Thea Marlatte: Being a Christian and teaching at both Trinity Western University and Simon Fraser University, Dr. Monika Hilder has a unique perspective on the phenomenon of students’ apathy toward learning. I found her insight on the topic so stirring that I asked Professor Hilder if she’d be willing to share her thoughts on the subject with the wider student body. The following is her response to my concerns about TWU students’ apparent lack of interest in learning:

Dr. Monika Hilder: Firstly, it’s generational. The consumer attitude contributes to the apparent lack of interest – students regard time in direct correlation to their GPA…therefore time is being “wasted” when they are asked to think. Most often if they got rid of their GPA fear, their GPA would go up. They want the “quick – give me ten points.” At SFU, too, we have to wrestle with anti-philosophical, anti-humanist thinking that’s somehow reductionist. This is everywhere, though, [it’s] symptomatic of our time; the consumer, materialist mentality is antithetical to learning.

TM: How do you respond as a professor?

MH: We keep doing what we do. Some students catch on, become the enthusiastic learner – who, by the way, have very high GPAs.

TM: What’s different about the task of getting students interested in learning in an explicitly Christian setting?

MH: Well, we all strive to teach with Christ-like attitudes. St. Ambrose gets quoted a lot: “All truth is God’s truth.” We have also inherited an anti-intellectual attitude, not across the board in Christendom, but from parts of it. There can be a sense in which some freshmen arrive thinking: “We understand what is true. We belong to Christ. The world is fallen, blind, and dead.” This happens all too easily and what we are dealing with is plain hubris. So, what can and does distinguish us as Christian scholars, wherever we find ourselves? What we are trying to do is make connections. We work with the idea of common grace which counteracts hubris.

There is the feeling sometimes when teaching that the students have heard it all, that they are asleep. Not only as a student body, but also as a Church, all this can get too familiar. We need to become more conscious of just how radical Jesus Christ is. We’ve lost the sense of wonder — I mean, take this out into the world, this is stunning!

TM: What is our task as Christian students, then?

MH: I would really wish for a sense of wonder, of expectation for the difference the gospel does make, for how open people are in the most surprising places. We must never assume that simply because we belong to Christ, people have nothing to say to us. That kind of hubris is sickening.

Anti-intellectualism is everywhere. Our mandate as Christians is to engage. I think we wrestle with engaging with what is outside or radically opposed to the Christian faith. So we write off people who say, “Those stupid Christians!” but we shouldn’t live up to their libel. The point is to build bridges.

There are different flavours of disengagement at SFU and at Trinity, but what we are really dealing with is people who watch a lot of TV, who think reading is hard work and hard work isn’t worth it. Reading is eminently worth it, because ideas represent souls: the souls that come up with them, and the souls that pass them on. That’s the arena. How, then, can we not be engaged? How can we not work hard? Like Paul writes in I Corinthians: ‘I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.’ The fact that ideas represent souls, how important then is our calling to learn to speak people’s languages? It’s important in Paul’s sense…

TM: If there were one fallacy at the root of Trinity’s particular flavour of disengagement that you could speak to, what would it be?

MH: Something to do with the attitude that only Christians can see what is worth seeing and true, and forgetting that God uses donkeys, rocks and his beloved humanity. We are called to be in the world but not of it, but we make a mistake if we think that unbelievers have nothing to say to us.

TM: What would you wish for us, then, if you could ?

MH: I would wish that every student would be excited about learning for its own sake, respectfully be in conversation with all people, and do all those things out of a heart of love. We must vigilantly guard against anti-intellectualism. It’s a disservice to the Lord and to humanity; it stops the game. We need to play really well in the confidence that He has given us gifts to use. This is all about souls. It’s about the human journey.