Kevin Stilley

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December 5, 2014 by kevinstilley

Education – select quotes

education.002They know enough who know how to learn.
~ Henry Adams

Some people drink from the fountain of knowledge, others just gargle.
~ Robert Anthony

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
~ Aristotle

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
~ Aristotle

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.
~ Isaac Asimov

An educated person is one who has learned that information almost always turns out to be at best incomplete and very often false, misleading, fictitious, mendacious — just dead wrong.
~ Russell Baker

The paradox of education is precisely this — that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.
~ James A. Baldwin

Book CoverTo have people who are well informed but not constrained by conscience is conceivably, the most dangerous outcome of education possible. Indeed it could be argued that ignorance is better than unguided intelligence, for the most dangerous people are those who have knowledge without a moral framework.
~ Ernest Boyer, in “The Third Wave of School Reform”, Christianity Today , 9/22/89, p. 16

Rhetoric completes the tools of learning. Dialectic zeros in on the logic of things, of particular systems of thought or subjects. Rhetoric takes the next grand step and brings all these subjects together into one whole.
~ William Blake

Education is the movement from darkness to light.
~ Allan Bloom

The plain, unvarnished truth is that public education is a shoddy, fraudulent piece of goods sold t to the public at an astronomical price. It’s time the American consumer knew the extent of the fraud which is victimizing millions of children each year.
~ Samuel Blumenfeld, in NEA: Trojan Horse In American Education [Boise, Idaho: Paradigm, 1984] page xiv

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
~ Derek Bok

Education is learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know.
~ Daniel J. Boorstin

It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated.
~ Alec Bourne

To have people who are well informed but not constrained by conscience is conceivably, the most dangerous outcome of education possible. Indeed it could be argued that ignorance is better than unguided intelligence, for the most dangerous people are those who have knowledge without a moral framework.
~ Ernest Boyer, in “The Third Wave of School Reform”, Christianity Today , 9/22/89, p. 16

I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression .
~ Ray Bradbury

Man is what he reads.
~ Joseph Brodsky

Change is the end result of all true learning.
~ Leo Buscaglia

That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call tragedy.
~ Thomas Carlyle

Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom.
~ George Washington Carver

Education is a system of imposed ignorance.
~ Noam Chomsky

He who studies books alone will know how things ought to be, and he who studies men will know how they are.
~ Charles Caleb Colton

Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace.
~ Confucius

Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.
~ Walter Cronkite

Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow.
~ Anthony J. D’Angelo

The only real failure in life is one not learned from.
~ Anthony J. D’Angelo

Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.
~ Leonardo da Vinci

The instructor has to teach history, cosmogony, psychology, ethics, the laws of nations. How can he do it without saying anything favorable or unfavorable about the beliefs of evangelical Christians, Catholics, Socinians, Deists, pantheists, materialists, or fetish worshipers, who all claim equal rights under American institutions? His teaching will indeed be “the play of Hamlet, with the part of Hamlet omitted.”
~ R. L. Dabney, in On Secular Education. Moscow, ID: Ransom Press, 1989. page 17.

Every line of true knowledge must find its completeness as it converges on God, just as every beam of daylight leads the eye to the sun. If religion is excluded from our study, every process of thought will be arrested before it reaches its proper goal. The structure of thought must remain a truncated cone, with its proper apex lacking.
~ R. L. Dabney, in On Secular Education. Moscow, ID: Ransom Press, 1989. pages 16-17.

Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.
~ John Dewey

There is no God and there is no soul. Hence, there are no needs for the props of traditional religion. With dogma and creed excluded, then immutable truth is also dead and buried.
~ John Dewey

Children have to be educated, but they have also to be left to educate themselves.
~ Ernest Dimnet

On one occasion Aristotle was asked how much educated men were superior to those uneducated. “As much,” said he, “as the living are to the dead.”
~ Diogenes Laertius, in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
~ Will Durant

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.
~ Albert Einstein

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
~ Albert Einstein

The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
~ Albert Einstein

Those who trust us educate us.
~ George Eliot

We must not believe the many, who say that only free people ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosophers who say that only the educated are free.
~ Epictetus, in Discourses

Every student can learn, just not on the same day, or the same way.
~ George Evans

Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
~ Edward Everett

Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
~ Malcolm Forbes

Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
~ E.M. Forster

An education isn’t how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It’s being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don’t.
~ Anatole France

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
~ Benjamin Franklin

Genius without education is like silver in the mine.
~ Benjamin Franklin

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
~ Robert Frost

Perhaps the number one problem in public education is the attempt to educate students without a moral point of reference. With a floating target of truth and the desertion of absolutes, the entire system has abandoned its base.
~Kenneth Gangel, in Schooling Choices, edited by Wayne House. Portland, OR: Multnomah, 1988. page 127.

When you take the free will out of education, that turns it into schooling.
~ John Taylor Gatto

The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.
~ Sydney J. Harris

Education comes from within; you get it by struggle and effort and thought.
~ Napoleon Hill

We have too readily blamed shortcomings in American education on social changes (the disorientation of the American family or the impact of television) or incompetent teachers or structural flaws in our schools systems. But the chief blame should fall on faulty theories promulgated in our schools of education and accepted by educational policymakers.
~ E. D. Hirsch, Jr., in Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1987.

Schools have, or should have, children for six or seven hours a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for thirteen years or more. To assert that they are powerless to make a significant impact on what their students learn would be to make a claim about American education that few parents, teachers, or students would find it easy to accept.
~ E. D. Hirsch, Jr., in Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1987. page 20

A man’s mind stretched by a new idea can never go back to its original dimensions.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the things you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not. It is the first lesson that ought to be learned.
~ Thomas H. Huxley

The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.
~ B.B. King

Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
~ William James

Liberty without learning is always in peril and learning without liberty is always in vain.
~ John F. Kennedy

The goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth.
~ John F. Kennedy

I am much afraid that the schools will prove the very gates of hell, unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures, and engraving them in the hearts of youth. I advise no one to place his child where the Scriptures do not reign paramount.
~ Martin Luther

A Christian boy or girl can learn mathematics, for example, from a teacher who is not a Christian; and truth is truth however learned. But while truth is truth however learned, the bearing of truth, the meaning of truth, the purpose of truth, even in the sphere of mathematics, seem entirely different to the Christian from that which they seem to the non-Christian; and that is why a truly Christian education is possible only when Christian conviction underlies not a part but all, of the curriculum of the school.
~ J. Gresham Machen, in Education, Christianity, and the State. Jefferson, MD: Trinity Foundation, 1987. page 81

The most important Christian Education institution is not the pulpit or the school, important as those institutions are; but it is the Christian family. And that institution has to a very large extent ceased to do its work.
~ J. Gresham Machen, in Education, Christianity, and the State. Jefferson, MD: Trinity Foundation, 1987. page 8

Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.
~ Malcolm X

Without education, you are not going anywhere in this world.
~ Malcolm X

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
~ Nelson Mandela

Therefore, teaching, talk and tale, however lucid or fascinating, effect nothing until self-activity be set up; that is, self-education is the only possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of a child’s nature.
~ Charlotte Mason, in A Philosophy of Education

I call therefore a complete and generous education that which fits a man to perform justly, skillfully, and magnanimously all the office, both private and public, of peace and war.
~ John Milton, in Areopagitica and Of Education. Northbrook, IL: AHM Publishing, 1951. page 60

Educationists are entertaining. We can always find a good laugh in their prose, with its special, ludicrous combination of ignorance and pretentiousness.
~Richard Mitchell, in The Graves of Academe

If you want to predict the future of our land, go to school and look around.
~Richard Mitchell, in The Graves of Academe

I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.
~ Wilson Mizner

Education costs money, but then so does ignorance.
~ Claus Moser

If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves.
~ Report of the National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983

The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.
~ Thomas Paine

True, a little learning is a dangerous thing, but it still beats total ignorance.
~ Pauline Phillips

Responsibility educates.
~ Wendell Phillips

The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future in life.
~ Plato

A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink of it deeply, or taste of it not, for shallow thoughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking deeply sobers us again.
~ Alexander Pope, in Essay on Criticism

People enter schools as question-marks and they leave as periods.
~ Neil Postman

Education is the most powerful ally of humanism, and every American public school is a school of humanism. What can the theistic Sunday schools, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teaching?
~ Charles Potter

America is becoming so educated that ignorance will be a novelty. I will belong to the select few.
~ Will Rogers

Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.
~ Jim Rohn

The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.
~ Carl Rogers

All of life is constant education.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt

The apparent ease with which children learn is their ruin.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.
~ Bertrand Russell

Most people would rather die than think — in fact they do!
~ Bertrand Russell

For we let our young men and women go out unarmed in a day when armor was never so necessary. By teaching them to read, we have left them at the mercy of the printed word. By the invention of the film and the radio, we have made certain that no aversion to reading shall secure them from the incessant battery of words, words, words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects.
~ Dorothy Sayers, from “The Lost Tools of Learning” in Douglas Wilson’s book Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning: An Approach to Distinctively Christian Education. Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1991.

There is also one excellent reason why the veriest amateur may feel entitled to have an opinion about education. For if we are not all professional teachers, we have all, at some time or other, been taught. Even if we learned nothing–perhaps in particular if we learned nothing–our contribution to the discussion may have a potential value.
~ Dorothy Sayers, from “The Lost Tools of Learning” in Douglas Wilson’s book Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning: An Approach to Distinctively Christian Education. Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1991. page 145.

A man cannot leave a better legacy to the world than a well-educated family.
~ Thomas Scott

Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don’t.
~ Pete Seeger

He is educated who knows how to find out what he does not know.
~ George Simmel

Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.
~ Thomas Sowell

Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.
~ Mark Twain

We’re drowning in information, but we’re starved for knowledge.
~ Unknown

If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble to dust; but if we work on men’s immortal minds, if we impress on them with high principles, the just fear of God and love for their fellow-men, we engrave on those tablets something which no time can efface, and which will brighten and brighten to all eternity.
~ Daniel Webster

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
~ Oscar Wilde

You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation.
~ Brigham Young

__________

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Filed Under: Blog, Front Page, Quotes Tagged With: Blog, classical, Education, homeschooling, pedagogy, policy, private, public, Quotes, school, theory

July 11, 2013 by kevinstilley

Foundations of Education – Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

The following books are some of those appearing on a Comprehensive Reading List for PhD candidates in Foundations of Education at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.  This list was compiled several years ago so it may have been updated since then with other titles not found here.

Anthony, Michael J. and Benson, Warren S. Exploring the History and Philosophy of Christian Education: Principles for the 21st Century. Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2003.

Barclay, William. Educational Ideals in the Ancient World. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1959.

Bruce, Alexander Balmain. The Training of the Twelve. New Canaan, Ct: Keats Publishing, Inc. 1979.

Clouse, Bonnidell. Teaching for Moral Growth: A Guide for the Christian Community Teachers, Parents, and Pastors. Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1993.

Eldridge, Daryl. The Teaching Ministry of the Church. Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1995.

Erikson, Erik H. Identity and the Life Cycle. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1980.

Estep, James Riley, Jr., ed. C. E.: The Heritage of Christian Education. Joplin, MO: College Press, 2003.

Ford, Leroy. A Curriculum Design Manual for Theological Education: A Learning Outcomes Focus. Nashville: Broadman Press. 1991.

Gaebelein, Frank E. The Pattern of God’s Truth: The Integration of Faith and Learning. Winona Lake: BMH Books, 1968.

Gorman, Julie A. Community that is Christian: A Handbook on Small Groups. Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1993.

Knight, George B. Philosophy and Education: An Introduction in Christian Perspective. Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press, 1989.

LeBar, Lois E. Education That is Christian. New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1958.

LeFever, Marlene D. Learning Styles: Reaching Everyone God Gave You to Teach. Elgin, Ill: David C. Cook Publishing Co. 2002

Lingenfelter, Judith, and Sherwood Lingenfelter. Teaching Cross-Culturally: An Incarnational Model for Learning and Teaching. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003

Pazmiño, Robert W. Foundational issues in Christian Education. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1997.

Price, John M. Jesus the Teacher. Nashville: The Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, 1946.

Richards, Lawrence O., & Bredfeldt, Gary. Creative Bible Teaching (Rev. ed.). Chicago: Moody, 1998.

Richards, Lawrence O. A Theology of Christian Education. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1975.

Roehlkepartain, Eugene C. The Teaching Church: Moving Christian Education to Center Stage. Nashville: Abingdon, 1993.

Wilhoit, James, & Dettoni, John. Nurture that is Christian: Developmental Perspective on Christian Education. Wheaton, Illinois: Bridgepoint Books, 1995.

Wyckoff, D. Campbell. Theory and Design of the Christian Education Curriculum. Westminster Press. 1961.

Yount, William. Called to Teach: An Introduction to the Ministry of Teaching.
Broadman and Holman, 1999.

Yount, William. Created to Learn: A Christian Teacher’s Introduction to Educational Psychology. Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 1996.

Zuck, Roy B. Teaching as Paul Taught. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998.

Filed Under: Blog, Books, Education Tagged With: bibliography, Education, reading list, SWBTS

October 21, 2012 by kevinstilley

Ronald Nash – select quotes

I have never met a genuine Christian who disparaged the importance of conversion, faith, commitment, sacrifice, Bible study, holy living, and the like. But I know lots of Christians who have not yet seen the importance of sound doctrine. It is important THAT we believe (spiritual concern); but it is also important WHAT we believe (theological concern).
~ in Closing of the American Heart, page 99

Relativism, then is a position for which the world still awaits an argument. It is also self-defeating in the sense that every self-styled relativist is forced, sooner or later, to appeal to absolutes of his own making. And it is a theory that robs life of elements needed for any life to have meaning.
~ in The Closing of the American Heart, page 67

The world is not composed of religious and non-religious people. It is composed rather of religious people who have different ultimate concerns, different gods, and who respond to the living God in different ways…. All humans are incurably religious; we simply manifest different religious allegiances.
~ in The Closing of the American Heart, page 38

Filed Under: Blog, Education, Philosophy Tagged With: Education, Philosophy, Reformed Theological Seminary, Ronald Nash, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

December 12, 2011 by kevinstilley

Daniel Boorstin – select quotes

Education is learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know.

The biggest barrier to progress in human history has not been ignorance but the illusion of knowing.

Filed Under: Blog, History, Quotes Tagged With: Boorstin, Education, History, quotations, Quotes

August 30, 2011 by kevinstilley

A Student’s Guide To Liberal Learning – Discussion Questions:

Class #2 – Early Western Civilization Seminar

Assigned Reading: A Student’s Guide To Liberal Learning, by James V. Schall

Discussion Questions:

  • What do you enjoy reading?  What do you read?  Does it make a difference? “Desultory reading is delightful, but to be beneficial, our reading must be carefully directed.”( ~ Seneca)  What kind of books does Schall refer to in his book.
  • Schall refers to Plato’s productions as “literary works” and Aristotle’s as “more pedestrian classnotes and lectures.”  (page 1)  What is the contrast that he is identifying with these referents?
  • In several places in the book Schall claims that a denial of truth is prominent in the current Zeitgeist.  Do you think this is a problem?  Is this related to common thought regarding “toleration?”  “… sin?”  “… judging?”  “… inability to speak on a particular subject unless you have been through that experience yourself?” Are those who deny “truth” in the spiritual realm consistent when it comes to the manner in which they live in the physical world?
  • Do you agree that reading the classics is essential to restoring a vital intellectual life that is open to truth?  What is truth?  Do you think that the average person would agree with Plato’s definition of truth?  (page 10)
  • Schall refers to an endemic of biblical illiteracy?  (page 12) Do you think it is as bad as he suggests?  Is our generation different from previous generations when it comes to knowing what the Bible says?
  • Does Schall expect most students to get a good college education?  Why, or why not?  How would you respond to his question found in the last sentence on page 13?
  • What do you think about Bloom’s suggestion that music may be the real educator of our youth?  (page 17)
  • In “Reading”, Henry David Thoreau writes, “How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book!” Consider Schall’s account of the transformation of Augustine after reading the Hortensius.  Can you point to such an occurrence in your life? If not, why not? (page 18)
  • What do you think of Chesterton’s definition of humility, found on page 24?
  • When we discover contradictions and error in the “great books” should we resort to apathy, skepticism, or relativism? (page 24)
  • Schall claims that self-denial/self-discipline is primary and essential to education. Do you agree?  Just how important is it?  Re-read the last paragraph of page 25/first paragraph of page 26.  What role do you think self-discipline will play in how well you do at Southwestern?  “When a man is busy at study, the Evil Impulse whispers to him: Why tarryest thou here.  Go and join the men who flirt with pretty women.” – Talmud, Zohar, ii, 265b
  • Do you agree with the author about the relationship between self-discipline and freedom?  Schall says that self-discipline will set you free; Jesus said that the truth will set you free.  Which is it?  (page 29)  He also says that reading is freeing (page 43), can he not make up his mind?
  • Schall notes that “we don’t have to read everything.”  (page 31)  In fact, it would be impossible to do so.  So what should you read?  “Read properly, fewer books than a hundred would suffice for a liberal education. Read superficially, the British Museum Library might still leave the student a barbarian.” (~ A. R. Orage)
  • Schall refers to the reading of Shakespeare; (page 32) do you think it is taking a shortcut to watch Shakespeare’s plays rather than reading them?  (for additional thought: http://kevinstilley.com/ode-to-shakespeare-in-modern-english-editions/)
  • Regarding the roles of student- teacher Schall writes, “This is what I have tried to do for students in insisting that they come to class regularly, after having carefully read the text.  The student who does not do this work himself is unteachable.  No teacher can really help him.”  (page 39)  Do you agree?
  • Schall defines a personal library as books that we have read again.  (page 34) What is the value of re-reading? “When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than was there before.” ~ Clifton Fadiman.   Is there a similarity between anthropological field work and reading a great book?
  • Consider Schall’s comments about those to whom a student “owes” something for their education.  Who do you owe?  (page 36ff)
  • What is the value of reading a book in community rather than in isolation?  (page 42ff)  Watch the video clip from Apartment for Peggy; http://kevinstilley.com/the-benefits-of-colloquium/
  • Schall reminds us that, as Aristotle pointed out, “that many people who do not know books are nevertheless very wise.” (pages 43-44) Does this take away from his previous argumentation regarding the value of books?  Does this warn against letting your learning make you arrogant?

Questions For The Final Exam from this material:

  • Probably None

Recommended Additional Reading:

  • http://kevinstilley.com/books-reading-select-quotes/
  • “On the Reading of Old Books” by C.S. Lewis
  • The Best Things in Life, by Peter Kreeft
  • A Student’s Guide to The Core Curriculum, by Mark C. Henrie
  • From Achilles to Christ: Why Christians Should Read the Pagan Classics, by Louis Markos
  • When Athens Met Jerusalem: An Introduction to Classical and Christian Thought, by John Mark Reynolds

Filed Under: Blog, Books, History, Philosophy, Worldview, Zeitgeist Tagged With: college, Education, Reading

June 12, 2011 by kevinstilley

Curiosity – select quotes

Every man ought to be inquisitive through every hour of his great adventure down to the day when he shall no longer cast a shadow in the sun. For if he dies without a question in his heart, what excuse is there for his continuance.
~ Frank Moore Colby

A faith without curiosity is like a seed that does not grow. Indifference is farther from faith than doubt or rebellion.
~ Peter Kreeft

Only the curious will learn and only the resolute overcome the obstacles to learning. The quest quotient has always excited me more than the intelligence quotient.
~ Eugene S. Wilson

Filed Under: Blog, Quotes Tagged With: creativity, Curiosity, Education, imagination, investigation

May 15, 2011 by kevinstilley

Teachers & Teaching – select quotes

A teacher affects eternity: he can never tell where his influence stops.
~ Henry Adams

A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.
~ Thomas Carruthers

If you want to be a teacher, remember that you’re just as likely to teach who you are as you are to teach what you know.
~ Marie T. Freeman

Enseigner, c’est apprendre deux fois. [To teach is to learn twice.]
~ Joseph Joubert, in Pensees

__________

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Filed Under: Blog, Quotes Tagged With: Education, mentor, quotations, quote, teachers, teaching

May 14, 2011 by kevinstilley

Thomas Henry Huxley – select quotes

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the things you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not. It is the first lesson that ought to be learned.

The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man’s foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher.

Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.

Filed Under: Blog, Philosophy, Quotes Tagged With: Blog, discipline, Education, quotations, Quotes, T.H. Huxley, Thomas Huxley

January 19, 2011 by kevinstilley

Exponential Times

Students, below are the “Did You Know” videos.   The one we watched in class about exponential times is version 3.0.

    Did You Know 4.0

    Did You Know 3.0

    Social Media Revolution

    Social Media Revolutions 2010

Filed Under: Blog, Zeitgeist Tagged With: change, Education, Social Media, technology

July 9, 2010 by kevinstilley

Have You Read All These Books?

“Have you read all these books?” That is inevitably the question that is asked when we have a group of people into our home. We have thousands of books scattered throughout our home — three sets of bookshelves full of commentaries in the upstairs game-room, three sets of bookshelves in the formal living room full of literature, art, and Christology books, two sets of bookshelves in the master bedroom with books on history and the history of ideas, two sets of bookshelves in the nursery with philosophy and apologetics, books lining the walls in the formal dining room and every nook and cranny of the house. We have lots of books.

“Have you read all these books?” the question was asked once again, this time by one of the students in the medieval history class I am teaching at the seminary this summer. We had the students into our home to hang out, play Wii, and review for their final exam.

I usually try to walk the inquirer through a list of reasons why I have certain books in my personal library. “I use this book as a reference.” “I have read this particular book dozens of times.” “This is a book I bought spontaneously on a recent bookstore visit.” “I read a little Kierkegaard every day.” etc. Probably more information than the inquirer really wanted to know. So, the most recent question gave me an opportunity to use a new response I adapted from a passage in James V. Schall’s A Students Guided to Liberal Learning;

“In this personal library of ours, as I have explained, we ought to have books that we have read, though there is nothing wrong with accumulating in advance books we might never read or read only years later. No serious book-lover will ever die having read every book he has managed to collect. This is not a sign of dilatoriness but of eagerness, anticipation.”

So, I explain, my personal library is not just an indication of where I have been, but of where I am going. Not just of who I am, but of who I want to be. Not just a catalog of my literary friends, but of great minds to whom I hope to be introduced.

Anticipation, eagerness, … Hope.

Filed Under: Blog, Books, Family Circus, Front Page, Worldview Tagged With: Books, Education, Liberal Arts, library, literature, Philosophy

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