March 30, 2009
Measurement
In an interview with World magazine Charles Murray, author of Real Education said, “America has an irrational love for the Bachelor of Arts degree…” The gist of the article is that getting a B.A. has become the status standard of measurement for higher education. Murray believes however, that certification in particular fields can actually be more valuable than the coveted B.A. Believers as well can fall victim to credentials and man’s measurement. Gone are the days when we can have a degreeless fisherman or a carpenter preaching in the church. “We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves. When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise.” (I Cor 10:12 NIV)
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Gail;
-----I have missed the import of this passage. Now that you’ve placed it alone in this setting of certifying educational accomplishment, I can see its light clearly. And it illuminates a problem I have also had with many of the world’s cultures, including the church. There is a definite usefulness in certifying education by degrees, but there also is detriment. On the front side of the degree, to mean anything it must be issued by an accredited institution, that is, by an institution that itself has received a document of certification. To achieve its certification it must meet certain standards in offering expected fields of study from expected purviews. As everyone awards accomplishment according to these measures created amongst themselves, a box becomes defined within which the degreed student is trained to think. That is the first detriment.
-----It is rather well known that many Pharaohs and other kings had certain physical defects, such as six toes, or weak immune systems. Their efforts to keep the throne in the family often made for them wives of their sisters. Eventually the incest took its toll on their genetics. So also intellectual defects grow within the certified box from a sort of academic incest. Everyone winds up thinking they are so educated when they eventually learn to think in their individually different ways about the same ideas cut from the lump of reality by one well defined cookie-cutter. But this individual variation itself minutely effects the shape of the cookie-cutter which, being man-made, is susceptible to deviation. The next batch of cookies are then cut with some alteration. History has served us a whole comic-book of idiots following each other down intellectually twisted trails. That is another detriment.
-----But the worst detriment is the meaning lost by focus upon the very symbol of the meaning expected. Like a dollar gets passed around with little thought of why it represents what it represents, the degree becomes an empty face. Not many people could explain what education and knowledge the bachelor degree represents, but they are sure to look up to it anyway. Then the words and deeds of the degreed people are swallowed by the same approving, sheeply attitudes as was Thomas Aquinas’ scholasticism. So our society becomes ever more and more bent towards such intellectually incestuous idiocies as man-made global warming, evolution, a woman’s right to chose (to kill her unborn child), undefined hope, undefined change, and Fatherless love. If we knew the intelligence itself, or at least the substance of it, we would be less likely to follow symbols through their incestuous pathways. But that takes humility and dedication to learning. Since neither are natural traits of all men, we are supplied symbols for place holders. Our blindness from focusing upon the symbols is a third detriment.
-----Like Paul was driving at in II Corinthians 10:12, when we measure ourselves against ourselves, especially when giving our measurements such demarcations as B.A., etc., then we know only ourselves. But when we hold ourselves accountable to know some truths too, we can then measure somewhat from our own developing understanding. And as we learn to allow that understanding to be shaped by the more truths we discover, the more we are able to discern the substance of another’s claim to knowledge. By discounting the degree and measuring firsthand, growth and learning escape the box, ideas appear with more variety, and correct solutions become more likely. Of course such is not the call to intellectual chaos, for the Word of God sits most soundly of all in man’s pool of available information. Eventually, intellectual honesty will open it and use it. Knowledge of truths will then begin.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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