college

But as God hath distributed to every man, as the Lord hath called every one, so let him walk. 1 Cor. 7:17

This is “thin ice” material for an administrator of a traditional, academic track school to be writing. I am not alone in giving voice to this concern, however, and think I find myself in good company. Janie B. Cheaney brings up the subject once again in the Sep. 20 issue of World Magazine. A previous article in the Spring about the “diminished returns” of some college degrees evidently stimulated a strong response. Cheaney writes, “The subject seems to be a hot-button issue among Christians of a certain age: young adults or older adults with teenage children. The ‘Go-To-College’ steamroller that gained traction after the G.I.Bill has begun to slow down as the cost-effectiveness becomes more questionable. Charles Murray, author of Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America’s School Back to Reality, put it bluntly in a recent Wall Street Journal article: ‘For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time.”

Most of my familiarity with this issue stems from discussions with and observing the lives of a number of early 20-somethings. These went dutifully off to college, successfully earned their degree, and now are back home, rootless, and struggling to find both themselves and a real job. It seems there is not much of a market for psychology majors, English literature majors, or History majors. Even business majors are struggling. These newly minted graduates, who did everything we asked them to do, are now waiting tables, working at Panera Bread, or treading water with two or three part-time jobs. They live cheaply with friends or family, sleep over garages or on front porches, and spend their spare time “hanging out” with friends in similar situations. And they wait. They wait for fate to carry them someplace they know not where. In the meantime, they have college loans to pay off that make my first mortgage look like a football wager.

College can be a formative experience and a gateway to a professional career, no doubt. But far too many wander down that lane with no plan or goal in mind. They emerge burdened with debt and no marketable skill. In the mean time, there are numbers of clearly focused youth who discover that there are many skilled trades that offer worlds of opportunity and only take half the time and expense of a traditional four year degree. This is not the same world as when I went off to college. Today, there are a number of different angles to be worked in preparing for a fully independent life of service and blessing.

Janey Cheaney highlights just a few of these. Homeschoolers and fast-trackers can now explore opportunities for dual credit in the latter high school years. CFC is looking closely at this as we contemplate adding our high school program. Testing out of pre-requisite courses and dual credit can drastically cut the cost and length of an academic program especially through the use of a low cost community college. But even then, a plan should be pre-eminent in thinking about the future. What interests are best pursued? What is the end goal? What would be the best path to get there? Cheaney notes a web site, CollegePlus.org, that offers assistance by assigning a coach to each student to develop a plan. In so doing, one may quickly discover that an associate’s degree is all that is needful to enter a certain field.

Another major choice involves the quickly proliferating technical schools that are now available. These quickly focus on specific skills and occupations that can rapidly propel a student into the workforce with a very marketable skill. In conjunction with this, one should never overlook the path of apprenticeship. The U.S. Department of Labor has an actual Office of Apprenticeship, as does every state. Check out doleta.gov and nastad.us to see if these can open the doors of interest and opportunity especially suited to your student. There are opportunities out there to learn and to be paid while one is learning. What a concept.

The biggest challenge of formulating a plan is that youth are seldom blessed with a clear vision for their lives. I firmly believe that having a variety of work experiences is the best school master for helping a young person find their first love. This points out the value of summer jobs, internships, days-with-dad or other family friends, and, yes, even school field trips. Sometimes it takes the actual fire of a welder’s arc or the artful stitching of an open wound to awaken the desire and vision for a young person’s life. My daughter’s experience as a CNA (a short 4 week course through Red Cross) confirmed in her the leading towards a career in nursing. And when they find that spark that can ignite a life-long passion, we will do well not to demean it as less than satisfactory. Diesel mechanics make much more than school teachers from what I hear. The bottom line is that we not measure the worth of any calling by the money or worldly status attached to it. The important thing is to find a calling whereby we meet a need in society that will afford a living suitable to our needs. And regardless of the days spent or not spent in obtaining an education, God still reminds us that wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom. That, of course, puts everything in proper perspective.

This will preach!

"And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow." Matt. 13:3

Poets and preachers ply much the same trade. They rummage about in old sheds and ploughed fields always casting a keen eye for odd bits of iron or stone, trinket or toy, broken or whole that tell a story. Picking up the oddest specimens of the everyday, the common, the familiar, they discover them to be treasuries of meaning; Rosetta stones that unlock mysteries of morality and truth. They look beyond the obvious to translate for us the tales of significance and value locked in their earth worn covers much like the bilingual person can read to us from a cast off book written in a foreign tongue.

Jesus was pre-eminent among them taking sheep, bread, wheat, and wages and unleashing from them pictures for the eyes of our imaginations that leaped the barriers of literacy, prejudice, status, or age. Olive trees became discourses and wineskins, dissertations that conveyed truth down into our souls with a sweetness and ease that disarmed our defenses and silenced the critics of our hearts, at least for the moment. Caesar’s coin in the hands of the carpenter’s son defeated even the most devious of minds and most relentless of foes and left them silent, their entrapments in shambles, their arguments destroyed.

Long after the terminology was lost, the picture remains, burned into the memory like the heat and brilliance of a grand fire. Grandma Shown was good at it, too. When the children unwittingly tripped us up, she would sermonize succinctly and simply: “When they are young, they step on your toes. When they are old, they step on your heart.” She had known both, in spades. Herman Melville was a master at seeing the universal in the particular and proclaimed doggedly, “And some certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little worth, and the round world itself but an empty cipher, except to sell by the cartload, as they do hills about Boston, to fill up some morass in the Milky Way.” His masterpiece, Moby Dick, is awash in moralizing at every turn with deep reflections on life taken from the everyday experiences of a whaler, in all their beauty and terror.

For one, Melville takes considerable time to describe the careful path of the harpoon rope laid about in the whale boat before it followed its mark with a whizzing that could take off a leg or arm or snatch one into a watery grave. It actually lay across arms and shoulders as it trailed from its coiled lair, innocent as “the seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal powder, and the ball.” It was the thing which carried “more of true terror than any other aspect of this dangerous affair.” But why say more, he adds. “All men live enveloped in whale lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life.”

Following the tradition, I continue to exclaim for all to hear at every cluttered closet and tangled garden hose, “Chaos always descends from order! Order never descends from chaos!” (A pox on Darwin and all his kin!) Come to my woodshop and you are likely to hear, “If you work with wood, you will get slivers. If you work with people, you will get hurt.” Young preachers (& teachers) need forewarning. Can we see the eternal significance in those things that surround us each day and point them out to young ears as lessons for the heart? “Go to the ant, thou sluggard, and consider her ways” the Scripture says, and so we look beneath our feet and see wisdom for the taking. Through eyes of faith and vision, we, too, can see the treasure in the common and exclaim with sudden discovery and joy, “This will preach!”

Scouting

“Even a child is known by his doings, whether his work be pure, and whether it be right.” -Pro. 20:11

I may have told some of you this story but now I want to write it. A friend of mine has a son who has become a very specialized and skilled doctor because of an opportunity he was granted as a newly minted surgeon. It seems that there was a highly respected team of doctors who were offering a fellowship and a chance to bring some new blood into their specialized field. Numerous applications made their way in to seek after this rare opening. After the selection process had run its course, my friend’s son was amazed and thrilled to be one of the two individuals to be chosen for the program. Some months later after having come on board, he asked just how he managed to be chosen out of all the resumes representing all these other highly credentialed candidates. His mentor told him that he noticed that he was an Eagle Scout and, hence, pulled his application and put it on top to be examined first.

It is somewhat staggering to learn that what a young man had accomplished as a student in junior high school and the first years of high school mattered more, with regard to getting noticed, in landing a prestigious fellowship than all of his college and medical school grades or accomplishments put together. Obviously the one could not stand without the other, but it still is remarkable that obtaining the rank of Eagle Scout, scouting’s highest honor, speaks so strongly and clearly about the character and mettle of a man that years later others would still care and notice.

The road to Eagle is not easy and few there are who make it. Yet it is obtainable for anyone who dedicates himself to steady accomplishment and submits himself to the meticulous training regimen in which a young man first learns to take orders and, eventually, to give them. While others are out playing at whatever the teen culture affords, looking for easy fun and fast times, scouts are working on badges, learning new skills, or building endurance through hikes into the wild. They go out of their way to find hardship, heat, sweat, and obstacles of all kind. But out of that old world crucible known as scouting comes character; character that is noticed and appreciated the world over.

In a day and age in which families are under pressure to teach their children to read at an early age just so they can get a leg up on their peers in the race for college scholarships, I find it odd that scouting for boys is so easily overlooked. Here is a proven program that magnifies both true values and opportunities way down the line and yet it gets by passed for things such as sports or part-time, minimum wage jobs, neither of which have shown themselves to offer much return for the time invested in them.

What sparked this article today was my chance stumbling across a plaque I discovered the other day in the basement of the annex. It showcased all the Eagle Scouts who have come through the ranks of Troop 530 here at West Town Christian Church. I was amazed when I saw that they had promoted Eagle Scouts every year, some 22 Eagle Scouts in all over the past 16 years. Some troops never promote an Eagle and some only occasionally. Whatever this troop is doing, they are doing something right. I have to suspect that they have some great leadership and dedicated scouts involved to make this such a successful programs. If I were a parent of a pre-teen son, I would definitely want to check this opportunity out. It could result in somebody’s resume going to the top of the stack someday.

colors

“For the body is not one member, but many.” 1 Corinthians 12:14

Our God, as revealed in nature, is a God of incredible powers of creativity and variety. And yet there is unity. I loved the Olympics for it calls forth people from every country of the globe and then shows us how much alike we are. And yet no two are exactly the same. We are as unique as snowflakes.

Even more so, the mystery of personality is a maze of fascinating twists and turns. Many have tried to give us a grid to help us understand ourselves and those around us. I would hesitate to ascribe to any of them in terms of absolute truth, but I find them intriguing and helpful in grasping just some of the complexity and diversity of the human psyche that invests us all. One of these is a system of four colors developed by Carolyn Kalil under the publishing name of True Colors. I would like to resort to this model as it lies at my fingertips and does a well enough job as any in portraying something of just how fearfully and wonderfully made we are.

I take this little side journey because there are bound to be times when you or your children will find themselves bonding in strong and familiar ways with certain teachers and not with others. If you ask every student to identify their favorite teacher, some names would crop up more than others, but there would never be 100% agreement. My point is simple. Students are not all created alike and neither are teachers. Because all students are not alike, we do not want all our teachers to be alike either.

Ms. Kalil categorizes personalities in four colors as being green, blue, orange, and gold. Gold people are typically first-born, dependable, responsible, loyal people who value order, tradition, and security. They love structure and are very driven by a sense of duty. If you need someone to organize your company or keep your books, you want one of these folk. Many of these people go on to become teachers and, as such, they value achievement, punctuality, exactness, hard work, and the tried and true method of the classroom lecture. They aggravate the rest of us with their insistence on correctness and detail.

Orange personalities, on the other hand, are spontaneous, daring, creative, entertaining, and skillful people for whom “adventure” is their middle name. These folk make great drama teachers, firemen, salespersons, and independent business owners. They will annoy us at times by their desire to test the limits, be the class clown, or with their impatience over routine tasks. But they make great leaders with their flair for creativity, finesse, and charisma. Orange teachers value physical activity, the unusual, cleverness, energy, creativity, and hands-on learning.

Blue personalities are relational people. They are sensitive to others and love authenticity and honesty. They love freely and want to be loved in return. They are compassionate, encouraging, vivacious, and affirming. We enjoy having these people in our lives because they make us feel good. They despise and flee from confrontation and conflict. The Blue teacher is a born nurturer, desires harmony and good feelings, success for everyone, likes cooperative learning and people-oriented concepts and activities. Many elementary teachers have a strong “Blue” streak because of their desire to be nurturers. But they can be annoying on a committee because they value good feelings above actual work or progress.

The Green personality is most complex and, perhaps, the most easily misunderstood. They love to analyze, take things apart, think in abstract terms, and use precise language. They often exude a calm and cool exterior as they seek after and solve complex problems. They make great scientists, inventors, and chess players. But they can be irritating in their questioning of assumptions, insistence upon perfection, or their detached presence. “Green” teachers value freedom of thought, ingenuity, independent mental activity, independent projects, and inquiry-discovery methods of instruction. Every board or company needs one of these folk to ask the hard questions nobody else thinks of or dares to bring up.

We conducted a sample self-test one year among our teachers and discovered that most were either gold or blue in regard to their predominant personality trait. If your child has a Gold personality, they will typically love being in class with a Gold teacher. If they are predominantly Blue, they will naturally gravitate to a Blue teacher. Not all students are gold or blue, however. We need the full spectrum of teachers to, at least one time in their lives, spark and give value to those personality traits waiting to come to life in your child.

That is why we value all of our teachers and the differences they bring in ministering to such a diverse body of students that you regularly contribute to us. If you have trouble “connecting” or even agreeing with the way a particular teacher does things, please remember that there are others out there who are probably loving it. Part of the school experience is to learn how different we all are and to develop both the patience needed to deal with other personality types and the appreciation of how they contribute to the life and diversity of the hive. All have value, all have strengths, all have weaknesses, and all are needed.

- Mr. Moe (a self confessed ‘green’ who has learned a lot by being married to a flaming ‘blue’ for 42 years)