The older I get, the more I appreciate God's emphasis on mentoring. Life is far too complicated to be "taught" like a classroom subject. Sure, "tests" appear pretty frequently from our Master Teacher but clearly the people older than I are supposed to be my "study buddies."
Many skills-based careers still depend on the master/apprentice relationship. Carpenters, electricians, and machinists (among others) even still use those medieval terms: journeyman, master.
I recently read that tattoo artists learn their complex trade by apprenticing themselves to a master artist who takes full responsibility for the younger's training and development as an artist. When the apprentice has exhausted his master's knowledge and skills, he moves on, perhaps to found his own shop.
Artists and musicians are part of a centuries-old system of mentorship. Professional trade the names of their teacher like Olympic medals or badges of approval. "Well, I got to take a master class with so-no-so before he died." "Ooooh! Really? Wow!" *eyes open* Even musicians trained outside the traditional system proudly acknowledge sessions spent doodling or jamming informally with the musicians they most admire. "I learned those sweeps from Paul! He was chillin at my buddy's house before a show so we hung out...."
For most disciplines, a "good education" must be mediated through someone else's guidance and experience. Wise students attend colleges where a well-trained faculty invest themselves in training students well and directing their entrance into the discipline. So it is with life.
If I went to college thinking I would get answers to my deep questions, I was disappointed.... I didn't. I only got more questions. Ditto with master's degree #1. Masters #2 *did* provide a wealth of foundational material for my thinking, but I think that had as much to do with my being older the second time around as it did with any particular course content. Education is never about the content....
Let's be honest: Life is tough. We all need each other -- isolation is deadly -- but we need these people ahead of us on the journey even more. We need these storehouses of experience to open themselves up for us to rummage around and find what we need as we need it. And it's not just the "big questions" of life that fall under Paul's injunction that"the older teach the younger" -- think of what humanity would lose if Southern women stopped teaching their daughters how to make fluffy biscuits and sweet tea!
Several of my former students and friends just moved thousands of pounds of STUFF into their dorm rooms at college. An overwhelming number of them now live on entire halls or buildings crammed with hundreds of freshmen controlled by a scattering of RA's (who are nearly as inexperienced at life and the universe and everything).
Doesn't the very concept of "the freshman dorm" cut the legs out from under God's vital process of life-mentoring?
Sure, college classes provide plenty of intellectual discipleship into a professor's underlying worldview ... but dumping all the newbies into one building to muck along on their own as best they can (aside from the "freshman life seminars") suggests we don't really care much about our freshmen .... or deem them capable of much more their first year besides public drunkenness and a need to be sequestered from the quieter, calmer, older student population who find freshmen too irritating to keep close by.
I critique BJU a lot, but I deeply appreciate now the way they nestled the freshmen into already-existing communities of older students. Every room contained a jr/sr, a sophomore, and a freshman (usually). Having those older, wiser people around me in abundance made a whale's difference in my freshman year -- though I recognize that only now. The University purposefully created 'spaces' in the student organizations where freshmen became woven into the fabric of university life instead of being left to clump together in one lump of inexperience. Looking back, I can't remember the names of all the upperclassmen girls who reached out to me in my first months at college, but I can't tell you how much their stability and wisdom protected me from a lot of stupidity and mistakes. (And loneliness.)
Unintentionally, NCS ended up following a similar pathway as we designed the high school. I noticed my first year there that the 8th graders become so much more mature by hanging out with high school kids all the time. We have seen the older kids take an intentional role in raising up younger students who know how to act right; who treat their classmates with patience; who treat a lady with respect; who learn what to do at a formal dance. We'd drive those relationships all the way down into the elementary school if we could. It's so good.
Almost by definition, young adults lack the experience they need to actually "make it" in adult life. Dropping all the young'uns into a single building where they can be managed, controlled, and kept away from the mainstream population robs them of so much that ought to be part of a college kid's dorm experience! You don't learn wisdom and life skills from classroom lectures; it comes as someone older than you teaches wisdom "when you're lying down, and when you rise up; in your goings-out and comings-in; as you walk along and when you eat" (so says Deuteronomy 6, more or less).
Isolation from older, wiser adults is a systemic flaw in the American college system.
Comments (4)
Isolation from older, wiser adults is a systemic flaw in the American college system.
True. Kicking hornet's nests again are we??
I think the issue you're looking at goes much deeper, past a rooming system to an issue with how people become mature. Here are my thoughts, as a college student:
Lack of time:
Being a senior, I don't have time to train up a freshman while at the same time being able to perform adequately in my classwork. I have a limited amount of time to get things done, and schoolwork always takes precedence. I'm here to get an education, not to train a roommate.
Not what people expect:
None of my roommates have ever expected that, nor have I ever expected it of them. Students don't move in with people to learn from them. (Even though I try to maintain that you can learn from anyone.) The blunt fact is that people don't want your advice, nor will they listen if you try to give it. I will say that learning takes place, but it ends up happening not by listening but instead through conflict. Attitudes at college are selfish- we come here to get educated, earn a degree, get a mate, or party and try to put off entering the adult world for a few years. We didn't come here to serve each other. Admittedly, I'm at a secular college, not BJU, but I would guess that not all of the students at BJU came to be servant leaders for their roommates.
Lack of apprenticeship relationships:
The apprentice relationship is agreed upon by both the apprentice and the master. This is not the case in the majority of roommate relationships. I'm not saying it shouldn't be, just that it isn't. I got roommates because I couldn't afford a place off campus without them. I just was also lucky enough to get some I like. Also, the apprentice relationship is gone from college entirely. Over the last few years, I've only been in a relationship like that twice, and that was with co-workers, not teachers or students. Even working directly under teachers where I assumed apprenticeship would be the norm, I was disappointed that it was not.
Raising:
I'm not my roommates' mother, nor should I be. Any child raised correctly can and will thrive in a collegiate environment, regardless of who they live with, and it's not the responsibility of other college students to bring them up to par. Of the many problems of the American educational system, failure to put older students with younger isn't one. Older student avoid freshmen (and freshmen in particular) because they have yet to survive the trial by fire- getting through the first year without failing or dropping out. College isn't here to coddle you- you sink or swim. And it's that process that attempts to separate the wheat from the chaff, to misuse a biblical metaphor. It's absolutely necessary.
RA vs. BJU's System:
If I wanted to train freshmen, I would be an RA. I fail to see why you mistrust the RA system while trusting the BJU one. Part of my disagreement stem from the fact (at least I consider it a fact) that the maturity difference between individuals FAR outstrips the maturity difference between a freshman and a senior. The other part is that the maturity difference you're talking about is on average three years. I wish I became mature enough to train other people after three years. If living with mature people is that important, I would argue for living with your parents.
Living with mature people does not makes you mature. If anything, I think that living with immature people makes you mature. People are still growing during college, but college is an intermediate step between being pushed out of the nest and learning to fly. I think the problem has very little to nothing to do with the rooming system and more to do with how mature people are when they enter college.
@linktheoriginal -
<<Living with mature people does not makes you mature. If anything, I think that living with
immature people makes you mature. >>
I think that's the only thing you wrote that I actually agree with.
Everything else is either a misunderstanding of what i wrote, a misstatement of what I was trying to say, or something I flatly disagree with.
To clarify:
I never said BJU's dorm system was in any way perfect or the ideal. I *do* have major problems with their setting up upperclassmen as spiritual judges over younger students in the name of "spiritual leadership." But that wasn't my point of comparison. I value the fact that BJU didn't buy into your argument that college is a selfish time of life when you get to focus on yourself to the exclusion of anyone else.
Or perhaps you need to redefine what it means to "help others" -- you don't have to prevent AIDS in Africa to tally "doing something good today" in a way that is meaningful for the
Kingdom. Community is part of the fundamental nature of humanity. And even freshmen deserve "a cup of cold water" ... that's part of my point.
I said nothing about babying a roommate, cramming unsolicited advice down someone's throat, or spending half your day with people to the detriment of your coursework. If that's what you think "let older people teach the younger" means, you have seriously misunderstood Paul's mandate. Scripture is pretty clear these "life apprenticeships" happen within the context of good relationships that you ought to be building anyway. It's not some weird kind of assigned "job."
Mixing ages in the dorms isn't the solution; but it's a start. Getting adults more involved in the lives of young adults in general is another. Expecting everyone to give a care about people around them, especially those coming behind them, IS biblical. "The lone wolf," "the rugged individualist," the "sink or swim" entrance into adulthood via college is an American aberration of the Truth, not divine revelation.
You never have the right to love only yourself.
Life is bigger than YOU, even in college.
If you're too busy as a senior to deal with anyone but yourself, you might be too busy.
But it IS nice to see an actual discussion develop on a Xanga post for once.
Things I hate about the freshman dorm:
It is freezing. Always.
People who don't flush the toilets. Gross.
Battling my loft all the time. I usually lose.
... That is all I can think of right now. I guess you could say I'm a fan of the freshman dorm.