Does anybody know what Boyd K. Packer's wife's mother's middle name is? How about the color of the bicycle that Elder Uchtdorf rode as an 8 year old? Honestly, does anybody care? Well, I had to care last semester, because my religion final was full of questions like that. And you call this religion? Pardon my ignorance, but I thought religion, pure and undefiled, was “to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep [oneself] unspotted from the world.” (James 1:27)
When I registered for “Teachings of the Living Prophets,” I envisioned studying the speeches of President Hinckley and the writings of Neal A. Maxwell. Great stuff, right? Well, we didn’t get to that stuff, because we were too busy discussing the number of General Authorities who had a pet when they were children.
In doing so, we didn’t just waste a bunch of time. We wasted the very opportunity that BYU so uniquely provides. What good is combining secular and religious learning if the religious part of it is just trivia? In my opinion, the purpose for religion classes at BYU should be to inspire, uplift, edify and motivate us to be better people. Anything short of that shouldn’t be labeled “Religion”.
5 comments:
I 100% agree with you. It's like they are trying to trick us so that we get a bad grade.
You wrote your argument very well, and I could get a really critical vibe from it. I totally agree that as a university community we need to reevaluate the things that we consider to be worthy of taking up class time.
That’s funny! When I read the first paragraph of your blog I knew exactly what class you were talking about. I am almost positive I was in the same class with the same professor as you. Its true we should not be tested on dumb facts like the ones we were in this RELIGION course.
AMEN, girl! Yes, I thought of Bro. Merrill, who we took last semester. You will disagree with me on this one, but how does his 40minute daughter's wedding video or his car accident story contribute to the Book of Mormon? Although our topics are a little different, but some professors include lots of non-sense in their classes and quiz you on it (your example); or the professors talk about non-sense, but still quiz you on the material that they SHOULD have covered in class (my example). But I see where you're heading on this, so great job!
There is class where all you learn is trivia about the Church and General Authorities? Why didn’t I hear about this earlier? I have always wanted to be tested on those types of questions in a religion class. Oh, wait, no I haven’t. Thank you so much for warning me about this class before I made the mistake of taking it.
Post a Comment