"It is bad luck to be superstitious." - Andrew W. Mathis

These seemed appropriate given that I spent an hour this morning printing 18 pages of material, 16 of which were the same handout. Why can't anyone make a reliable home printer? I gave up on HP and got a Kodak. Yes, the cartridges are cheaper... but I don't think they last as long. And I've learned to start the printing at least 12 hours before I need the job done to allow for "issue resolution." Today it was an error code I had to hunt down on the Kodak site - they don't make that easy! - and then a black cartridge that wouldn't work.
I hate printers!

We've had gusts up to 30 mph for three days now. I'm ready for that to be done. An open window means a house full of fine desert dust on everything, but this is the time of year when we want them open.

Never mind the twisted course that got me there, this morning I thought about education. Here's how I see it:
It's like the vortex I get when I pull the plug in our laundry tub. Or like a flushed toilet.

High school should be up at the top, wide and slow, basic, giving an overview of the broad range of general ed. Kids should be exposed to the hard and soft sciences, arts and literature, history, the whole gamut. I think this approach has at least two advantages. First, they may discover a particular subject that really clicks with them. And it may come as a total surprise. More than one kid has discovered that drama, or biology, or Shakespeare or calculus or auto mechanics captivates them. Plus, there is great advantage in life to having a broad base, a well rounded and informed intellect. We call the other people geeks. I'm lousy at math beyond long division but I realize it's still good for me to at least know what I don't know. Literary classics, the basics of physics, how economies function - it all makes me a more balanced person who appreciates the complexities of life. I can also poke around in all kinds of areas, converse with all kinds of people and enjoy the richness of intellectual diversity.

Note: this is why I'm not a fan of magnet schools. Even if (!) a 15-year old knows what they want to be for the rest of their lives they still need the broad base that only a general education provides. See "geek," above.

Undergrad work is the transition. The first two years of a 4-year degree move from general ed. to a more focused commitment on a particular major, with the last two years designed to provide a level of professional proficiency. I took college level lit, sociology, psych... all kinds of courses that enriched me as a person. I also took several hours of Bible and theology each semester. By my junior year it was all Bible, theology and ministry classes.
The vortex narrows and picks up speed.

After 12 years in pastoral ministry I went to Talbot Seminary. Loved it! Because my undergrad work was at a Bible college, unlike seminary classmates who had degrees in all kinds of fields, I could test out of some courses and concentrate on advanced subjects. I chose a major and a minor of particular interest to me and went digging. Halfway through my Masters they gave us the option of writing an extended paper instead of the standard thesis and I jumped on it. Wrote this crazy long analysis of the causes of the division of the Israelite kingdom in 926 B.C.
The vortex picks up speed even as it narrows.

Years later when I was teaching at the college I was encouraged to begin work on a Ph.D.
No way in the world!


A doctorate is all about finding the most infinitesimal topic, something nobody's ever explored before, and learning more about it than anyone ever needs to know. Go to your advisor and say, "I want to study the impact of red headed newspaper reporters on socialism in the Baltic states" and he says, "Sorry, that was done in 1992 by a woman at Harvard." So you pick something equally inane. Then you spend thousands and thousands of dollars and best six years of your life, and you give up anything that brings the least bit of pleasure to your dreary existence. At the end you've got a dry, irrelevant document that no one will ever read...except for the poor sucker who needs it for his dissertation's bibliography.

This is the point at which the toilet part of the vortex analogy fits better.

Ph.D.'s work for some people. They enjoy the process the same way others enjoy doing ultra-marathons every weekend for two years. I've never had the least inkling to go anywhere near terminal velocity in that vortex. I want to ride my bike, rebuild VW's, restore old houses, read good books, go tent camping, ride motorcycles across the country, play golf....