The level of paranoia exhibited by the previous comment is stunning. So, let’s say a student wants to talk about the spirituality of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Aung San Suu Kyi, social activists who were activists because they were spiritual beings. The professor remains silent in the face of a student’s honest inquiry about how s/he might craft a way of being based on spirituality? That would be sad indeed. Silence would be merited only if the professor himself or herself saw no spiritual side to life, and really could not comment. This study is worthy of attention by all campuses intent on helping students as whole human beings.

Kathryn, at 7:45 am EST on December 18, 2007

What do we make of the fact that students report a decrease in health and well-being (more depression, less exercise, more stress, more drinking) even as they have become more “spiritual?” There is something sigificant in those data that should be further explored. Perhaps many of these questions are measuring the increased life perspective of juniors, rather than spirituality or faith.

dean, at 9:50 am EST on December 18, 2007

Binges and Spirituality

Dean said:

Q:What do we make of the fact that students report a decrease in health and well-being (more depression, less exercise, more stress, more drinking) even as they have become more “spiritual?”

The state of our existence and the knowledge or realization of that state is in itself a spiritual journey. At the end of the road we must choose faith in order to believe in something we cannot see, or others turn to confusion and hence may be more mentally depressed as they try and solve existential issues, or may drink as they try to escape, may be more stressed without any factual answers...

That is my philosophical answer.

As for the exercise, well...The extra time that college students DO have off, apart from academics, friends and work (if they work, and a lot do) does not necessarily go into exercising but into resting or lazy wandering.

-JC

JC, at 11:35 am EST on December 18, 2007

Purpose-Guided Education—A Response to HERI

Elizabeth, Thanks for covering this topic and including the key charts. I’ve followed Lana’s (Helen’s) work for years and have always found it to be both interesting and solid. HERI is indeed among the most-cited research groups on related subjects. Also, a flurry of books and other studies enhance the importance of HERI’s work. In the light of various studies, the faculty role in such discussions is becoming increasingly under scrutiny. In her recent dissertation, Patrice Noel found that the highest-rated professors at Clemson talked with students about their future—and there’s a sense of purpose and the students’ role in such scenarios; see “Still Making A Difference In The Problem I Am Becoming: A Study of Students’ Perceptions of Faculty Who Make A Difference In Their Lives,” Azusa Pacific University, 2007. Among published works, you might begin with Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford University Press, 2005). Also, see Smith’s fascinating cover article for Books & Culture (Nov/Dec 2007), “Getting a Life: The Challenge of Emerging Adulthood.” Of course, Naomi Schaefer Riley’s book is a must—God on the Quad: How Religious Colleges and the Missionary Generation Are Changing the World (New York: St. Martins, 2005). A book much in the news was Anthony Kronman’s Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life (Yale, 2007). I appreciate his efforts, and especially his title. He does well in identifying the problem but seems to offer little hope in helping students to find answers. On Kronman’s views, see “A Dangerous and Disturbing Development” in the online Comment Magazine (September 21, 2007), responses to Kronman’s Boston Globe article, “Why are we here? Colleges ignore life’s biggest questions, and we all pay the price,” (September 16, 2007). Sharon Daloz Parks may be a bit more helpful in her Big Questions, Worthy Dreams: Mentoring Young Adults in Their Search for Meaning, Purpose and Faith. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000)—though keep Craig Dykstra’s work in mind for clarification on definitions, i.e., Growing in the Life of Faith: Education and Christian Practices (Louisville, KY: Geneva Press, 1999), and note his association of faith with a “transformation in life” and meaning and value as “likely benefits of our faith” (p. 30). Perhaps the best new book on “purpose” is Larry A. Braskamp, Lois Calian Trautvetter and Kelly Ward, Putting Students First: How Colleges Develop Students Purposefully (Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing Company, Inc., 2006), and the very recent Lois Calian Trautvetter, “Developing Students’ Search for Meaning and Purpose” in Gary L. Kramer et al, Fostering Student Success in the Campus Community (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007). Also, Daniel Levinson, Seasons of a Man’s Life (New York: Knopf, 1978) is a good read. One of the more important voices on the subject of life’s questions is the late Robert M. Hutchins (of Great Books renown)—see Keith Berwick’s lively interview (transcript), “Don’t Just Do Something.” Posted at the School of Cooperative Individualism: http://www.cooperativeindividuali..._center_democratic_institutions.html. Related discussions are Richard H. Broadhead, “Of Preparation for an Unknown World,” The Good of this Place: Values and Challenges in College Education (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004) and Stanley Hauerwas, The State of the University: Academic Knowledges and the Knowledge of God (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007). Also, see Hauerwas’ review of The Good of this Place, Appendix A, pp. 202-205. Though a bit dated, see the useful William F. May, “Public Happiness and Higher Education,” Caring for the Commonweal: Education for the Religious and Public Life, edited by Parker J. Palmer, Barbara G. Wheeler and James W. Fowler (Macon, GA: Mercer Press, 1990). A well-articulated response from a Christian perspective—with profound application to all religious publics and secular publics is Mark R. Schwehn’s brilliant Exiles from Eden: Religion and the Academic Vocation in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). An important work from a similar perspective is found in The Schooled Heart: Moral Formation in American Higher Education, Douglas V. Henry and Michael D. Beaty, editors (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2007). See Ed Chinn’s vertigo discussion in M. Rex Miller’s, The Millennial Matrix: Reclaiming the Past, Reframing the Future of the Church (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004). Of course, many of the questions raised in Elizabeth’s article are dealt with in the various works of Parker Palmer, e.g., Let Your Life Speak: Listening to the Voice of Vocation (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000); The Courage To Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998); Sam M. Intrator, Living the Questions: Essays Inspired by the Work and Life of Parker J. Palmer (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005). I discuss the issues of life purpose, noble causes, etc. in my forthcoming books with McGraw-Hill, Why I Teach and Why It Matters to My Students (Feb. 2008) and The Purpose-Guided Student (Fall 2008). The latter is an attempt, through much input from many dozens of you through the years, to operationalize a philosophy that puts the big questions at the center of a student success model, and helps foster intrinsic motivation. Studies like HERI’s and those represented in the works above remind us that the questions Helen Astin and her team ask are indeed for an agenda—to help us to help students. Perhaps the more pressing question would be, and one Hutchins would likely argue for today—What if important life questions were not rated of high importance by our students? Do we plan curricula for what students desire or what institutions perceive as important? Likely, the two are always related either in pedagogy or outcomes discussions, and often both. Elizabeth, thanks again for your timely summary of this report. I also find the other scholars’ responses helpful in framing my own understanding of Helen’s work and its reception. JP

Jerry Pattengale, AVP for Scholarship & Grants, Prof. of History at Indiana Wesleyan University, at 1:50 pm EST on December 18, 2007

Religious but not spiritual

How depressing. “Spirituality” here seems to be largely a combination of niceness, sentimentality and wooly-mindedness. “Becoming a more loving person"—puke. If one important goal of education is, as I believe, to get students to be clear about ethical issues this is the last thing we want.

As far as I can see what “spirituality” cashes out to here is vague good will and intellectual sloppiness—whereas the purpose of education should be to promote clarity and tough-mindedness.

I’m religious but not spiritual.

H. E. Baber, at 3:00 pm EST on December 18, 2007

Connotation not denotation

As usual, it’s the language and our intensely personal mental representations and connotations of the words ‘spirituality’ and ‘religious’ that are hanging us up. Get a grip. ‘Becoming a loving person’ (I think this phrase is a bit more universal in connotation) cannot fail to be beneficial to both ourselves in spirit and in acknowledgment of the reality that our brain lives in our body, and to others in fostering world peace and community. The only thing we know for sure is that we’re sharing this planet with a lot of other people and creatures who are living in their own heads. As a college professor, it is my job to help my students prepare for a place in that world by fostering thinking that is adaptive and flexible and supportive of their own personal success when they leave my classroom. That’s immensely liberating. But it’s also restrictive. It is not my job to probe for or encourage blind faith in some man behind the curtain that some/many/most/not all people trust is looking out for them. I interpret this study to suggest that the system is working as it’s intended...

Julia Fisher, at 10:55 am EST on December 19, 2007

College Student Specifc?

I wonder how this study’s results would compare to a study of 18 to 21 year-olds who are not in college. I would be surprised if there would be any significant differences in the results.

I would be reluctant to suggest that the trends noted by this study were formed by a college culture or by higher education.

Michael Ross, Dr. at Anderson University, at 8:10 am EST on December 25, 2007