Jehovahs witnesses and higher education

[The Librarian]

Jehovahs witnesses and higher education by Gerritt Loesch

Talk by Gerrit Lösch, member of the Governing Body of Jehovah’s witnesses, given in Italian during a special JW convention on May 22, 2005 in the city of Monza, near Milan, Italy. He expresses the official JW view on higher education.

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I posted this in response to a previous question where I gave a quick summary of the changes in our viewpoint on University Education over the years. Thanks to Ann O’Mally for finding it.

Agape!

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

ON COMPETENT ADVICE:

it is up to EVERY INDIVIDUAL Brother and Sister to review in their own mind how COMPETENT this advice was .... because it has not changed ...

Taking sound, reality based advice will, barring chance and unforeseen circumstances, make your life better, happier, EASIER, and more fulfilling. Most of the REAL PROBLEMS I have had in my life have been caused by being poor, and constantly STRUGGLING to keep gainfully employed.

Gainfully employed in THIS day and age is not the same as in the time of John the Baptist, where you could dress in rags, live in a hole in the ground, and eat locusts (YUM!), and die of exhaustion, deprivation, starvation ( No, I'm FASTING! ...uh... yeah... uh... that's it .. uh "fasting!") .and disease, and a LONG life for the average genetically disposed person was around age 34 and you were full of infection of every sort, and your teeth had rotted out of you head.  You walked everywhere, and died on the side of the road from exposure.

It is up to EVERY INDIVIDUAL Brother and Sister to review in their own mind how COMPETENT this advice was .... because it has not changed.    

The RESULTS of taking INCOMPETENT ADVICE are completely  indistinguishable from being chained to deliberate, premeditated evil.

The Three Elders who came and counseled Job for three days did not just sit in the dirt and stare at him for 72 hours ... they were yapping their heads off ... but after three days ... nothing they said was worth recording.

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[TrueTomHarley]

On 4/1/2016 at 0:20 AM, The Librarian said:

Jehovahs witnesses and higher education by Gerritt Loesch

Put yourself in the latte category if you are spiritual and you want to go to college. But in general, we try to get our specialized education a la carte, since the 4 or 6 year experience packages acknowleged gems in a dumptruck load of turds. 

Put yourself in the latter category if you are spiritual and you want to go to college. But in general, we try to get our specialized education a la carte, since the 4 or 6 year experience packages acknowleged gems in a dumptruck load of turds. 

Put yourself in the latte category if you like to break at Starbucks in service.

[TrueTomHarley]

On 2/23/2017 at 9:59 PM, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

 

 

On 2/23/2017 at 9:59 PM, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

Most of the REAL PROBLEMS I have had in my life have been caused by being poor, and constantly STRUGGLING to keep gainfully employed.

To undergo such a struggle and to think, rightly or wrongly, that it would have been different with greater education, is a significant grievance. To stay loyal under such circumstances shows a laudable love of God.

I got around all this by not learning the truth until after my education days were done. Today Witness parents are encouraged to take an active role in their offspring's future plans so that they will be able to support themselves decently. But that was not so much the case in the past. Guiding one's child in career or job choice was often a catch as catch can affair - many parents did not do it, sometimes through neglect, but usually through inexperience.

[JW Insider]

 

2 hours ago, Jay Witness said:

Talk by Gerrit Lösch, member of the Governing Body of Jehovah’s witnesses, given in Italian during a special JW convention on May 22, 2005 in the city of Monza, near Milan, Italy. He expresses the official JW view on higher education.

Going to college and hoping to survive it is like putting a gun in your mouth and pulling the trigger to commit suicide and inadvertently surviving and blowing away the part of your brain that was making you think you should commit suicide in the first place.

Or is he saying?

Choosing to go to college is like choosing to commit suicide by shooting yourself in the head and then excusing your suicidal actions by pointing out that at least one person you know survived a bullet to the brain and even lived a better life after the suicide attempt.

The first option sounds like college has the uncanny ability to solve even the most serious problems with surgical precision. Of course, he actually means the second option.

 

If you are already in college, we won't tell you to drop out, but we commend you if you do.

[The Librarian]

This is how JW's typically attend a University or College:

[Jack Ryan]

He reiterated this again just today!

Gerrit Lösch gives a special talk the Norval Assembly Hall in Georgetown Canada

There were 2 sisters who got up and had a dramatization about a sister not wanting to go to College. I will paraphrase as best as I can.

High School Counselor: ''Have a seat Karen and I will show you all the College applications I have for you.''

Sister: ''Thank you for all the work you have done.''

Counselor: '' I have an application from Harvard,one from Michigan University,and a couple from the East Coast.''

Sister: '' I have done alot of thinking and decided not to go to any College."

Counselor: ''Karen,you have a 4.0 grade average and scored very high on the A.C.T. and you would have no problem getting into any of these schools."

Sister: '' As you know,I'm a Jehovah's Witness and we believe that we are near the ''end times.'' I decided that I will go into the preaching work part time and maybe go to a 2 year school."

Counselor: ''You will probably get into these schools at almost no cost because of your 4.0 average and high A.C.T. scores and have a good career the rest of your life.These are great schools and will prepare you to land a good job.''

Sister: ''This world is passing by and may not be here any longer. I decided to enter the ministry work and Jehovah God will provide for me in the future."

 

He brought up the fact that "70% of freshman go to post-secondary for MORE MONEY" - of course this is what ppl focus on when going to post-secondary. Does he seriously expect people to make over $20/hour without a post-secondary education, with the exception of trades? (I know you can get a good salary without post-secondary but this is increasingly hard to do in the 2010s) I guess we all should be making minimum wage for the rest of our lives and focus on pioneering!

Including the musical interlude, Watchtower summary, Canada stats, and Losch's talk, the program was 2h 40m..

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[Jack Ryan]

The statistics he used in that talk were used in a 1988 awake where they quoted from a 1988 New York Times article.

Awake: https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/101988372

Every person that has heard Losch spout his "statistics" needs to understand where and when these statistics were compiled. The survey he quotes is from 30 years ago. The same survey also showed that there was also a rise in freshmen who supported laws against homosexuality (53%), and a decline of support for legalization of marijuana ... clearly showing what different time period it is from. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/1988/01/14/us/to-freshmen-a-big-goal-is-wealth.html

Besides the fact that there is absolutely nothing wrong with hoping to make more money after graduating college, these statistics are grossly out of date. The survey was directed by Dr. Alexander W. Astin for the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles.

The key word here is "annual". They conduct the exact same survey every year. It would be very easy for them to use more current data. The funny thing is that the question about money being a motivating factor is up to 72.6%, but it is not the most motivating factor. Here is the most current freshman survey for anyone interested. It is from 2016: https://www.heri.ucla.edu/monographs/TheAmericanFreshman2016.pdf

I haven't found the table for the 1988 data, but here is the table from 2016, so you can see how the question was asked and results tabulated. The first screen shot is of the actual question that is asked of freshmen. The second screenshot is of the results for 2016.

[JW Insider]

14 hours ago, Jack Ryan said:

"70% of freshman go to post-secondary for MORE MONEY"

Yikes. Good catch, Jack. The persons who wrote and checked the Awake! article in 1988 were probably not dishonest, but they more likely just had no understanding about statistics and how this type of question is used in social surveys.

The question has very little to do with the actual percent of students who hope that college gives them an opportunity for making more money -- which is probably always closer to 100%. Most pre-college students are making from $0 a year during High School or less than $1000/year in part time jobs. 100% of them SHOULD hope to make more money, even if they don't go to college for this purpose. Even more so if they are purposely or inadvertently preparing to follow the Bible's admonition:

• 1 Timothy 5:8  Certainly if anyone does not provide for those who are his own, and especially for those who are members of his household, he has disowned the faith and is worse than a person without faith.

The way the question is presented, however, it is possible for all students to say that 100% of them go to college for more money AND that 100% of them go to college for a better job AND that 100% go to learn things of interest AND that 100% go to please their family, etc. The idea is to try to get a feel for the priorities that are in a students head as they are just starting college. A student could conceivably claim that every one of those reasons was "Very Important."

All the survey above actually shows is what you said about how it only compares relative importance of motivational factors. It certainly does not say that only 70-some percent went to college to make more money. And the Awake! article is misleading when it says "spiritual goals declining." They probably were, but this survey says nothing about comparing these particular goals with their spiritual goals. Also, as noted above, providing for one's own, especially one's household is a spiritual goal according to 1 Timothy 5:8, or might even be considered by that verse to be MORE IMPORTANT than faith.

All that question is really allowing us to see is that students either think that several other factors are more important than money, or that they are not willing to admit that money is as important as it probably is, especially when asked to weigh it against less crass and better-sounding motivations.

When I hired people to work on my teams in IT departments (1985 to 2015), I didn't care too much whether a person went to college or not, as long as they could show the correct aptitude for technical testing, logic, programming, designing, data analysis, etc. But over the years, I began to appreciate that, in choosing among those of similar technical skills, those who went to college were almost always preferable. Even if it were for a degree in English, drama, psychology, education, sociology, etc., they were more likely to have better communication skills and more of what was more important to me: an "appreciation of ideas" (the second option of the survey). I would not have cared WHY they went to college, even if it was please their parents, or study for a career they no longer wanted, or even if they had already failed in a previous career.

Of course, college holds out the hope and promise of better or at least a wider array of employment opportunities. But this is not always the way things work out. In the United States, both the educational and financial institutions are always looking for ways to profit off students by taking a percentage of any increased income they might get from college. Student loans are managed by these institutions to maximize the profit from each student. Colleges also maximize the amount of tuition that they can get away with. 

[JW Insider]

20 hours ago, Nana Fofana said:

I believe you are sincere and that this was your experience and now your honest perspective that you are giving.

Thanks. Of course, you should be careful to follow such a statement with "But . . . " at least for the sake of certain opposers.

Anyway, agree completely with everything you said above. I don't believe that, in the United States, most college degrees are worth the outrageous expense. They definitely were worth it through most of the 60's, 70's, 80's, and 90's if you were also an "educated consumer." There was a turning point in the 90's for some and in the 00's for most others, even before the financial crash became visible in '08. Starting in '08 it would be much easier to make a Peter Schiff style video. (That style of video can be made any time, of course, even when you want to fake a point, but you'd have to do a lot more editing to make it look like there was a consensus. Jay Leno could have proven that no college student knew that 2+2=4 merely by only including those who answered incorrectly, or with too long a pause, or were drunk, acting silly, nervous, etc.)

Now there are still more jobs available to college graduates than non-graduates of course, and this is even more critical in an economic downturn. But that doesn't mean the degree was worth the expense. And it's stupid that you would need a degree to make coffee at Starbucks.

The need to pay down a student loan does indeed make workers more controllable. That's a critical requirement of capitalists who wish to maximize profit even squeezing from those who believe they are well on the way to joining the "American Dream" someday. Student loans and car loans have been a big part of an abusive process to those who need them, but these problems are nowhere as big as the factors that fed 2008. Combined with the fact that the [banking&finance] criminals who abused taxpayers in 2008 are still fighting [bribing politicians] to be able to abuse with even less regulation now might though combine with student loans as a catalyst with these other problems to see a second wave [plunge] of recession/depression.

[Jack Ryan]

Help! College is filling my mind with 'HARMFUL PROPAGANDA'.

[Jack Ryan]

Elders will be deleted if a family member is pursuing a university education. 2nd paragraph bullet point 3.