alt Hacker News> The class turned out to be more or less “A Letter (singular) of Paul:” we spent the semester reading Paul’s letter to the Romans, at a rate of about 3 sentences per week. Per week!
That's not a liberal education. That's religious brainwashing. It's the kind of thing madrassas and yeshivas do - obsessively school students on a very few texts said to be sacred.
Liberal education was traditionally broad. There are curricula based on the Great Books. [1] They can be criticized for being retro, but they are not narrow.
[1] https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/undergraduate/great-bo...
Replies
St. Paul's writing has this effect on people. It's either a burst of love and joy or seething hatred. Never in the middle. :D
> There are curricula based on the Great Books.
List not including the greatest book of them all... What did they mean by this?
There's nothing inherently wrong with theological education assuming it is also clubbed with other curricula and is not dogmatic in nature.
Most major theological programs in the US like Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Chicago, Vandy, and Notre Dame take this kind of an interdisciplinary approach.
The issue with madrassas and some hardcore yeshivas and seminaries is they do not allow any curricula that isn't litigurical in nature.
> Liberal education was traditionally broad. There are curricula based on the Great Books. [1] They can be criticized for being retro, but they are not narrow
I've found the Great Books curricula to be closer in style to madrassa and hardcore yeshivot curricula than a traditional liberal arts education, as they don't actively try to connect past texts and treatise with the present.
The Great Books curriculum is itself a holdover from back when UChicago was meant to be a fundy evangelical theological program.
This is one class to deeply understand one of the most politically impactful texts in history. What about that is religious brainwashing? Do you even know the professor’s religious beliefs? Because they’re not obvious to me simply from the course description.
I took a religious studies course in college amid a liberal arts math/CS major. I can say it was one of my favorite classes in college, primarily for exposing me to ways of thinking that differ from my own, and yet I left with my (lack of) religious beliefs intact.
> That's not a liberal education. That's religious brainwashing.
No it's not. It's theology. A text that influenced millions of lifes and deaths can be studied in great detail without any brainwashing.
(To be fair, it can also be brainwashing! But from the blog post it seemed like the course was more about language and culture than about God.)