This morning, I had appointments with a friend from grad school and with one of my grad students from Texas Tech. Both now teach at Christian colleges in the U.S., and it was interesting to see how life is both the same and different at religious schools as compared to my own experiences at public universities.
Despite different personalities and religious backgrounds, both reported that they were largely able to teach what they want how they wanted. Of course, given their personalities, they were unlikely to declare religion dead or that the students might be fools for following a certain belief, but they have been able to teach and research political science with significant freedom.
Of course, I felt uncomfortable enough at TTU where the large majority of students had pretty narrow imaginations so I could never teach at a Christian college nor would any of them hire me. But these conversations were instructive that I should not be so narrow-minded to think that there are other ways of doing things and other places where folks can get good educations, even if it means that they have to live in a single sex dorm on campus :0
Of course, right now, I am reveling in my gambling success at last night's annual poker game, so the juxtaposition of last night and this morning is especially amusing to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment