That’s what Thomas de Zengotita refers to the ever growing set of “options” to which Americans are addicted. Doug Groothuis points us to a piece in The Chronicles of Higher Education that makes a similar point. Mark Edmundson surveys the college landscape featuring the turbo-charged student. Today’s college students have had access to the web since they were eight years old. It presents them with a bewildering variety of “options.” They want to cash in as many “options” as possible.
All this seems very familiar. A couple of years ago I began a new monologue in my classes that says something to the effect, “I know that you live in a world of endless options where you get to determine what is significant and what you should learn and what you can ignore. In this class I determine what it is you need to know and what you must learn.” It is a real shock for some to learn that they are not the arbiters of what is important. They are stunned when I tell them to wait and see if I answer the most important question any student has ever asked in the history of education.
Finitum non capax infiniti.
R. Scott Clark
R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.
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