What the American Church Needs in 2015

Posted on January 1, 2015 by Richard Heyduck

I’m only going to mention two things here, not because I think the situation is really that simple, but because if we can get these two things right, most of the other things will fall into place.

The first thing the American Church needs to do this year is center on Jesus. By this I don’t mean “get its Christology right.” Sure, that would be a good thing. No, I’m saying the church needs to center its life on Jesus. Before that is an intellectual task, it is a matter of prayer, worship, and devotion. We’ll be centering on Jesus not for what he can do for us (give us stuff, make us successful, legitimate our political or cultural agendas), but because Jesus is Lord. All power and authority has been given to him, but we’ve too often treated him as a toy to keep in our pocket or as an ID badge to get us points with others. we have to go back to Jesus.

The second thing the Church needs is a sense of humor. Notice that I don’t say “a better sense of humor.” For the most part, our problem has been that we don’t have a sense of humor. We’ve become so serious about the political and cultural battles we’re fighting (in the church and the world), that our seriousness has crowded out a sense of humor. If we do number one – renew our focus on Jesus – perhaps it will enable us to take ourselves and our projects, however good and godly we take them to be, less seriously. When we gain a sense of humor we’ll be able to take John the Baptist’s attitude toward Jesus, “He must increase, I must decrease,” and extend it to the people around us. When we gain a sense of humor we’ll be less susceptible to offense, whether the offense of people attacking us or of people living in a way contrary to our sensibilities. We’re sinners living in the midst of sinners, so of course offenses are going to come. But if we center on Jesus and gain a sense of humor, perhaps we can respond better with Jesus-style love.

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The Lost World of Scripture

Posted on December 31, 2014 by Richard Heyduck

Having enjoyed John Walton’s earlier work, The Lost World of Genesis One, I thought I’d check out his recent The Lost World of Scripture. Here’s the review I just posted on Amazon.

This book has two main goals. The first is along the lines of Walton’s earlier book, The Lost World of Genesis One. The authors aim to situate not only the Bible but the notion of biblical authority, in its original context. A huge part of this original context is the primacy of orality in the ancient world. Our is (well, was) a text-centered age. Our ways of reading the Bible, of thinking about its authority (and whether it had authority), even reasoning about it, were all based on the Bible AS TEXT. Walton & Sandy make a case for the oral origins of both the Old and New Testaments. Even the letters of the NT, the very genre of which seem to us to be the epitome of texts, were composed in and in terms of a world were orality was primary. This goal of the book will be of value to all Bible readers.

The author’s second goal is to begin the reconstruction of the evangelical doctrine of inerrancy in terms of the orality of the ancient world. As they demonstrate, a doctrine of inerrancy based on the primacy of TEXT is rather different than one based on the primacy of orality. A textual world is more likely to collapse the Bible into a huge set of propositions, in which context inerrancy is them built on the accuracy of all those propositions. The oral world pictured by Walton & Sandy allows for more appreciation of a range of genres in scripture. Though they are committed to a high view of the authority of scripture, they recognize that if we read the Bible in terms of the primacy of orality, evangelicals will likely need to find a term fo replace inerrancy. As an evangelical Wesleyan, I especially appreciated their approach.

The weakness of their text comes in part of their central model of orality. They build off the work of John Searle’s speech act theory (I saw no mention of J.L. Austin), primarily in distinguishing between locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts. Their use of Searle is superficial, however, failing to investigate and apply his distinction between illocutionary force (WHAT is going on in the speech act) and propositional content (the INTENTIONAL dimension of the speech act). If not Searle himself, they would have profited from closer attention to Anthony Thiselton’s appropriation of speech act theory in New Horizons in Hermeneutics. Closer attention to the philosophy of language and the philosophical hermeneutics that employs it, would have strengthened their case.

This book will be of interest to all who seek a more contextual reading of scripture, especially to those who seek to honor the authority of the Bible in a way that fits with the ancient cultures in which it was produced.

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Systemic Racism?

Posted on December 7, 2014 by Richard Heyduck

A few thoughts:

1. If I as an individual identify a person or set of persons as belonging to a certain race, AND, I take my having identified them as members of that race to tell me the primary things I need to know about them, I am acting as a racist. Now it might be that my racism, my thought that the race of the person tells me what I need to know about them, appears positive or benign. For example, I might think that since X, Y, and Z are members of race Q, and I have a prejudgment that members of race A are universally (or even predominantly) good cooks, then I would be inclined to think that X, Y, and Z are most likely good cooks. Usually our judgments that are termed “racist” are negative, however, assigning some sort of deficiency or evil to members of that group.

2. Thinking after Ferdinand de Saussure and structuralists who came after him, assigning people to a racial category requires the existence of a system of races. Races exist alongside each other and are at least partially defined in terms of their differences from each other. The fly in the ointment in the American racial system in the so-called “post racial age” is that it is easy for us white folks to imagine that race is something other people have. They have race (that’s why we call them “people of color”) and we don’t. If they have race and we don’t, AND, we take ourselves to be positively disposed toward the members of those races whom we know and encounter, then our being racist is not possible. But if Saussure is right – well, if we take race to be as much about talk (language) as it is about social (or biological) reality – then we cannot pretend that some humans have race and others don’t. Race is an “everyone has it” or “no one has it” kind of thing. Race talk happens in a social-linguistic system which we all inhabit. If we use the race talk, we’re in the system.

3. Continuing with Saussure a bit more, just as the linkage between signified and signifier (between word and thing in the world the word connects to) is arbitrary, likewise any particular racial system is also arbitrary. Because it is arbitrary, the system will also be more or less rational. In our current system we have various ways of analyzing the system, but in most surveys I see, I see categories like African American, Asian, Caucasian, Hispanic, Native American, Pacific Islander. If the system were really meant to be descriptively useful, we would make sure each of these categories was clearly and unambiguously delimited. But they’re not. In the first place, though these terms ostensibly refer to places of origin, as racial terms, they exist to point out other characteristics, most particular skin color (our national fetish). If our system were really “accurate,” then it would be clear how to place each person in the proper racial category. But it’s not easy. In previous generations  when the focus was on engineering proper discrimination (with all its negative connotations in play), we developed the “one drop rule.” A person might look entirely like a “white person,” but because she had a grandparent or great-grandparent who was of African descent, that person was judged to be non-white. The categories of our system are porous, so it can be hard to police the system. This will only get harder as racial intermarriage continues to rise.

4. But the system does require policing. If we’re going to have a system and intend to use that system as a tool for adjudicating spoils or punishments, we have to keep people in the right category so we know what to do with them. When systems require policing, their can be conflicts of both interest (what I want) and interpretation (what there is). These two kinds of conflict are often intertwined. Because social systems have power, and racial systems, insofar as they divide up people distribute that power across the system, the unequal distribution of power will create advantages and disadvantages.

5. Systems prefer order and continuity, even if various participants in the system may prefer different arrangements of order and continuity of one set of features over another. We have the social institution we call “police” to maintain the dominant order. Insofar as order maintains the rights and possessions and well-being of those who inhabit that order, people are happy. When destructive forces challenge the order from within, usually locally, we call on the police to bring repair. When destructive forces challenge the order from without, perhaps globally, stronger forces are needed (nowadays usually called “the military”).

6. Liking order has nothing to do with the divisions we call race. Whatever racial group a person is sorted into, that person prefers to have his rights, possessions, and well-being defended and continuous. If a person sees that order challenged, that person calls for adjustment and repair. Sometimes the challenge to order is acute: it comes on the spur of the moment. That’s the time we call the police. Sometimes, however, the challenge to the order is chronic. Or, we might say, the order desired by one group is different than the order desired by another group. Before the US Civil Rights movement, the order in the US had a certain stability. Many white folks were happy with it. It seemed just plain normal. But the order crunched on those who were considered non-white, especially those who were considered maximally non-white, i.e., African Americans. Since the police supported the order as it was, they could be of no use to repairing the chronic problems experienced from the nature of the order itself. The order had to be overthrown and reconstituted.

7. Calling attention to the order is painful. We like the order to remain in the background, unseen, unfelt, unacknowledged. As long as we pretend there is no order – other than “the way things are” – we just g on with our lives, mostly oblivious to those on whom the order impinges negatively, those who experience the order as death and destruction. When we ignore the existence of the order as (arbitrary) order, we also pretend that no force is required to maintain it. My body works well because I have bones. They give my body structures. In conjunction with my muscles, they enable me not only to stand, but also to move from place to place. Most of the time, however, we’re unaware of our bones. We only become aware of our bones when there’s something wrong. That’s out it is with our societal order. Usually we’re blind to it – unless there’s something wrong with it.

8. Borders in the order are places of power. On the one side are the police, those publicly tasked with maintaining order to the benefit of all. On the other side are those who challenge the order for their own benefit. We usually call these “criminals.” Unlike the rest of us who can live most of our lives away from the borders within the order, these two groups live by force. Since police work for the order, their force is deemed legitimate, i.e., in accordance with the laws (rules of the order). Criminals work against the grain of the order (usually not against the order, but to exploit weak and vulnerable points within the order). Since force often comes across as violence, the line between police and criminal can be very thin. At least some police are tasked with working so close to the line that they face the constant temptation to give in to the consequentialist reasoning of “Whatever it takes.” We who benefit from the order demand that they protect us and keep us and ours safe (at the risk of their own lives), so we push them up to the line so we don’t have to go there. Stanley Hauerwas has said that the greatest sacrifice we ask of our soldiers is not that they lay down their lives for us, but that we ask them to lay down their aversion to killing for us. I think we too often think of police the same way. Unlike the military, killing the enemy for us is not one of their primary duties, but in our ultimate commitment to our own safety and prosperity, it can come down to that too frequently.

9. Sometimes there is something wrong with the societal order and we’re unaware of it because we’re doing just fine in it. Our place in the system is such that we take it to be eminently fair and well-designed. But maybe there are other people who do not find it to be so. What are they to do? Chances are that if they are in a place where the order is not doing them well; they experience the order as adversarial toward them, as broken. The others like them who are near them, can sense the problem also.

10. If we would like to think that we care about those who are not doing well in the system, we would require ways to see beyond our own comfortable position in the system. The best way to do that is to have friends who are across boundary lines from us who will tell us the truth. If we never have friends who are across those lines from us, there are some things about our own world that we will never be able to see.

Well, that’s a start. I’m not entirely happy with all of this, and I recognize that I am ignoring much complexity. But it’s a start.

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Textual Stability?

Posted on October 29, 2014 by Richard Heyduck

As I review Nancey Murphy’s Anglo-American Postmodernity: Philosophical Perspectives on Science, Religion, and Ethics, I came across this claim:

“If the texts’ ability to perform a definite speech act depends on the existence of a community with shared conventions and proper dispositions, then textual stability is in large measure a function not of theories of interpretation but of how interpretive communities choose to live.”

We United Methodists have the “same” Bible now as we did in the days of Wesley. Sure, we tend to work from more modern translations, but the basic text is the same. Our interpretation of scripture and our use of scripture have changed substantially, however. In many parts of the connection those who argue for the primacy of scripture have won; even those who support revision in important areas try to do so from the perspective of scripture. Having a common text, however, is not leading us to common conclusions.

Murphy observes that for a text to “perform a definite speech act” requires more than just a stable text. The textual community, that is the community that reads the text and counts it to be authoritative, must share “conventions” and have “proper dispositions.” If she is correct, and I think she is, this is a major failing of the sola scriptura approach. The text is not self-interpreting: it is always under view by some community. If that community has no shared reading strategies (conventions) and lacks the right attitudes toward reading and using scripture, reading will go amiss.

One disposition that is all too rare is humility before the Word. Whether we call ourselves liberal or conservative, there is a tendency to submit the Bible to what we think it ought to say. We want to feel affirmed in our practices and convictions. We detest the idea that scripture might show our cherished notions and practices to be in the wrong.

What can we do? Calls to just go “back to the Bible,” insofar as they ignore the interpreting community, thinking the Bible is self-interpreting, won’t get us anywhere other than more conflict. Each position currently takes itself to be faithful to scripture. The opposite position, the the Bible is simply too ancient or confused to be of any current help, wpn’t get anywhere with those who are committed to scripture.

The starting point will be renewed discipleship and a functioning ecclesiology to go with it. Discipleship will have to be more than just going to Sunday school or weekly Bible study class. It’s going to take time. It’s going to take a willingness to listen to those who love us and challenge us. It’s going to take growing into a community of mutual discernment. We’re going to be uncomfortable more often than we’re comfortable. I pray we’re up to it.

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Dealing with Anger: Pessimism or Contentment?

Posted on October 4, 2014 by Richard Heyduck

In class today I showed the students Alain de Botton’s presentation of the philosophy of Seneca.

I think Seneca (as interpreted by de Botton) is genuinely insightful. The richer and more successful we are, the more prone we are to anger and frustration. Anger is the result of having our expectations frustrated. We want the world to be a certain way, for events to go a particular direction. We see this phenomenon not only on the individual level, but in nations through history. Revolutions tend to come not when things are at their bleakest, when people have the least. Instead, they come when things are looking up. When things improve, those improvements almost never keep pace with expectations of improvement.

Seneca’s solution is to lower our expectations. Well, more than that. We should not just lower our expectations, but grow in pessimism. We should recognize that the world is a hard place. A little imagination every morning (Stoic devotions/quiet time?) will help us think of all manner of things that can go wrong in the day. When we learn to expect bad things and those bad things sometimes don’t happen – hey! we can be happy!

The strategy of low expectations or pessimism makes sense. But I’d rather go another direction. I prefer going with Paul’s “Godliness with contentment is great gain.” Paul would have agreed with Seneca that the world was not necessarily a happy place. Things frequently went wrong. Yet when he’s in prison not knowing whether he’s going to live or die, Paul doesn’t act like Seneca suggest suicide or melancholy. No, Paul says, “Rejoice in the Lord, always; again, I say, rejoice! I can do all things through him who gives me strength. I have learned to be content in any situation, whether well-fed or hungry.”

Paul’s way of life was centered on Jesus. He knew the Jesus way was not the way of easy, dancing happily through the lilies. He knew Jesus had said, “Take up your cross and follow me.” His way of handling the disappointments, sorrows, and sufferings of life was not to practice expecting the bad; it certainly wasn’t to give up and embrace suicide. No, Paul’s way with Jesus was to find the source and purpose of his life in Jesus. As I find my content in Christ I can find a way to not only deal with frustration, but also to channel the anger that comes from the gap between the way things are and the way they should be into something positice.

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Reading For the Sake of the Bride

Posted on October 2, 2014 by Richard Heyduck

Here in the Texas Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, we’ve been encouraged to read Steve Harper’s recent book, For the Sake of the Bride. Bishop Huie is preparing us to have discussions in the various districts.

I’ve just finished the book & have a few reflections:

  1. The need to be centered on and driven by love is essential – but often forgotten or redefined out of existence.
  2. I respect Harper’s admission that all the biblical material that relates to same sex activity is negative – AND the contextualization of that (particularly in Romans 1) with the universality of sin. I’m careful to do that as well whenever I teach or preach from that text.
  3. I, too, have learned much from E. Stanley Jones. I barely knew the name when I began at Asbury Seminary and reckon learning more of his work to be one of the high points of my education there.
  4. I especially like the way Harper & ESJ center on Jesus. I know no other way to be Christian. We rarely go wrong when we center on Jesus. Sure, we might recruit Jesus as an adjunct to our own causes, but that often collapses Jesus into an idealized version of ourselves.
  5. Humility is essential. As one with a philosophical temperament, I know I can be wrong. As John Wesley noted, I currently believe (a) all my beliefs are correct, taken individually (otherwise they wouldn’t be my beliefs) and (b) that it is highly unlikely that all my beliefs, taken as a whole, are correct (given my track record of having to make corrections). I have a high capacity for doubt. Jesus is all I hang on to.
  6. Unlike Harper, I am not convinced that marriage can be moved beyond the traditional model of gender complementarity. (Phillip Blond and Roger Scruton give a secular argument for gender complementarity in marriage while simultaneously endorsing gay unions and urging churches to approve them.) Now on the one hand, the sociological hand, my doubt is clearly misguided. It is a sociological fact that marriage can be anything a particular society causes it to be. We currently have same-gender marriage in at least some states (and countries) so it is an undeniable fact that same gender marriage is a reality. My doubts on the possibility are from the direction of theology and the biblical approach to marriage. It is clearly obvious also that both Christians and others who hold to the gender complementarity understanding of marriage have often done marriage poorly. The prevalence of abuse, infidelity, and the like make a mockery of claims to honor the “sanctity of marriage.” (Harper doesn’t use this argument in his book.) Doing a thing poorly is different from not doing a thing; I’m just not at a point where I can see same-gender “marriage” as marriage.
  7. Harper makes much of the concept of “dualistic thinking,” but he ties it so closely to the mere act of differentiation that I don’t see how it can stand. We can say, “There are two SIDES in the current debate. We need to transcend the dualistic thinking of SIDES and do LOVE instead.” This isn’t setting aside dualism, but trading one dualism for another. The old SIDES (both of them) are “non-love,” the new is “real love.” The end result he wants, which he clarifies toward the end of the book, is that the problem of dualism is that it results in hierarchy. That may be the case. Though rejecting hierarchy in the abstract strikes me as impossible (we have to order perceived goods as we live our lives), the rejection or at least reduction of hierarchical thinking is often a good thing. I think his case might be strengthened if he explicitly argued in favor of differentiation (many) instead of rejecting dualism.
  8. Finally with regard to core claim of his book, I think he is correct that the only way forward is to meet & talk. His mention of the creeds of the early church is important here. If I had written that section I would have made more of the fact that creating those creeds took a lot of time. What we use as the Nicene Creed began at the Council of Nicea in 325 but most of the final article wasn’t added until 381. Even then the issues continued to be debated. We complain about working on this issue for 40 years. We lack the capacity (patience?) to imagine that reaching a decision about some issues can take a really long time.
  9. Moving outside the book: I don’t have a position of much authority in the church. I’ve never been a delegate to GC or JC, and lack the political astuteness (and patience) to imagine being such. Even so, though I am one who counts myself as a member of the Confessing Movement and supportive of the church’s current position, I have no desire to approach the matter legalistically. I don’t want to go hunting for those who’ve got it wrong. (Maybe Gamaliel was on to something.) I don’t think our hierarchical polity helps us here. There is so much power and control from above (on this and other issues), that our relationships are warped. Our current Discipline pushes us toward a “one size fits all” approach, leading to the fear our side might lose: we take losing in this kind of system to be losing everything. We also have the problem of trust. Before the issue of homosexuality even comes to the table we don’t trust each other: Pastors don’t trust DSs or bishops, DSs don’t trust pastors or churches, churches don’t trust pastors or cabinets.
  10. Moving farther afield, I think we need to do more work on the question of “orientation.” It’s become a primary concept in this debate. Orientation may be a useful concept, but if it’s limited to issues of sexuality and framed in the context of determinism, I don’t find it tenable. I find a variety of “orientations” in myself and cannot take these to be automatically good or bad merely on the basis of their being my orientation.
  11. Finally, and here I go back to Harper’s book, though he frames the book as a “third way” in the debate, I’m afraid that I’m still looking. Saying that we should love each other and talk together is opposed to the way of controversy aimed at winning. Saying that we adopt the notion that sexual immorality is the thing to be avoided, and that sexual immorality is defined as sex outside of marriage, and making the move to see same gender marriage as acceptable, is not a third way. I can’t help but read it as a position that requires complete capitulation on the part of the traditionalists. If there’s another way to read this move, please chime in.
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Jesus and Culture

Posted on September 13, 2014 by Richard Heyduck

Yeah, I know; given the title of this post I could write just about anything. I’m only going to touch on one aspect here.

Sometimes we complain about how biblical scholars give us a Jesus who looks nothing like us, a Jesus so enmeshed in his own ancient Jewish and Mediterranean culture that we don’t know what to make of him any more. The salvation that Jesus preached isn’t just the “be forgiven so you can go to heaven when you die,” or “God is nice so you be nice too” messages that we’ve heard since childhood. Since we’ve failed to eliminate his kingdom language, there’s an irreducible political tinge to all Jesus did and said. His salvation redeems/creates a people who will live according to God’s agenda in the midst of constant cultural opposition from multiple directions.

One of the things we can get from that biblical scholarship that highlights Jesus’ culture and those that neighbored it, is a clearer sense of the contrast Jesus created. Jesus spoke of being “light in the midst of darkness.” We’ve too easily applied that as a self-congratulatory “we’re right, and you’re REALLY wrong!” Well, maybe we are, and maybe you are, but even more, the light and dark language is a language of contrast. When we look at Jesus in his culture, we see that though he was making moves that advanced the cultural game plan, they were not at all the moves anyone expected. He stood out.

I believe paying closer attention to Jesus and the way his life contrasted with his culture can open our eyes to the ways our Christianity fails to contrast with our own. When we see some Christians who are culturally indistinguishable from various parties in our culture (we might think in terms of political parties here), something’s not right. Perhaps if we learn the difference exemplified in Jesus, we can learn to expect one in our own lives – assuming we plan to walk in the Jesus way.

Yes, I know the problem here. Assuming God has an agenda for our culture, for our society – an assumption many Christians have made through the centuries – there’s a chance that some Christians might align with that agenda and to some small degree enact it. In that case there will be at least some aspects of culture that are aligned with what God wants. To put it briefly, God wins! Because of this, just as we cannot simply assimilate to our culture and remain Christian, neither can we simply adopt a totally contrarian attitude. The primary thing is neither “go with culture” nor “go against culture.” The primary thing is “Go with Jesus.”

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Not Islamic?

Posted on September 11, 2014 by Richard Heyduck

In last night’s speech the President said,

Now let’s make two things clear: ISIL is not “Islamic.” No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim. And ISIL is certainly not a state.

I’m going to limit my comments to the first thing the President makes clear, since I find the claim less than clear.

If we were to approach ISIL folks (and survive the contact in some way that would allow us to report on the results) and ask, “Are you Muslim,” I have no doubt they would answer in the affirmative. I take it to be indubitable that they consider themselves to be Muslims – to be an Islamic group. In fact, it appears that they take themselves to be truer representatives of Islam than the other groups out there. They are so faithful to Islam that they have declared themselves to be the new Caliphate.

When I see Christian groups standing for and doing things that I take to be antithetical to Christianity, I am inclined to say something like, “They’re not really Christians.” Considering the actual ways purported Christian groups have acted over the past two millennia, I can think of many ways of not being Christian.

But what’s the difference between not being a Christian (when one takes oneself to be a Christian) being a Christian poorly? To what degree can my understanding of real Christianity, orthodox as I am, be taken as definitive of what it means to be a real Christian? I would think that my assessment of real Christianity has more credence than the assessment of non-Christians. I’m an insider: I have a commitment to Christ, to the Christian community (considered more broadly than just my own United Methodist Church), and to the advancement of Jesus’ kingdom. I have a stake in what is really Christian, a stake non-Christians usually don’t. When I see some group, Westboro Baptist, for example, acting in a way (in fact, apparently, defined by these actions) in a non-Christian way, I would like to say, “Those people aren’t Christians.” I’d go further and want to say, “Because those folks aren’t real Christians, you should not get your idea of the nature of Christianity from them.” From this angle it’s a variant of “Don’t look behind the curtain!”

If I were a Muslim, I’d surely not want my friends and neighbors (and children!) to think that the ISIS (or ISIL or IS or whoever they are) represent real Islam. I’d be much more comfortable saying they are obviously something else altogether. I know Islam; that’s not Islam. The President’s claim is coming from a perspective like this, even though he is not a Muslim. Like President Bush before him, President Obama speaks as a hypothetical Muslim. He does not want to believe that real Islam beheads journalists, crucifies religious opponents, or flies airplanes into buildings. Since I have Muslim friends, I don’t want Islam to be like that either.

What if the ISIS people are genuine in their claim to be Muslim? What if what I want – and what our presidents want – is irrelevant? My reading of the situation is that we are dealing with a conflict internal to Islam. We outsiders have wishes and desires – we want peace & safety – but we don’t get a say in what counts as real Islam. In the way some Christians stand against the practices of Westboro Baptist, some Muslims will stand against the ISIS conception of Islam. Time will tell which Islam becomes the real Islam, and which is considered Islam done wrongly.

It is surely the case that there are phenomena that are not Islam. Muslims would likely be the best to discern that these phenomena are not Islam, but as I, a Christian, would be better at discerning that a given phenomenon was not Christian. But as with the Presidents, sometimes my evaluation leans toward the factual, sometimes to the wishful thinking (or, more nicely, the hortative).

Finally, the general point I am making is that we need to sharpen our practices of predication and evaluation so that we allow the difference between not doing a thing and doing a thing poorly.

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Books (a Friday evening rant)

Posted on September 6, 2014 by Richard Heyduck

Books enable scholars to extend their reach. A single teacher can only have so many students. When the teacher writes a book, what that teacher has to say can be passed on to many students. Book may be expensive, but they rarely cost as much as the teacher who wrote the book.

Now we are going bookless. Books cost too much and the students can’t afford them. Now we offer free resources on the internet. Those free resources can be so much more than just a book. They can include not only text to be read, but audio to hear and video to see. And, compared to the books we used to use, it’s all free.

Well, maybe not. What about the students who can’t afford the hardware needed to access the online text, audio, and video? What about those who have the hardware, but cannot afford the subscription to get the internet piped into their homes? Well, that’s why we have computer labs on campus. If they cannot access their material at home, they can do it on campus. But when we make that big campus-wide shift away from books to internet content (free content!), do we strengthen our network so that it is more reliable? Do we up the bandwidth and speed to handle the capacity of more people demanding more from the network?

The free online content is easily available to many people simultaneously. Well, when they can afford the access. And when the electricity is working. A book – the old fashioned kind made out of paper – can only be used by one person at a time. But once one person has used it, the book can be passed on. It takes on a life as it imparts life. And books work when the power is off, amazing things that they are.

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Dismantling Education?

Posted on September 1, 2014 by Richard Heyduck

I keep hearing the observation (prediction?) that higher education is being disaggregated (most recently, here). What is meant by this is that the sources of the learning that add up to any given degree/diploma/certification are not going to come from a single or even small number of institutions. One will typically, it is said, take each course from the “best” teacher of that subject, wherever (and whenever?) that teacher might be located. There may be a covering institution that awards a degree based on completing a set degree plan, though few, if, any, courses are taken at that institution.

One brake on this model is that most of us are used to thinking of education happening in the social context we call school. But it is also the case that some of the success of the online/MOOC model comes from people knowing what to do with it given their previous understanding of what school is and out it works. Doing an online class is a move in the social institution we call “school,” or, more narrowly, “college.” Perhaps this is why so many of the young people I know strongly prefer face to face over online education.

But what happens when the school goes away? What happens when the institution in which online education “is a move” is no longer there? I’m wondering about not only the step of disaggregation, but of social disembedding. In what social context will the various moves that currently aggregate under the name “education” find a new home?

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