Education and Religion: What Do They Have in Common? Best Books 2013, Part 2

Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, Reza Aslan

I know that many will disagree with this pick. I hope it will generate at least a little controversy. The author gained a great boost in sales when a less than professional reporter hounded him. But then it turned out he’d inflated his credentials. All of this is a sideshow, but also evidence of how stories become popular for all kinds of reasons that have little to do with the actual story itself.

But here is why I think this book is worth reading. The vast majority of people I talk to who call themselves Christians often have not a clue about the early historical struggles over the direction of Christianity and the narrative of Jesus. Makes it plain that he thinks that Jesus’ brother James (and for some, saying Jesus has a brother is news, as it goes against what they have been told) was the power in Jerusalem after Jesus died. He then describes the struggle for control of what is called, before the religion itself was a religion as we define it, the Jesus movement Paul, the outsider who calls himself the one true apostle, takes over the leadership and moves it away from its roots in Judaism and toward the gentiles instead. He does this largely as a result of his having to submit to James in what describes as a humiliating moment . However, The subsequent historical fall of the Jews to the Romans in Jerusalem lets Paul’s travels and his successful preaching become the new road down which Christianity began to become the religion of choice for the Romans.

While describes the conflicts of James with Paul in overblown prose (and without any consideration that the sources he often cites for critique are in this case, the standard bearers of historical fact,) the struggle is there in Acts in clear prose. It should come as no surprise, even to those who think each word of the New Testament is holy, that humans vie over leadership and direction of movements. But putting a sacred text under scrutiny does not often happen in a Sunday sermon. For those looking for some provocation mixed with some story telling and historical data (and some guesses and stretches to), then this book is worth reading.

Almost everything he says has been said before by more credentialed experts, but this book is an easy read and it will change the way many look at Jesus unless they have had some prior theological training or religious study classes that look at the bible as a text for close reading. In other words, he examines The Good News as work of history. He picks and chooses words to support his reading rather than approaching the text as The Word made flesh. For some this is simply blasphemy; for others, it will be a good guide to understanding how one became the other, a miraculous narrative that in its meandering ways is itself a miraculous narrative. To draw from another old culture, I think that despite its initial hype, this book will quickly be overlooked. Why? It is another case in which the messenger must be put to rest. In this day the messenger bearing news that is not what many want to hear does not face death; that would turn him into a martyr. Instead, silence is the best way to keep the words from being a part of reasoned examinations of sacred texts. But I do think that readers of the book who are Christians should ask the question: Did Jesus have a brother? Such a simple question, yet the answer would, if yes, shake the foundations of may dearly held beliefs. If not, they’d need to explain how the text doesn’t say what it seems to say.

College (Un)bound: The Future Of Higher Education and What it Means for Students, Jeffrey Selingo

It may seem odd to link this book with the one above, but there is a common thread. Many people of faith have yet examine with a critical eye the data that comprise the words of the book they use to shape their views of what the life of Jesus was and then became through the early disciples. College (Un)Bound  gathers a huge amount of data to challenge the often unquestioned assumptions that educators and schools leaders have made and continue to make about what constitutes the new  shipping lanes of students from secondary school to colleges and universities.) Selingo’s book takes a hard look at seaworthiness of the educational vessels to win the war of global competition  in education, He finds many of the craft are old, and have not been equipped with the newest forms of tech that are needed and some would say necessary. Instead, many  have sprung leaks that unless addressed may well sink them in the not too distant future. (The shipping news trope is mine, not his.)

Selingo is an editor at the Chronicle of Higher Ed, the publication that most go to in order to find out about current trends in education. This book is an overview of what he has learned from covering large issues in education; at the same time he also has found examples that might be useful to those seeking to repair the damage from what might be called Titanic envy.

During the 80’s and 90’s when the economy was largely strong and education enjoyed the support of politicians and taxpayers, many schools took the money that flowed in and built behemoths.  By this I mean that schools went of spending sprees.

Colleges now have more facilities to engage the students than  any previous generation could  have dreamed of:  State of the art gyms, art buildings, climbing walls, food courts, beautifully manicured campuses with spanking new buildings. The list could go on perhaps not quite as long as Homer’s famous catalogue of ships, but it’s quite an armada nevertheless.

To expand the military metaphor a bit, schools decided to engage on an arms race with those schools at the top-- the Harvards and Stanfords of the world.   The problem, as the od Soviet Union discovered, is that keeping up an arms race without the economic resources of  the most well-funded schools in the world simply does not work over any sustained period. At the time when everyone wanted to rise in the rankings and money seemed flush, a series of endless presentations went on across the land by administrators saying that new buildings and amenities would draw great students and help their schools flourish.  This narrative sounded great and so schools borrowed and built—they went wild. Where did the money come from? From banks and from students and families. .Each year tuition went up well in excess of the rate of inflation. The parents who were making more money could bear the increases. But then came what Nassim Taleb calls a black swan. This philosophical term refers to things that are outside the purview of people. Black swans, in England, way back when were thought not to exist. In our day, the first black swan came on 9/11. It was followed by the housing crisis. Both dismantled the way we lived and worked (and in many cases didn’t work). The aftermath of these events: a shrinking middle class, and a disproportionate income gap between the have and have-nots. In a book filled with revelatory details one in particular stood out to me:

“At the top is the total number of eighteen-year-olds, some 4.3 million in 2009. The ones that filter out at the bottom are those with above-average SAT scores and family incomes over $ 200,000 a year, who also want to attend small, private colleges in the mid-Atlantic or northeast regions. That number in 2009, according to Lundquist? Just 996 students.”
Selingo, Jeffrey J. (College Unbound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students (p. 66). New Harvest. Kindle Edition.

The poet Ezra Pound wrote an essay a long while back extolling the usefulness of what he called the ‘luminous detail”. I would appropriate his phrase and apply it to the number 996. This tiny number has huge repercussions. There number of students needed to fill liberal arts schools in the northeast exceeds that number by, perhaps, an order of magnitude. In order to fill the beds at these schools (and at many schools throughout the US) schools now offer discounts to students and families. In some cases less than a third of students pay full cost. But this discounting comes at a cost too. With fewer dollars coming in, schools can no longer afford to hire tenured faculty. Instead they hire adjuncts at a fraction of the cost. But even these efforts are not enough. The schools have come to realize they have priced themselves out of the market. So now the rush is on to get students, mostly from China, who can come and pay full fees. Selingo cites the dramatic growth of international students into the US. Selingo does not address how this market may change in the future but I will. In a decade the flow will have slowed dramatically because China is pouring a trillion dollars into education. The great labs and resources here are the best in the world, but now only a small number of schools in the US can continue to build as before the reason for coming to the US will decrease. This is what I would call a black swan too. If you think I am being a just an opinionated naysayer, Inside Higher Ed has just reported, not that the end is near, but that things are indeed changing in China.

Throughout Selingo’s book he cites data that I found surprising and, to a large degree, saddening. Throughout the fall I posted a number of education quizzes. Many of the questions come from data I gleaned from Selingo’s book.  Selingo cites some innovative models that save money and permit students to earn a degree without incurring debt, the other black spectre that is already starting to haunt education. The student debt load is now larger than the housing crisis debts and they are not going to go away unless schools retool their economic model. Selingo gives some ways to do so, but I was surprised that he is not a champion of MOOCs.(Massive On-line Pone Courses). I see these courses as a way for student to save at least two years of tuition. If schools begin t offer academic credit for MOOCs, then they won’t have to live on campus for a couple of years. Given the 50,000 costs of private schools, saving 100,000 sounds appealing, but it may become necessary. Time will tell. For those looking to find many problems that need solving, this book is a great place to start. Close reading of data, either scriptural or educational will challenge the long held beliefs of many. But Selingo’s book has not been passed around by college presidents or been the subject of front-page headlines. He is, after all, not a member of the educational elite. He is an outsider looking in and so he Jeremiad has gone largely unheard and unread. (For those with a kindle, I have posted publicly my highlights and notes.)

The Smartest Kids in the World, Amanda Ripley

The answers are simple. If the US wishes to regain its position near the top of countries in educating students, then there needs to be dramatic change. The efforts need to be redoubled to bring those who are at the bottom end of the economic and social rung up if not to equal levels with those who enjoy privilege then at least closer than they are now. To do this there needs to be less emphasis on standardized tests and more about how to reward effort.  In our democratic system opportunities mean more than outcomes.

If you agree with what I have just written then I encourage you to read this book. And if you don’t I encourage you to do the same.

The author, taking a cue perhaps from Malcolm Gladwell, (whose book David and Goliath I reviewed here recently), is not what most would call an educational expert. She is instead,  horrible dictu, a journalist and this category will, for some, call her insights into question. And like Gladwell, she uses individual stories as a springboard to make some large assertions about education around the world and in the US. She follows the lives of a few young people as they leave the security of home to search for new opportunities as a stranger in a strange land, a plot device as old as literature (think of Homer or the Bible). She uses these students’ reactions to the schools in Finland, Korea,  Poland  and the US to look back at the land they’ve left as much as to describe  the place they spend an exchange year in. In the midst of this she also takes time to examine the world rankings that have causes such as stir among educators.


The rankings she uses as her tool to measure countries do not come from US News or other media outlets. Instead they come from the results of a test . PISA (acronym for Program for International Student Assessment) is not a typical test like the SAT or the Gaokao or even the IB. Instead, the test measures skills that are not curriculum based. In other words they hope to measure skills that involve both creative problem solving and as PISA website puts it,  applicable ‘to real life situations’. The author approaches the test and its claims with a healthy does of skepticism. But she does what most skeptics who deserve the name actually do: She experiments. She takes test herself. And she reports that the test does indeed assess these skills. If we are to trust her judgment, then this test cannot be simply dismissed by the test taker foes that say the test has little or no value except to measure test prep ability. As far as tests go, this one seems far better than most. Those scores from students tested around the world, by country, comprise the basis for the rankings. Some schools that top the list are a surprise: Finland for example. Others, such as Korea, comes as no surprise, since test taking for national exams for entry into top universities means more than anything else to most households with students.. While there are many who often stereotype Asians as robotic test-takers who don’t know how to think, this test, and the results, undermines that claim. But this information, as well as the creative skills that the test measures do not get discussed much in US educational bureaucracies


The descriptions of the test, as well as the profile of the test makers already make the book worth reading. So too do the narratives of the students. Their stories humanize the conclusions the author draws about what needs to be done to improve education in the US.

The first paragraph of this review was also a test. In a few sentences I put forward what many in education define as the problems and the solutions to the mediocre performance of US students.  But this book takes issue with each of these assertions and to me at least makes a great case about how  the US will never improve its standings if it continues to travel down the wrong to reform.

What Ripley finds, through data, is that the US outspends almost all other countries in education. More importantly, the spending of money at a greater rate, even in low-income neighborhoods, does not predict that scores will rise. The calls for increased spending, even if they happen, will not effect much change. The problems with education in the US are not economic; they are cultural.

The best way to improve education? Hire the best and brightest as teachers. In the countries which rise to the top teachers are culled from the best students attending universities. The emphasis on education came, in many of these countries, out of necessity. Korea, for example, was a poor moribund place in 1962,. Since then it has risen to become an economic giant. How did they do this? By funneling the best people to be teachers and by emphasizing education as the foundation of economic change. Finland too recruited the top 5% to become teachers because they knew they needed the best to produce the best. Poland is now following suit.

The story in the US is far different. Very, very few students in the top 5% pursue teaching. In our cultural milieu teaching is a low status job. As a result, there are many teaching today who although they have education degrees, did not major in the subjects they teach. If the teachers are not skilled in math it should come as no surprise they are not great math teachers. This common sense, however, gets ignored by many in education.

But it isn’t just teaching that has low cultural value in the US. Ripley makes the point several times that in the US athletics gets more prestige and family support than academics. Parents go to every game, cheer their students on, but they don’t often do what would help the students most: spend time at home encouraging reading from early on. Having a literate household, having parents who spend time having intellectual discussions, and rewarding high performance all add up to a successful formula for students.

I agree with Ripley. Here is the thought experiment that I use to demonstrate her point. In visiting schools in China (Shanghai has the best results of anyplace on earth on the PISA tests) I occasionally asked the students this question: Which would you rather be, the valedictorian of your school or the captain of your province winning soccer team? I knew what the reaction would be: they thought it was a stupid question. In the US, I have asked the same question (I have occasionally substituted football or lacrosse or another sport depending on the school), and at least among boys the answer is mixed. I think if I were a peer rather than who I am even more would have chosen the athletic over the academic accolades. If this makes me sound like a nerd calling for reform I at least can say that my background gives me some credibility to ask this question. In secondary school I was a highly ranked athlete and in college I competed on a national level in a sport. My experience taught me tha being an athlete gives huge perks and means way more socially to one’s peers than academic prowess.

Ripley makes her points well but I am not optimistic that they will become the talking points of educators and politicians. To change a mind is hard.  To change a culture? Usually it takes a black swan.

To call for money to solve problems is easy. To cite cultural norms that downplay academic prowess would give rise to many debates that would get certain groups upset. But the Common Core , like No Child Left Behind won’t do much except expend resources on things that won’t lift those who need help and won’t raise the ranking of the US education anytime soon.

PISA is unique because it develops tests which are not directly linked to the school curriculum. The tests are designed to assess to what extent students at the end of compulsory education, can apply their knowledge to real-life situations and be equipped for full participation in society. The information collected through background questionnaires also provides context which can help analysts interpret the results.