434 - Education In General and Theological Education

Education In General and Theological Education
By Hugh T. Kerr

"If there is fault to find with education, and if the system appears to be breaking down, we assume that the first place to look for trouble must be teaching and the teacher. . . . My own research on general education began with teaching as the primary focus. But I have come to see that the real problem in education today is not teaching and the teacher but learning and the student. The big question is not how to teach but who the student is and how he learns. . . . Until today, the big question has always been content-oriented: 'What is education?' But now high school, college, university, and graduate students are asking a different kind of question: 'What is education for?' When translated into the area of theological education, this becomes a 'professional' question."

ANYONE who undertakes to survey a segment of education today soon discovers that everything is related to everything else. Starting at one level leads inevitably to another. The problems of higher education are of course not those of secondary education. Theological schools differ from community colleges. Graduate-professional training is not the same as adult-continuing education. But having noted such obvious diversities, there is more that unites than divides.

Hugh T. Kerr is Professor of Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary and Editor of THEOLOGY TODAY. During an academic leave, 1969-70, he made a survey of innovative experimental programs in education at several different levels. This article is published as a summary report of that investigation. A graduate of Princeton University and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, he holds an M.A. degree in philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh and the Ph.D. in theology from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and the University of Tübingen, Germany. He is the author of several works on the Reformation and the editor of the annotated anthology, Readings in Christian Thought (1966).

435 - Education In General and Theological Education

Until recently it has been the educational fashion for each separate division to operate its own enterprise without paying much attention to other levels of education. I don't know any theological educators, for example, who trouble to acquaint themselves with what's happening in the high schools today. Even educational groups with the same kinds of problems seldom get together. I have never heard of a conference for medical, law, education, and theological students, all of whom belong to the graduate-professional designation. Educationally and professionally we tend to insulate ourselves, living within very narrow parochial confines. In the same locality, there is likely to be very little communication among elementary, secondary, college, or graduate teachers and students.

But today there is a growing sense of common cause throughout all the ranks of education. We are all in this thing together, and most of us know that the times are changing. We are all involved with teachers, students, classrooms, textbooks, libraries, exams, essays, grades, and degrees. But the mere mention of these commonplaces exposes our current frustrations and anxieties. And since we have so much in common, we should know about each other to help each other and to learn from one another. An illustration from another field may suggest the changed situation in education.

The current interest in ecology and the environment has disclosed the principle of the interdependency of all of nature. Environmentalists point out that man and his world are dependent upon a chain-of-being in which every part is related to every other part. To concentrate on one aspect to the neglect of others is to be not only parochial but foolhardy. We live in an implicative system of elaborate and intimate design. What affects one area affects all areas. Educationally, this suggests that any particular category, theological education for example, should be viewed within the total educational complex. At least this approach promises something different and possibly something fresh.

I

To look at theological education as one small piece of turf within the total educational landscape requires a wide-angle perspective. Instead of beginning with the special problems of graduate-professional education in the area of theology, ministry, the church, and

436 - Education In General and Theological Education

other forms of Christian service, we must allow all these matters to remain unexplored until we get our bearings within general education at various levels. To see theological education as a piece of all education may seem uncongenial since we are not used to operating this way. But if we try to make the adjustment, as I have tried to do in an intensive way for the past three years, it is just possible that we may catch a new vision of our own educational responsibility. In desperation it might be argued that there is no other alternative anyway. Concentrated attention in the past on theological education as a special category has produced so little for such a long time.

While I was making up my mind about this, the following statement caught my eye, and I use it as supporting evidence. The comment refers to a consultation on professional education held at the Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, Mass., in 1967 to which spokesmen from various professions were invited.

"There have, it is true, been various studies of American theological education in the past quarter century, but the recommendations resulting from them have been rather obvious and anything but radical. There have been no significant breakthroughs comparable to those resulting from the Flexner report in medical education or the case method at the Harvard Law School under Langdell. Thus, it seemed necessary to look outside theological education for new ideas."1

For a starter, let me select three observations regarding general education which suggest implications for theological education: (a) the sheer massive size of the educational enterprise, (b) the academic "upward mobility" syndrome, and (c) the creeping selectivity of the whole educational system. All three are obvious and all are portents of possible disaster. Theological educators seem not to be aware of what's happening elsewhere in education, and so it is important to dwell on what is more apparent when looking at the whole scene. The ominous perils to which these three factors point are even less a part of the normal purview of theological education. The drift toward disaster, which many general educators sense and fear, seems actually to be a vigorously pursued goal for many of us in theological education.

1 Owen C. Thomas, Professor of Theology, Episcopal Theological School, quoted in the Foreword to Theological Education as Professional Education (Dayton, Ohio: AATS, 1969), p.ix. (Italics added.)

437 - Education In General and Theological Education

(a) Wherever you look these days, education is very big business and getting bigger. Theological education is such a tiny drop in the ever-expanding pool and beset with so many problems of mere survival that it is easy to forget how flourishing are other forms of education. In round figures for 1969-70, we are talking about 61 million students, teachers, and administrators. We are financially involved for nearly 65 billion dollars. The U. S. Office of Education publishes, among other things, a monthly three-column, 300 page journal called Research in Education which lists hundreds of current research projects on education all across the country. There are twenty regional Educational Resources Information Center Clearinghouses (ERIC) which feed reports into the Washington office. The National Education Association (NEA) operates 34 departments and publishes a Handbook of 400 pages that simply lists local and state associations of all kinds.

Trying to immerse myself in this vast pool during a year's sabbatical leave, I joined a dozen educational learned societies, subscribed to as many professional journals, attended annual conferences of specialized groups numbering from 1000 to 26,000, visited more than 50 schools of all kinds, and doggedly read stacks of books, reports, newsletters, pamphlets, and bulletins. After all my effort, I only scratched the surface. There's more.

Several of the larger foundations (Carnegie, Ford, Guggenheim, Danforth, Kettering) and hundreds of smaller ones are deeply involved in educational research. Many industrial corporations (Esso, Westinghouse, Kodak, IBM, Xerox, Scott Paper) sponsor educational projects. The Committee for Economic Development (CED) representing 200 businesses has produced several basic educational documents. Manufacturers of school equipment have their own organizations, and they exhibit their wares at the various association meetings; sometimes as many as 500 such exhibitors are present at one time in one place. Every campus I visited was in the process of putting up at least one new building. Instant schools and brand new campuses are springing up all over the country. As one example, the State University of New York (SUNY) now comprises a system of 67 colleges, including university and medical centers, colleges of arts and sciences, agricultural and technical colleges, more than 30 community colleges, and the system is still expanding.

The biggest investor in general education is the U. S. Govern-

438 - Education In General and Theological Education

ment. The Carnegie Commission on Higher Education announced that in 1967-68 federal aid given to institutions of higher education reached about $4 billion. This amount was channelled through 2100 colleges and universities and to several hundred thousand students. The Commission would like to see this amount tripled in the next few years. Three-quarters of all advanced research in colleges and universities is financed through federal aid .2

The sheer massive size of the educational enterprise represents one of its greatest potential dangers. Bigness and growth are typically American virtues. But we are coming to see that while economic survival may depend on groupings and clusters, the whole purpose of education may be lost if our schools mass-produce students and dehumanize them in the process. Today students are peculiarly sensitive to this possibility. The sorting out of the priorities in our expanding educational development confronts all of us with a decisive question about the chief purpose of what we're doing. A special urgency marks those of us in the smaller institutions who easily become envious of the larger institutions. Only a few years ago the multi-university concept looked like the wave of the future. Today it is almost everywhere held up for ridicule. The bigger the institution, so students argue, the more oppressive and depersonalized it becomes. And the more the system requires extra administrators and bureaucrats, the less open it will be to renewal and reform.

(b) Not only are the various levels of education intertwined, but the momentum of the whole enterprise propels everything in it onward and upward. This is not merely a matter of onward with the population growth, of more schools, more teachers, more students. The total drift is academically upward in the sense of raising standards and tightening requirements. For the past several decades, we have witnessed an evolutionary climb from the lower to the higher rungs of the educational ladder. The expectation of all educators is to move upward, and it is taken for granted in higher education especially that everyone is involved in academic gamesmanship.

College presidents try to entice more Ph.D.'s for the faculty from the more prestigious graduate schools. Previously isolated landgrant colleges hope to become full-fledged universities. Univer-

2 Quality and Equality: New Levels of Federal Responsibility for Higher Education (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968).

439 - Education In General and Theological Education

sities develop their graduate schools. And all along the line, everyone wants to upgrade the curriculum and screen the applicants for proper motivation and academic aptitude.

In this process -from lower to higher, it is assumed that meritocratic values correspond with "quality" education. Upward mobility hopefully gets translated into "excellence." Foundation and government funds for research support this upward climb. Learned societies and accrediting associations enhance the mystique of academic prestige. Not every institution can become another Harvard, but every present level can be superseded by a higher. Perhaps, as Harold Taylor has suggested, the ultimate achievement would be a graduate school of such rigor that only a few highly gifted students could be admitted and from which none at all would be graduated.

Academic upward mobility accelerates in the university-graduate school echelon. The more rigorous the graduate school, the more prestigious its reputation. There are today probably not a hundred really first-class university-graduate schools in the country. These presumably act as pacesetters and models for everyone else farther down the line.

Theological education almost everywhere now emulates this upward academic pattern. This has not always been the case. Except for a very few well established seminaries and divinity schools, many theological institutions have only recently climbed up from the level of ecclesiastical tradeschool. But theological education today, even of the denominational variety, derives its academic norms from university-graduate education. The accrediting influence of AATS, the rapid development of departments of religion in colleges and universities, and the pressure to defer to university-based standards have all contributed to theological uniformity.

There are two perils in this upward mobility game. For one thing, students are increasingly restive under a system that uses cognitive, rational, intellectual, cerebral criteria as the only measures for ability, quality, excellence, and maturity. The life of the mind is fine, but there is more to life than mental gymnastics if this means, as in graduate school, the locked-in structure of comprehensive exams, documented dissertation, and oral defense.

And secondly, graduate-professional education, if it is to be faithful to its dual responsibility, must give as much attention to professional training as to academic scholarship. If theological education

440 - Education In General and Theological Education

continues to make the academic the norm for the professional, then the logical future for seminaries is for them to become departments of religion in colleges and universities. In any case, the question of priorities is forced upon us. In some ways, this is the most crucial decision for theological education in the very near future.3

(C) The inevitable corollary of academic upward mobility is increasing selectivity based on predetermined standardized tests. If ability, excellence, and quality education are linked directly with high cognitive performance, then the best education and the best schools must practice restrictive admission policies. Only so, it is argued, can the incompetent be excluded in order for the high achievers to progress at their own pace. For the past thirty or forty years this has been the driving aspiration of all institutions of higher education, including theological seminaries. Some can enjoy more selectivity than others, but scarcely any upward bound institution advertises that it will admit anyone regardless of academic qualifications.

But this is exactly what the current debate on "open admissions" is all about. If academic achievement, based mainly on reading, writing, and verbal skills, is the major test for admission to higher education, then clearly this principle negates any pretensions to equality or democratic education for everyone.

Strict constructionists like Vice President Spiro Agnew view with panic any assault on the hard-won principle of selectivity. So do those who have only recently and with great difficulty climbed up a rung or two on the educational ladder. But the issue has now been joined by many outspoken educators, by most students, and by all blacks. Let three quotations point up the problem and the peril of academic selectivity.

"The most common educational justification for ability tracking is the assumption that the student will develop better educationally if he is grouped with students of similar ability … The available evidence indicates that it does not work: the intellectual development

3 On academic gamesmanship, see: Christopher Jencks and David Riesman, "The Triumph of Academic Man," in Campus 1980, ed. by Alvin C. Eurich. (New York: Delacorte, 1968), pp. 105, 109, 112; Harold Taylor, Students Without Teachers (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969), p. 16; E. Alden Dunham, Colleges of the Forgotten Americans (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969), pp. 7, 23; An Assessment of Quality in Graduate Education (Washington: American Council on Education, 1966), Foreword by Logan Wilson; Kenneth Underwood (ed.), The Church, the University, and Social Policy (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1969).

441 - Education In General and Theological Education

of the bright student is apparently not impeded if he attends a relatively unselective college, nor is the development of the less able student adversely affected if he attends a highly selective college." 4

"To reward superior natural endowment is, in effect, to substitute an aristocracy of genes and talent for the older aristocracy of family and title. To reward the socially advantaged is to render the already fortunate more fortunate still. Clearly, neither of these principles is acceptable in a school system that professes to be democratic." 5

"It is abundantly clear that seminary admissions committees which continue to operate in their usual way thwart all efforts to increase the number of Black students . . . This process is designed to be highly selective and to produce the best possible student body in conformity to the standards of AATS and the socio-cultural-economic norms of the white Protestant majority." 6

Once again, the sorting of priorities becomes an educational imperative. We are not talking about relaxing academic scholarship; we are talking about "full equality of educational opportunity," to use the Vice President's phrase. However the open admissions debate proceeds, and it promises to heat up, graduate-professional schools must reappraise their goals so that academic standards serve rather than dominate the whole educational program. 7

II

Even a cursory survey of general education today leaves the overpowering impression of a halting, stumbling, failing system. From all sides and from all levels we are hearing substantive criticism that the educational system is not working as it should. In a relatively short period, many of the myths that sustained the whole enterprise have been disputed or rejected.

Just when we were beginning to pride ourselves on a developing system of standard requirements and goals, all moving majestically

4 Alexander W. Astin, "Responses to 'Spiro T. Agnew on College Admissions,"' College Board Review, Summer 1970, No. 76, p. 4.
5 Melvin M. Tumin, "Some Basic School Ideas that Need Rethinking," Princeton University Magazine, Fall 1969, No. 42, p. 29.
6 "The Black Religious Experience and Theological Education for the Seventies," ed. by C. Shelby Rooks, Theological Education, Vol. VI, No. 3, Supplement (Spring 1970), p. S-13.
7 Robert Stevens, "Aging Mistress: The Law School in America," Change, Jan.-Feb., 1970,pp. 32-41; Alan Wolfe, "The Myth of the Free Scholar," The Center Magazine, Vol. II, No. (July, 1969), pp. 72-77; Nevitt Sanford, Where Colleges Fail (San Francisco: JosseyBass, 1967), p. 34.

442 - Education In General and Theological Education

from lower to higher, we are being confronted by direct attacks against everything regarded as so essential just yesterday.

Teachers and faculties have been organized for professional recognition and status, salary security and tenure. Students move from level to level by way of standardized tests, grades, and exams. Research, scholarship, and specialization at the upper reaches presumably have set academic norms for the whole educational hierarchy. Isn't the educational system getting bigger and better, more efficient and utilitarian, more essential for entering into the good life of modern society? More high schoolers each year go on to college. More college students go on to graduate school. We must be doing something right.

All of a sudden, so recent has the change come over us, practically all such assumptions are challenged at every level of education.

"Dissatisfaction with American education is everywhere evident … Since the late fifties, the federal government has granted billions of dollars to finance curriculum reforms, innovations of all kinds in thousands of schools, and a large program designed specifically to improve the instruction of the disadvantaged. Yet the outcome of much of this endeavor and expenditure has been, to put it mildly, disappointing." 8

"If what I've done all year is what an education is, then taking a diploma from high school is hypocrisy. It's ridiculous. What I've learned all year is what I've done on my own outside of school-what I've read, what I've learned from others. You just can't sit there all day; it's so boring. Parents don't realize it. I know parents say you have to learn to accept things that are boring, that everything can't be exciting, but, dammit, it's four years of my life!" 9

"Because adults take the schools so much for granted, they fail to appreciate what grim, joyless places most American schools are, how oppressive and petty are the rules by which they are governed, how intellectually sterile and aesthetically barren the atmosphere, what an appalling lack of civility obtains on the part of teachers and principals, what contempt they unconsciously display for children as children." 10

8 To Improve Learning, Report to the President and the Congress, Commission on Instructional Technology (Washington: U. S. Gov't. Printing Office, 1970), p. 11.
9 Leslie Gregg, high school senior, Princeton Town Topics, May 21, 1970, p. 27.
10 Charles E. Silberman, "How the Public Schools Kill Dreams and Mutilate Minds," Atlantic Monthly, June, 1970, p. 83.

443 - Education In General and Theological Education

Comments such as these which fault the system for being boring, uninteresting, or a waste of time are commonplace today among students and educators at all levels. A more direct criticism has to do with the lack of relevance in much that passes for education. One needn't go outside theological education for evidence. The conventional pattern of religion and theology courses in colleges and seminaries strikes many students today as completely irrelevant.

Courses on the literature and formation of the books of the Bible, philosophy of religion and language, the development of Jewish and Christian thought down the centuries, the history of comparative religions, analysis of great thinkers-these kinds of courses form the backbone of most instruction in the field.

What students today most want from the study of religion they hardly ever get. The personal-mystical enthusiasm which many find meaningful comes too close to subjectivism for their teachers. Trained in the intellectualism of the typical graduate school, most teachers of religious subjects try to avoid anything as intangible as inner faith experiences. They want to demonstrate that religion can be studied as objectively as any other discipline. Their subject, they keep saying, is a humanistic field of scholarly inquiry.

Many theological students, and an increasing number of pastors, know that theology and the churches are being criticized not because they have no resources to draw on, or no meaningful ideas to contribute, but because they engender so much sham, hollow piety, sentimentalism, conventional moralism, and social irrelevance.11

Of a much more crucial nature than charges against education as boring or irrelevant are the current convictions of many educators and students, though not many in theology, that the whole educational enterprise represents an oppressive self-serving social system. The big problem with the school system, so this attack argues, is not merely with the inadequacies of teaching and curriculum, bad as they may be. The problem lies with education's cellular structures which support the onward and upward momentum of the whole thing.

Much of the current student rebellion is directly related to this

11 Henry B. Clark, "Tradition, Impotence and the Seminary," Reflection (Yale Divinity School), Vol. 65, No. 2 (Jan., 1968), p. 7; Theological Education, Vol. VI, No. 2 (Winter 1970), pp. 89, 146; Douglas W. Johnson, A Study of New Forms of Ministry (New York: National Council Churches, 1968), pp. 1-14; Connolly C. Gamble, Jr., Continuing Education and the Church's Ministry: A Bibliographical Survey (Richmond, Va.: Union Theological Seminary, 1967), pp. 116f.

444 - Education In General and Theological Education

growing resentment against a repressive system that allows very little critical reaction. Such a mood faults the whole educational enterprise from top to bottom as oppressive since it undergirds the meritocratic society it is set up to serve. It is oppressive because it favors the elite and depresses the disadvantaged. Not only so, but in many ways even the favored elite, who might be expected to approve their privileges, are the very ones who proclaim the loudest that the system demeans them as much as anyone else.

The focal point of this issue is the black-white dichotomy in American society. The racist tendencies in our midst, so accurately predicted by the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, the "Kerner Report" of 1968, are apparently forestalling significant educational integration. But at a deeper level, we are beginning to see that adult expectations for an integrated public elementary school are hopelessly unrealistic so long as the whole society itself is divided.

From the side of education, especially from the students themselves, the system perpetuates the evils we all deplore but refuse to face. This kind of interrelation of education and the social-political realities of the times helps to account for the ultra-militant claim that nothing useful can be accomplished anywhere until everything in society is overturned. 12

Curiously, theological students for the most part have not thus far adapted this critical stance toward their own situation. Some, but not many, note that seminaries and divinity schools tend to support the church status quo. Where churches and denominations financially support theological education, the possibilities of prophetic renewal issuing from within the seminary must certainly be lessened.

If general education perpetuates the social conventions, could it not be argued that seminaries contribute to the rigidities and unrealities of institutionalized religion? There is some evidence that this issue will be articulated more forcefully soon.

12 The literature on the school as an oppressive system is substantial. The following items are typical: John Holt, The Underachieving School (New York: Pitman, 1969); Jonathan Kozal, Death at an Early Age (New York: Houghton-Mifflin, 1967); Leslie A. Hart, The Classroom Disaster (New York: Teachers College Press, 1969); Herbert R. Kohl, The Open Classroom (New York: Random House, 1969); Ronald and Beatrice Gross (eds.), Radical School Reform (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969); Diane Divoky, How Old Will You Be in 1984? (New York: Avon, 1969); John Birmingham (ed.), Our Time Is Now (New York: Praeger, 1970); Marc Libarle and Tom Seligson (eds.), The High School Revolutionaries (New York: Random House, 1970); Alvin C. Eurich (ed.), High School 1980 (New York: Pitman, 1970); Richard Shaull, "The Challenge to the Seminary," Christianity and Crisis, April 14, 1969.

445 - Education In General and Theological Education

III

If there is fault to find with education, and if the system appears to be breaking down, we assume that the first place to look for trouble must be teaching and the teacher. Students, we imagine, go to school to learn. "School" means faculty, teaching, curriculum, courses, textbooks, assignments, instruction, exams, essays, and grades. If students are dissatisfied with the school system, or if they are not learning what is being taught, then presumably the troublespot can be located in teaching and the teacher (assuming that students are not just plain lazy, uninterested, or delinquent).

Primal attention to teaching runs like a theme song through much of the educational literature and discussion of recent years. The tune runs like this: teaching has been neglected, more attention needs to be given to methods of teaching, in higher education teaching rates below research and publishing, good teachers are scarce, all teachers are impoverished and unappreciated, lectures are not as good as seminars, electronic aids may or may not be useful, the purpose of teaching is to transmit content, teachers should be experts in their fields, if graduate students know their subjects they can teach them, teachers pursue an objective search for truth.

The neglect of teaching methodology, especially in higher education, is astonishing. Teaching is apparently a skill, art, craft, profession for which there is no special training outside the mastering of one's discipline. In graduate schools, where most teachers for higher education are trained, it is rare to find any instruction whatever in teaching methods or learning theory. It is a safe bet that very few theological professors have ever studied teaching-learning theory, or have ever read any educational literature, or have attended any educational conferences, or have ever been videotaped in class, or have ever had their teaching evaluated in any way at all.

"The fact is that virtually no university requires prospective professors to obtain training in teaching methods." 13

"It is next to impossible to persuade a graduate student in history or sociology to take a course in the school of education." 14

13 Richard I. Evans, Resistance to Innovation in Higher Education (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1967), p. 55.
14 Nevitt Sanford, Where Colleges Fail, op. cit., p. 170.

446 - Education In General and Theological Education

"It is hardly surprising that a great deal of teaching at both the graduate and undergraduate level is dull and ineffective . . . Those who plan to teach get no specific training for such work." 15

"Undergraduates may or may not be aware that their mentors are trained in graduate school chiefly to find books in the library stacks and to write papers-not to teach students-but they are certainly aware of the results. "l6

There is no question that education would be better in many ways if more attention were directed to teaching and to methods for improving teacher effectiveness. But we should be clear about the purpose of teaching within the whole process of education. Are we trying to find new and better ways for continuing the traditional authoritarian method of telling, training, inculcating, and indoctrination? Are we thinking of teaching as transmitting? Is learning receiving? Must education be teacher-subject oriented? Is teaching telling? Is learning listening?

"A high school teacher displays the following sales pitch on his bulletin board: 'Free,' every Monday through Friday. Knowledge. Bring your own containers." 17

"Close to 90% of the class time in high schools and colleges is spent in listening to discussions and lectures . . . the average person will retain only 50% of what he hears, no matter how hard he concentrates . . . two months later he can be expected to recall only half of that amount." 18

"In spite of most colleges' stated objectives in glorifying the quest for learning, the bulk of instruction consists of telling, training, and teaching, an above-board program of indoctrination." 19

If teaching is primarily the passing on of the western intellectual and cultural tradition, and if the test of effectiveness is measured by some sort of student examination or paper, then the fact is that almost any method will suffice. Some teachers and some students will prefer one method to another, but repeated surveys show little measurable differences in methods used or in content mastered.

15 Christopher Jencks and David Riesman, The Academic Revolution (New York: Doubleday, 1968), pp. 531, 537.
16 Frederick L. Gwynn, "And Sadly Teach," in The College and the Student, ed. by Lawrence E. Dennis and Joseph F. Kauffman (Washington: American Council on Education, 1966), p. 200.
17 The Reader's Digest, Oct., 1969, p. 81.
18 Stanford E. Taylor, Listening (Washington: National Education Association, 1968), pp. 3f.
19 Will Riddles, "The Unquiet Revolution," Improving College and University Teaching, Vol. XVII, No. 3 (Summer 1969), p. 155.

447 - Education In General and Theological Education

"We have reported the results of a reanalysis of the data from 91 comparative studies of college teaching technologies conducted between 1924 and 1965. These data demonstrate clearly and unequivocally that there is no measurable difference among truly distinctive methods of college instruction when evaluated by student performance on final examinations." 20

Emphasis on teaching and the teacher, important as this may be, tends to obscure the other side of the educational formula, namely, learning and the student. We assume that because faculty and administrators traditionally determine curriculum that whatever is decided about teaching will automatically benefit the student.

IV

My own research on general education began with teaching as the primary focus. But I have come to see that the real problem in education today is not teaching and the teacher but learning and the student. The big question is not how to teach but who the student is and how he learns. Where does the student come from? Where does he want to go? What are his abilities? How does he think of himself? How does he relate to others like and unlike him? What does he think of the world around him? What does he read? How does he study? What does he want to know? What music does he like? What are his hobbies? What creative arts or crafts interest him? How does he express himself? How does he evaluate his own education thus far?

The crucial issue in education is the student, not the teacher, not the curriculum, not the requirements, not the subject matter, not the test scores, not the transcript, not any number of other matters, important as they may be, which usually get prior attention by faculty and administrators. The learning process is a much more complicated affair than teachers have acknowledged. Students today want to find out for themselves. They want to be allowed to make their own mistakes. They know that learning depends on being personally involved. That does not preclude the role of the teacher, but it changes his function from a lecturer to a guide, from an authority to a participant. Learning is something students do for themselves, with or without help. It is no longer possible anyway

20 Robert Dubin and Thomas C. Taveggia, The Teaching-Learning Paradox (Eugene, Ore.: University of Oregon Press, 1968), p. 35.

448 - Education In General and Theological Education

to teach everything about a subject. But it is possible to indicate what a subject is all about and how the student can discover for himself what is worth knowing.

"If the curriculum is to be really effective educationally, the material presented in the classroom must be related to the needs and interests of the students. Or in plain English, a teacher has to start from where the students are." 21

"Today's students are not asking to be taught-they are asking to be given the freedom to learn." 22

"The modern professional teacher is a person who guides the learning process. He places the pupil in the centre of the learning activity and encourages and assists him in learning how to inquire, organize, and discuss, and to discover answers to problems of interest to him. The emphasis is on the process of inquiry as well as on the concepts discovered." 23

"Faculty members and students are going to have to sit down-for much longer periods than either anticipate-and talk about the teaching-learning experience. " 24

There is no doubt in my mind that we have come to the end of a long and energetic era of education in which teaching and content have dominated the whole process. The next stage will completely rearrange every campus in the country, and in the resulting dislocation, and possibly confusion, at least one clear perspective will emerge: a new educational concern for the student and the learning situation. This will mean taking seriously the student-as-person.

"Our educational purposes must be seen in the broader framework of our convictions concerning the worth of the individual and the importance of individual fulfillment." 25

"To today's honor student, a relevant education answers not only the human, political, and economic needs of society, but also the per-

21 The Student in Higher Education (New Haven, Conn.: The Hazen Foundation, 1968), P. 36.
22 Joseph Alexrod, "Teaching Styles in the Humanities," in Effective College Teaching, ed. by William H. Morris (Washington: American Association of Higher Education, 1970), p. 43
23 Living and Learning, Report of the Provincial Committee on Aims and Objectives of Education in the Schools of Ontario, the "Hall-Dennis Report" (Toronto: Ontario Department of Education, 1968), p. 122.
24 James A. Johnson, "Instruction from the Consumer's View," in Improving College Teaching, ed. by Calvin B. T. Lee (Washington: American Council on Education, 1967), p. 289.
25 John W. Gardner, No Easy Victories (New York: Harper, 1968), p. 72.

449 - Education In General and Theological Education

sonal, psychological, and spiritual needs of each individual student and teacher." 26

"Put simply, education is one's encounter with reality; it is the process of discovering, transmitting, interpreting, developing, and trying out ideas about the world as it has been, as it is now, and as we might make it. For the individual, education should be directed towards both developing his particular creativities and enabling him to understand and cope with (accept and/or change) reality." 27

The importance of the inward personal factor in education, from the student's point of view, can be gauged by the way students tend to evaluate teacher performance. Almost invariably, whenever such evaluations are operative, students rate teachers on the positive side when they exhibit traits of friendship and caring. In the 1970 Yale Course Critique, for example, freshmen are advised to take courses on the basis not of subject matter but with regard to the teacher's accessibility and his willingness to listen to students' suggestions about improving the course.28

"Children were asked two questions related to the children's acceptance of a teacher's behavior: 'What did you like about him (her)? What do you think good teachers do?' The responses from kindergarten through eighth grade seem to fall into four categories: interpersonal relations per se, interpersonal relations and learning, the teacher as a helper, and the teacher as a person." 29

"Four most frequently mentioned reasons for liking 'Teacher A' best, reported by 3,725 high school seniors: (1) Is helpful in schoolwork, explains lessons and assignments clearly, and uses examples in teaching; (2) Cheerful, happy, good-natured, jolly; has sense of humor and can take a joke; (3) Human, friendly, companionable, one of us'; (4) Interested in and understands pupils."30

The personal factor in the teaching-learning linkage ought to be of particular concern for theological education. Christian faith, professedly at least, is more on the side of persons than principles, institutions, or organizations. The gospel, as personified in Jesus,

26 George N. Rainsford, "What Honor Students Don't Like about Honors Programs," College Board Review, Summer 1970, No. 76, p. 19.
27 Charlotte Bunch Weeks, "The Student and the University of the Future," Student World, 1968, No. 2, p. 135.
28 Published by the Yale Daily News, 1970; "Advice to Freshmen," p. v. A typical positive evaluation: "The strength of the course rested in Mr. .'s interest in his students and his receptivity to their suggestions."
29 Gertrude M. Lewis, The Evaluation of Teaching (Washington: National Education Association, 1966), p. 24.
30 Don E. Hamachek, Motivation in Teaching and Learning (Washington: National Education Association, 1968), p. 9.

450 - Education In General and Theological Education

is good news for people, especially for the poor and the oppressed. It is somewhat ambiguous, however, whether seminaries and divinity schools (or for that matter, departments of religion in colleges and universities) exhibit special regard for personal values. Is it universally agreed that churches, Sunday Schools, or church-related colleges make a special contribution, because of their faith commitment, in the area of caring about people, especially the poor and the oppressed?

Love, honesty, openness, compassion, friendship, regard for the poor, the stranger, the sick, the victimized, the worker, the artist, the musician, all kinds and conditions of men, women, children, animals, and nature itself-these are the values and virtues the student generation extols, and they are very close to the biblical characteristics of religious faith and life.

If education, whether general or theological, were to redirect its whole program so that it would be student-oriented rather than content-oriented, a new day in our schools would dawn. Some would hope never to see that day! The situation would be, perhaps, analogous to General Motors determining its policy for the benefit of the consuming public and not merely for the sake of the board of directors and the stockholders. Let's face it: this for many would be a frightening prospect.

The personal dimension in education would threaten, as some fear, to turn the whole educational enterprise inward. Might this emphasis transform theological education into therapy sessions and sensitivity training? To focus on the student would seem to many a perverse, even a backward step. Certainly it is a controversial issue.

But there is another side to the student and his world, and that is definitely and aggressively outward. If students want education to pay more attention to them as persons, they also demand that education become directly involved in the life and politics of the community. The cloistered campus is already a relic of the past. Students now require that the campus be dragged, kicking and struggling if need be, into the community and that the community be invited to participate in the campus.

"The whole community ought to be the school, and the classroom a home base for the teachers and kids, a place where they can talk and rest and learn together, but not the sole place of learning. The

451 - Education In General and Theological Education

classroom ought to be a communal center, a comfortable environment in which plans can be made and experiences assessed. However, one can open up the classroom as much by moving out of it as by changing the life within it." 31

"Education in the future will require a greater public involvement, a greater partnership between the home and school, between the community and the school. The school cannot be indifferent to the social conditions of the area it serves." 32

just as the overintellectualism of college and university education is being questioned today, so too the secluded research lab and uninvolved campus are being translated into direct social action. Teachers, professors, educators, trustees, and administrators are being challenged by students to put their feet in step with their ideals. Mouthing platitudes about liberal humanism will not do; indeed that is today branded as hypocrisy and regarded by students as dishonest, irrelevant, even obscene. Religion and its institutions are just as much at fault here as colleges and universities. The church stands for so much that is humanizing and ennobling, but too often the message gets blurred with pious rhetoric.

V

To look at theological education from the wider angle of general education is to be startled into awareness of rapid and total change. But change brings pain, and for every innovation there is corresponding resistance. Education today, whether general or specialized, is engaged in a colossal tug-of-war. The old assumptions of academic scholarship are being confronted by the new demands of personal involvement.

Unless theological education is content to continue its uncritical imitation of an academic tradition now under fire on the college and university front, then certain decisions about tomorrow must be made today. The most important of these, in my opinion, relates to a redefinition of the "professional" side of the graduate-professional label. What does it mean today to train young men and women for church leadership and Christian service?

Our answer to this question should force us to reappraise the goals and aims of theological education with special attention to what we think the church should be in today's world.

31 Herbert R. Kohl, The Open Classroom (New York: Random House, 1969), p. 75.
32 Living and Learning, op. cit., p. 14.

452 - Education In General and Theological Education

By raising the "professional" question, I do not suggest furthering the unfruitful distinction between scholarly and practical subjects. I am thinking rather of the kind of question asked so frequently these days in general education. Until today, the big question has always been content-oriented: "What is education?" But now high school, college, university, and graduate students are asking a different kind of question: "What is education for?" When translated into the area of theological education, this becomes a "professional" question.

If the church is primarily the custodian of the sacred tradition, then theological education will be of a certain type. If the church is regarded as an agent for social and cultural change, then theological education will be quite different. This is a "professional" decision of utmost urgency which seminaries and divinity schools have mostly avoided. It is not primarily a question of academic prestige, of raising standards, of accreditation, of clusters, of university connections, of curriculum revision, of teaching methods, of new forms of ministry. It is a question about the purposes which theological education should seek to serve.