On College or not
Dear Laura,
Forgive the tardy response. Besides travelling with the kids to speech competitions and getting caught up with life when we get home, but nine days ago, Becky fainted. No one knows what I did in the heat of the crisis, but when it was all over, I had two broken toes. At last here is a quiet day with Cal and the big girls at the seminary, and my morning chores over, including taking AJ to the doctor to check for strep throat. I am sitting in the kitchen in the red wicker chairs, with my foot propped up, borrowing Peter's laptop to get caught up with a few things. Your letter is one of them. Hurray!
Yes, I went to college. I spent four years at Hillsdale College, graduating in 1976 with a Bachelors of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies. At the time, IDS offered only four majors: I chose American Studies because it allowed me to take the best of my favorite subjects with lots of time for electives as well. I had to do a certain number of hours in American Literature, American History, Political Science, and Economics. But my best classes were English literature, art and music. Hillsdale is THE place for economics and political science, and I took many one-credit seminar classes in their Center for Constructive Alternatives, where I heard, and met, many of the top leaders in various fields. It was an exciting time to be at Hillsdale as they were standing up to the feds re: hiring and admission quotas.
Even then, I had people asking me WHAT I was going to DO with a major like that. I didn't know, I replied contentedly. I knew that God had plans for my life and I wasn't sweating setting up a "career". He would lead me where He wanted me, whether into marriage or not. I was there for an education. In a Vic Lit class, I read John Henry Newman's The Idea of a University which gives a good picture of a truly liberal arts education, explaining the university as a gymnasium of the mind, training one in all the disciplines. I drew heavily on Newman as part of my senior thesis (on education in America) which I did under Russell Kirk, visiting professor the years I was there. (He was the one, of course, who introduced Cal and me to each other several years later.) Our culture has so lost the idea of the university. It is really many times just four more years of babysitting combined with tech school.
I have no objection to college in general, if it is for a continued education. I think we all ought to be learning all the time, if John Milton was right:
I also have no objection for a woman, who hopes to be a wife and mother, getting the best education she can find, so as to be an excellent help to her husband, and to be an excellent teacher of her children, whom she must teach to know God aright. One must determine whether the traditional four year college, with its sillinesses and its debt, is really the best way to get a good education. I'm thinking that in our cybernetic culture there are ever better and better alternatives to traditional higher education as we have known it.
Though this next discussion is only anecdotally founded, and most likely not applicable to your own case, I have problems with the notion that an eighteen year old girl is ready to fly from her parents' protection (and sometimes, indeed, her father's headship) and live on her own far, far away from their wise and loving scrutiny, to make all decisions by herself. We saw a number of sweet girls enter college, only to develop into coarser, more feministic women. I suppose we may fault the parents in the first place who did not anchor their ladies in the Word so well that the influences of the college would only have made them stronger in their godly characters. (I think many Christian parents, the same who thought the church youth group was teaching their children, or the parents who taught their kids to esteem their own goodness, have only handed their kids a narrow, "Christian" culture, instead of leading them to the Word Himself. No wonder, then, when they find church to be insignificant when more glamorous things come by. I don't say this well, and certainly it is a huge subject on which to comment. Did Kilby share this with you http://www.fccm.net/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=72 I do not think the higher institutions of learning are in loco parentis. The church may be.
As you know, we visited St. Olaf with Susan. I would have fears for her (I do have some, but not of a deep and spiritual nature--just sorry she will observe lesbianism and loose morals and other coarseness from which she has heretofore been mostly shielded by the culture of grace God has given us in our home) except for the blessing of God's leading and provision for her education and fellowship. When asked by her new elder/father/friend how she figured on dealing with the liberal influences at the college God blessed my heart by her four-fold response: 1) the Word. 2) Prayer 3) the Fellowship of the Saints, and 4) knowing that falling comes in small, daily choices.
Debby,
The response time is not a problem, and yes, please do post this to your blog. Thanks for relating your experiences at Hillsdale; I had no idea you studied with Russell Kirk. Too cool. I have yet to read anything of his, but I ought to get to it this summer.
I too think that the university in principle, viewed rightly, is a great thing. And I would affirm all the more fervently the kind of philosophy of education that Milton expresses (as per Scripture, it seems to me). But given that I am in the vast minority at Baylor, and given some of the ideas even my closest professor-friend and mentor has about the direction I ought to be going and the purpose for which I am studying formally, leaving that pressure and all of the "sillinesses" of college life itself behind and becoming an autodidact is extremely tempting. By the way, your anecdotally founded discussion (about what happens when 18 is considered the magical age at which any Christian is ready to leave his/her parents and go into the college environment) is completely in line with my intuitive suspicions. ... it pains me to see that take place on all sides at Baylor.
The rest of that Milton quote, you know, goes thus: "[... to be like Him,] as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which, united with that heavenly grace of faith, makes up the highest perfection.") I know that virtue is not developed except by trials and tests, and this Baylor does offer abundantly. It's that grace of faith that 15 hours a week in a classroom + twice as much homework + ungodly classmates and professors seem to strive in every way to kill. I don't relinquish responsibility for my forgetfulness or the related sins by any means; besides, there are a few faithful friends who help me be watchful in prayer and grounded in the Word daily, as Susan has thankfully discerned is the key. It's just that I risk being consumed with the possibility of better alternatives as I labor in that atmosphere (and as I take a vacation from it, perhaps more dangerously . . . )
Thanks very much for the link to Voddie Baucham. He spoke at a camp I went to one time, and it was the most outstanding/memorable thing I heard in all my years in my Baptist youth group. (I appreciate his remarks about the SBC and children . . . ) This is great. Praise God for a voice like this in the SBC.
I appreciate your advice very much and will continue to think hard about these things.
Grace & peace,
Laura
Forgive the tardy response. Besides travelling with the kids to speech competitions and getting caught up with life when we get home, but nine days ago, Becky fainted. No one knows what I did in the heat of the crisis, but when it was all over, I had two broken toes. At last here is a quiet day with Cal and the big girls at the seminary, and my morning chores over, including taking AJ to the doctor to check for strep throat. I am sitting in the kitchen in the red wicker chairs, with my foot propped up, borrowing Peter's laptop to get caught up with a few things. Your letter is one of them. Hurray!
Yes, I went to college. I spent four years at Hillsdale College, graduating in 1976 with a Bachelors of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies. At the time, IDS offered only four majors: I chose American Studies because it allowed me to take the best of my favorite subjects with lots of time for electives as well. I had to do a certain number of hours in American Literature, American History, Political Science, and Economics. But my best classes were English literature, art and music. Hillsdale is THE place for economics and political science, and I took many one-credit seminar classes in their Center for Constructive Alternatives, where I heard, and met, many of the top leaders in various fields. It was an exciting time to be at Hillsdale as they were standing up to the feds re: hiring and admission quotas.
Even then, I had people asking me WHAT I was going to DO with a major like that. I didn't know, I replied contentedly. I knew that God had plans for my life and I wasn't sweating setting up a "career". He would lead me where He wanted me, whether into marriage or not. I was there for an education. In a Vic Lit class, I read John Henry Newman's The Idea of a University which gives a good picture of a truly liberal arts education, explaining the university as a gymnasium of the mind, training one in all the disciplines. I drew heavily on Newman as part of my senior thesis (on education in America) which I did under Russell Kirk, visiting professor the years I was there. (He was the one, of course, who introduced Cal and me to each other several years later.) Our culture has so lost the idea of the university. It is really many times just four more years of babysitting combined with tech school.
I have no objection to college in general, if it is for a continued education. I think we all ought to be learning all the time, if John Milton was right:
The end then of learning
is to repair the ruins
of our first parents
by regaining
to know God aright
and out of that knowledge
to love Him,
to imitate Him,
to be like Him
John Milton
I also have no objection for a woman, who hopes to be a wife and mother, getting the best education she can find, so as to be an excellent help to her husband, and to be an excellent teacher of her children, whom she must teach to know God aright. One must determine whether the traditional four year college, with its sillinesses and its debt, is really the best way to get a good education. I'm thinking that in our cybernetic culture there are ever better and better alternatives to traditional higher education as we have known it.
Though this next discussion is only anecdotally founded, and most likely not applicable to your own case, I have problems with the notion that an eighteen year old girl is ready to fly from her parents' protection (and sometimes, indeed, her father's headship) and live on her own far, far away from their wise and loving scrutiny, to make all decisions by herself. We saw a number of sweet girls enter college, only to develop into coarser, more feministic women. I suppose we may fault the parents in the first place who did not anchor their ladies in the Word so well that the influences of the college would only have made them stronger in their godly characters. (I think many Christian parents, the same who thought the church youth group was teaching their children, or the parents who taught their kids to esteem their own goodness, have only handed their kids a narrow, "Christian" culture, instead of leading them to the Word Himself. No wonder, then, when they find church to be insignificant when more glamorous things come by. I don't say this well, and certainly it is a huge subject on which to comment. Did Kilby share this with you http://www.fccm.net/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=72 I do not think the higher institutions of learning are in loco parentis. The church may be.
As you know, we visited St. Olaf with Susan. I would have fears for her (I do have some, but not of a deep and spiritual nature--just sorry she will observe lesbianism and loose morals and other coarseness from which she has heretofore been mostly shielded by the culture of grace God has given us in our home) except for the blessing of God's leading and provision for her education and fellowship. When asked by her new elder/father/friend how she figured on dealing with the liberal influences at the college God blessed my heart by her four-fold response: 1) the Word. 2) Prayer 3) the Fellowship of the Saints, and 4) knowing that falling comes in small, daily choices.
Debby,
The response time is not a problem, and yes, please do post this to your blog. Thanks for relating your experiences at Hillsdale; I had no idea you studied with Russell Kirk. Too cool. I have yet to read anything of his, but I ought to get to it this summer.
I too think that the university in principle, viewed rightly, is a great thing. And I would affirm all the more fervently the kind of philosophy of education that Milton expresses (as per Scripture, it seems to me). But given that I am in the vast minority at Baylor, and given some of the ideas even my closest professor-friend and mentor has about the direction I ought to be going and the purpose for which I am studying formally, leaving that pressure and all of the "sillinesses" of college life itself behind and becoming an autodidact is extremely tempting. By the way, your anecdotally founded discussion (about what happens when 18 is considered the magical age at which any Christian is ready to leave his/her parents and go into the college environment) is completely in line with my intuitive suspicions. ... it pains me to see that take place on all sides at Baylor.
The rest of that Milton quote, you know, goes thus: "[... to be like Him,] as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which, united with that heavenly grace of faith, makes up the highest perfection.") I know that virtue is not developed except by trials and tests, and this Baylor does offer abundantly. It's that grace of faith that 15 hours a week in a classroom + twice as much homework + ungodly classmates and professors seem to strive in every way to kill. I don't relinquish responsibility for my forgetfulness or the related sins by any means; besides, there are a few faithful friends who help me be watchful in prayer and grounded in the Word daily, as Susan has thankfully discerned is the key. It's just that I risk being consumed with the possibility of better alternatives as I labor in that atmosphere (and as I take a vacation from it, perhaps more dangerously . . . )
Thanks very much for the link to Voddie Baucham. He spoke at a camp I went to one time, and it was the most outstanding/memorable thing I heard in all my years in my Baptist youth group. (I appreciate his remarks about the SBC and children . . . ) This is great. Praise God for a voice like this in the SBC.
I appreciate your advice very much and will continue to think hard about these things.
Grace & peace,
Laura
posted by Compleat Mom at 11:00 PM
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