Spirituality 101

After reading the May/June 2006 Speak Out (“Should colleges worry about students’ spirituality?”), I found that I also needed to speak out on this issue.

Yes, spirituality is personal, as Dan Georgianna states. However, residential students, athletes and students working on campus experience a good deal of their personal lives on campus. Those affective skills—empathy, cooperation, leadership, interpersonal understanding and self-understanding—as listed by Alexander Astin, definitely come into play during students’ lives on campus.

We in student affairs work with students to help them develop affective skills and to use them effectively. Our jobs include helping students cope with the challenges they face as they live and work on campus. Students learn assertive communication, stress management and values clarification, for example.

No, we do not tell students what to do, but we help them make appropriate choices and take responsibility for their actions. Part of college student development involves exploration, both academically and personally. Students learn, inside and outside the classroom, which prepares them for life, not just careers. To ignore spirituality severely limits this learning.
Julie Rapcyznski
Potsdam, N.Y.

In principle, I agree with Georgianna.  A course does not need to be labeled “Spirituality 101” to deliver the much-needed opened door to critical thinking necessary to ponder humankind’s greatest question, “Why do we exist?”

As a college and university professor for more than 20 years, I attest to the development of the total student within a diversity of academic arenas, including behavioral sciences, humanities, history, religion, philosophy and art. As professor of human communication, my classroom career in part was predicated on the desire to help students define and connect with their total selves through self-awareness and critical thinking, using communication as a mental and physical tool.

The “right” is far from right when it blasts modern-day academia as “hyper-liberal” and lacking curriculum rich in concerns of personal character and moral substance. I have found most instructors in my broad and varied career to be extremely concerned with developing young minds of moral character and civic consciousness. The question is how these lessons should be framed in a public, free and pluralistic society.
Pamela S. Perkins
San Diego, Calif.

That people may not have been raised with the same religious beliefs does not mean that students cannot learn from each other’s religious backgrounds. Give students more credit and allow them to actively participate with other religious groups.

Furthermore, a spiritual classroom setting may in fact lead someone to a more religious or spiritual connection with the God of their choice. It is a personal choice that should be made by the student. No one is asking for mandatory spiritual classes. But they should be offered as electives.
Freddy Lopez
Los Angeles, Calif.

It has been said that offering spirituality courses in colleges or even some high schools would greatly benefit students. The debate is not over whether spirituality is a useful thing, because it obviously is. The debate is over whether it belongs in school systems. I believe that if students want to improve themselves on a spiritual level, it is their responsibility, and they should not rely on the school or college to offer it to them. If someone wants to get into self-discovery and self-knowledge, this is a very personal thing and individuals should do it themselves.
Brittney Shafer
Student

Adjuncts’ work is invaluable

Regarding the article “GET-UP blows the whistle on college rank” (May/June 2006 News & Trends), I found the last paragraph somewhat distressing. It seems Ciara Kehoe is suggesting that the quality and content of material imparted in a course taught by a temporary instructor is less than what would by taught by a tenured instructor. As an adjunct instructor, all courses I teach are based on courses compiled and structured by tenured instructors. If any changes are made, I first receive the input and OK from these tenured instructors.

I take my job very seriously and I make sure that the courses I present are equivalent or, in my opinion, better than what a tenured instructor would present. Although many temporary instructors do not possess the highest levels of education that most institutions prefer (I have a master’s degree), the contributions we make to student education are invaluable. Our presence allows tenured instructors to offer the specialized courses students need to complete their major courses of study. Otherwise, students would receive only basic college instruction.
David Boehm
Bergen, N.Y.