“Is Thinking Good for Its Own Sake?” 

        According to Williams, “To say that something is intrinsically good means that nothing else is needed to justify it or make it good.” I believe that something is intrinsically good when it is valuable even if it does not have a practical purpose.

My list of 20 intrinsically good things:

1. quality coffee

2. coloring pages

3. chocolate

4. painting

5. candlelight

6. peace

7. flowers

8. swings

9. crafts

10. literature (defined as the best expression of the best thought)

11. bubbles

12. Christmas lights

13. faith

14. horses

15. dress-up

16. exploring

17. cookies

18. traditions

19. traveling

20. dancing

        One of my favorite memories of a time that I experienced something intrinsically good was my first visit to Pour Jon’s coffee shop. A group of my closest newly-made friends and I decided to go for coffee late at night. Walking in the door, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of wonder over the authenticity of the environment. The first thing that my senses registered was the intense smell of fresh coffee. I breathed deeply, enjoying the way it instantly relaxed my shoulders and relieved the tension caused by adjusting to college life. Vintage light bulbs hung from the ceiling, casting soft light over the booths; the red brick and plaster walls were covered with Sharpie drawings of every kind as well as the signatures of faithful patrons and famous quotes. Because of my love for coffee, it was a memorable whimsy moment.

Questions:
1. How does the idea of whimsy connect to the inherent goodness of things?
2. How can we use our personal strengths and gifts to share intrinsically good things with others?

       

“Banking Education”

Although I attended a private Christian high school, I occasionally encountered an approach to education that was very similar to the “banking” method that was described by Paulo Freire in chapter two of his book The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. The students were sometimes, perhaps unconsciously, viewed as “banks” in which knowledge was deposited. However, unlike Freire’s ideas, I don’t believe that any of my teachers consciously held any of the sinister intentions which Freire so soundly opposes. Nevertheless, in some classes, “Education [became] an act of depositing,” as Freire states (p. 72). Rather than “controllers” subjecting the “oppressed”, I think my teachers focused on the input of information so that we would have information with which to reason for ourselves. That was the heart behind their actions anyways.

 Sadly, in the process of presenting that information, some classes became one-way narrative where the teacher was the only one with valid information to give. Any questions asked, the students were expected to answer but strictly with textbook answers. Now, not all of my classes were like this, indeed some were just as challenging as my college courses now because they made me think, but as a whole, this is the type of education I experienced.

Please don’t get me wrong, I loved my high school years. I still do.  But, looking back on several classes I took, including Bible classes, I’ve come to realize that many times, I wasn’t expected to really engage the material and wrestle with the ideas presented, so much as I was required to absorb and then reiterate as much of the course material as possible without ever questioning why a certain fact was important or what the long-term implications of such-and-such a belief are. This realization simultaneously saddens my heart and makes me determined that as a future teacher, I will do everything in my power to help my students engage with and reason through class material.

Questions:

1) What makes education at JBU different than the “banking” system, if anything at all?

2)What are some practical ways that we (as education majors and future teachers) can help students reason for themselves in our classes?