergy and non-clergy, and academics and non-academics. Speakers forcefully and persuasively made the case, both directly and indirectly, that the languages (classical Hebrew, Greek, and Latin) and the arts in which they find their home are the highest and most natural decoration of the Church and that the Church of the Augsburg Confession without them is like a stripped-out, whitewashed shell: a church building in Geneva, say, compared to the Stadtkirche Wittenberg. 

That's all fine and good, and you probably wouldn't have expected anything else to transpire. But those in attendance, both by their numbers and by their appreciative reception of the orations at the conference, confirmed that Lutherans want to be Lutherans. They want their children to be educated as Lutherans, they want Lutheran preachers in their Lutheran pulpits, Lutheran teachers in their Lutheran schools, and they want it authentically--not in an attenuated form. 

Concordia Theological Seminary, Ft. Wayne, which hosted the conference, has also generously published sound recordings of the plenary talks by Jon Bruss, Dale Meyer, Carl Springer, John Nordling, and Avery Springer and Jim Lowe. You can find these on the CTSFW Media page. Once you've navigated there, click on "Listen/View Conferences and Events," then hit "Lutheranism & the Classics 2010," which will bring up the five plenary talks. 

Papers from the sectional sessions will, along with the plenary papers, be available in a Logia 2012 special issue. I'm sure Logia would be delighted to have new subscribers in anticipation of that issue! 

To all who attended, to all who helped out, to all who spoke, many thanks. 

Foxes in the Chicken Coop

Critical observers of U.S. higher education—of which there are far too few—have certainly seen it coming for years, perhaps decades. I think it might have finally sunk in for me when, within the space of but a few years, the ubiquitous “caf” was renamed the “dining facility,” dorm rooms that looked like what you’d get for third-class passage on a ship were replaced by suites, and the cavernous rubber-and-sweat-smelling gym was turned into a “fitness center,” often as well appointed as the local for-profit fitness club. Ironically, none of this coincided with an equally obvious renewed emphasis on teaching and learning. Those on the busy side of the podium at the front of the room might even have been able to discern, over this roughly 10-year revolution that swept American higher ed, an inverse relationship between enhanced non-academic facilities and students’ engagement.

The problem was, those who should have been keeping tabs on it all were the ones who stood to gain the most from it: the fitness club for students is open, usually free, to faculty; the house-beautiful dorm rooms are as much a badge of pride for bricks-and-mortar administrators as they are for the students who take up residence there; and, well, everyone has to eat, and adults no less than students prefer padded chairs to benches, small tables to row seating, and a nice cut of beef in the stroganoff to yesterday’s shepherd’s pie. Meanwhile, students and their parents paid more and more; the federal government released more and more funds in support of “higher education” in the form of grants and loans; and the institutions kept doing what institutions do best: engage in a Veblen-esque conspicuous grasp for the biggest piece of the pie they could get.

Which makes it, frankly, refreshing that someone, finally, has someone’s ear: the president’s. In an interview with college and university newspaper staffs from around the country yesterday, Mr. Obama shows that he: (a) is onto the federal gravy train that has allowed higher education costs to soar out of proportion; (b) understands the higher-ed “arms race” (if I may be permitted: in 1985, 25 years ago, the comprehensive annual cost of one, very nicely appointed private institution [VNAPI] which I was fortunate enough to attend was just less than a brand-new VW Golf—$8,750; today, while the equivalent 2010 Golf runs roughly $16K, the comprehensive cost of the same VNAPI is $47K); (c) rightly views spa-like accommodations on campus as having little to no bearing on the quality of education; and (d) wonders out loud whether “research” may have gotten in the way of teaching and learning. You can read more about Mr. Obama’s interview in the Around Washington column in today’s Inside Higher Ed.

What does this all mean? First, this may be the first time I’ve seen these issues addressed publicly by anyone in Washington, although, as I've mentioned, critical observers have long noted these matters privately and in smaller venues. Mr. Obama’s comments may bring some long-overdue and well-deserved attention to some of the real problems in higher education. Second, this portends a new era of what we’ve been arguing for here on RenMus, a leaner, meaner curriculum, the creation of a shared culture not based upon whether students have private bathrooms with Kohler fixtures but on what they read. Third and finally, perhaps the reign of the foxes is over in the chicken coop.

That said, the foxes will be foxes as long as they can—even if it means destroying the chicken coop. The higher education juggernaut will continue. But there is room—and it is widening—for a new way, for a return to a tightly managed curriculum taught by teachers to students who want to be...educated. And Lutheran higher education, with its unique Wittenberg intellectual apparatus, is poised like few others to deliver.

Education & Schools of Education

In The Chronicle of Higher Education this week, Richard Vedder wonders, "Should We Abolish Colleges of Education?" I encourage you to read the whole piece (it's very short). Among other recommendations Vedder has is this, that "State governments should consider defunding students in colleges of education, requiring future teachers to major in an academic subject, etc."

Advice easily transferrable to the colleges and universities of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in North America. The rationale for teacher education, that is, for paedagogical education, is insufficient. How does it help to underprepare future teachers in academic subjects (mathematics, geography, literature, etc.?) in order to overprepare them for the moment when they first open their mouth in front of a class of first graders? Anecdotally, each and every year I have grown as a teacher--by experience. This is largely due to the fact that I entered the profession without a preconception about what a "good teacher" looked like, about what he or she did. And I quickly found out that teaching is like politics: the politician identifies what he or she wants, and gets there by any means possible. That's what teaching is like. It's a constant, tacit renegotiation on the part of the teacher with the students. The goal is always the same, but it's never met in the same way. It certainly fits nothing like a text-book version. But the point is this: nothing prepares you for life on Capitol Hill like, well, life on Capitol Hill. In the same way, nothing prepares you for teaching like teaching.

But nothing un-prepares you for teaching like having nothing to teach. An interesting study recently showed that students taught by novices (TAs) did, generally, as well as those taught by veterans (profs)--in the class in question. But the subsequent progress of the same group of students was tracked. Those taught by the profs went on to do better in courses later in the sequence than those taught by TAs. What does this mean? It means that content matters, and that a teacher's mastery of the content up and down the curriculum matters. What is salient in Calc I? What do students really need to be able to do and know in intermediate Greek to make it in advanced Greek? What bases must be built in in "Survey of American History" for subsequent courses in the Great Depression and the Civil War, etc.?

At the grade school level: what does a kid really need to know, really need to be able to do, to perform well later on in Geometry and Trig? The answer of the survey I mentioned above is that it requires, on the part of the teachers, depth of knowledge in academic subjects.

This, indeed, was and remains the Wittenberg way. Certainly the Reformers, both educational and theological, cared about pedagogy. But it was, for them, a guild craft, something gained in the shop (the school classroom), not in the classroom (the university classroom). The latter was for content.

What might Melanchthon's or Winsheim's or Dietrich's or...Luther's recommendation be today for the Evangelical Lutheran Church's parochial school teacher preparation? Perhaps we could tweak Vedder just a bit and say, "Synods and synodical colleges and parishes should consider defunding students in colleges of education, requiring future teachers to major in an academic subject, etc."

Scripsi.

[Pictured above: Das Melanchthonhaus Wittenberg, where Melanchthon, in addition to his rigorous teaching schedule at the University and prolific publication activity, ran a school. Content mattered.]