Tags
Related Posts
Share This
Is IDIS 102 a worthwhile class to take or is it a waste of time?
Every spring semester first year Trinity Western University students fulfill the currently infamous rite-of-passage called Intro Christian Worldview Thinking, or in other words, IDIS 102. This class is the complaint of many first year students who would rather do anything other than listening to the word “story” be repeated 50 times an hour and learn things they already know. Others take this class as a genuine opportunity to learn about how a Christian worldview affects academic discipline and its tension with the Western story. Students, I ask…
Is IDIS 102 a worthwhile class to take or is it a waste of time?
Worthwhile
Jessie Dias
The biggest problem with IDIS 102 is the negative attitude students have. Although the course could undergo some improvements, such as the type of material students are required to read or the amount of time allotted to the class, it is really students who are not ready to interact with the content at the beginning of their university career.
One of the first things students realize as they join the Trinity Western University community is that they must hate IDIS if they want to fit in. Most students make up their minds before even judging it for themselves. I still remember coming back from IDIS lectures and receiving a sympathetic “Oh, I’m sorry” from peers, without even prompting it. As teenagers fresh out of highschool, most are not prepared for the relevance of the topics discussed in the classroom; young students don’t always see themselves as being at an ideological crossroads, except in their independence from their parents. So because those things actually go way above their heads, as far as maturity goes, they decide that it is all “too much like Sunday school.” I am guilty of jumping on that boat in my first year too.
But, to give these students some credit, it is true that things could improve on the other side too. First-years are not used to the professor’s teaching style. Questions may be allowed, but are not dealt with in the usual postmodern “everyone-has-something-important-to-say” manner that younger students are used to. That is to say that in his teaching, the professor is a “preacher,” not a “teacher.” However, there is a good amount of quality content to be learned in the realm of worldview thinking and contemporary apologetics. Names such as Abraham Kuyper or even Francis Schaeffer may not always be highly praised among theologians and apologists, but their significance cannot be ignored. IDIS is a good introduction to their thought.
Perhaps IDIS would be more meaningful to students once they have added other courses to their transcripts, and while they are at it throw in a bit of Life 101 and Meaningful Christian Experience 101. Certain things are only worthwhile when built upon experience and attitude.
Waste of Time
Jason Brandl
IDIS 102 may be a well-intentioned class, but its only success is uniting grumbling freshman in their frustration stemming from the time they just wasted.
IDIS, short for interdisciplinary studies, aims at helping students develop a well-rounded worldview, but my time sitting in class was spent listening to a certain professor’s worldview more than being assisted in creating my own. That was at least the case for 102. I’m a closet lover of IDIS’ sister course PSYC 490.
Now, I’ll readily admit that I’m a few years out from this course, so perhaps, and hopefully, there have been some changes. But I have kept the Power Point notes stored on my computer, as I do for all classes, and my first problem is that it works off an assumption. “You want to offer up your whole bodily lives as living sacrifices to God.” That line was taken directly from the professor’s slides offered online in Spring 2007.
How can a course that is geared to wards helping me identify my worldview operate on an assumption of what my worldview is? Obviously we are a part of a Christian community, but a well-formed worldview should be organically formed from each person.
The larger problem, however, is that the remainder of the class didn’t offer insight into how to offer up my life as a living sacrifice. It was more the retelling, and retelling, and retelling of one person’s worldview rather than a dialogue allowing students to understand their own worldview.
In years prior, IDIS apparently, like University 101, had upperclassmen lead small group discussions on alternating weeks. Something like that is what students need — an opportunity to dialogue about their own worldview rather than sit with 180 other students and hear something they are not interested in to begin with.
And don’t even get me started on the computer bans and rumoured spies that sit in class to monitor computer use.
I have yet to meet someone who enjoyed the IDIS 102 course, or more importantly learned something from it. And when there is such a strong campus opinion like that, something has to be wrong.
The ideas presented in IDIS 102 are very similar to parts of any of Cal Townsend’s courses. My best friend, as a nursing student, had never heard these ideas. She LOVED IDIS 102 and felt like it really expanded her understanding of the world.
Now you know of 1 student.
I enjoyed IDIS 102 because I had never heard this taught in Sunday school or in my church and, seeing as I went to public school, never had the chance to interact with any of this. I enjoyed it because I came into it with an attitude willing to listen and to learn. I enjoyed it because it recognized and taught me to recognize that there were problems with our society, that there was the potential for this world to be more than what it is now and for us to be more than who we are now. My problem with it was that, while it pointed out all the issues, it did little in the way of helping us figure out what to do about it. I agree that small discussion groups could be an integral part of the learning experience.