A note to the random blog surfer

For the next month or so, this blog will pay special attention to a certain theme of the integration of faith and learning with a special focus on technology. This is due impart to the fact that this theme has been assigned to me by a professor who is forcing me to expand my comfort zone to include the bloggishere as a means of expression. While this theme has been handed to me from on high, it would be wrong to therefore assume that I view it as limiting or narrow in its scope of the relative topics to be discussed. Quite the contrary, learning is something done by all humans in any endeavor. Likewise, faith while recognized or unrecognized is held by all humans as a framework of how they organize pieces of information while they engage in the learning process; thus having an enormous impact on their conclusions from the learning process itself. Faith as a universally held component of a person’s learning process is not a notion that is widely held or greatly pondered. The word faith, by most, would be restricted to having a purely religious connotation; and therefore be viewed as inappropriately used outside of that context. If that were true, then faith may in fact have little to do with the learning of most subjects. However, this term can and should have a broader connotation in order to grasp the intricacies of what happens when a person mentally digests learned material.

While including a note on the religious connotation of the term faith, Webster’s recognizes the broader definition of faith as ‘a belief in the value, truth, or trustworthiness of someone or something.’ These words: belief, value, truth, trustworthiness, someone, something takes the meaning of the term faith into a universally applied realm; one that should be a bit more comfortable for the person who would seek to box the understanding and meaning of the w

ord faith into theological or spiritual realm. For is it not appropriate to use the word faith in saying, “I have faith that a piece of iron thrown into a pond will sink.” Recognizing and reproofing components of what we believe to be true is a vidal part in real learning and the advancement of technology. For if we did not recognize and challenge the assumption that a piece of iron thrown into a pond will sink, we would never learn that the iron actually displaces a greater mass and weight than the water it replaces. Evaluating that faith assumption has led us to learn how to shape that iron in a manner that will actually float.

Recognizing that faith assumptions are foundational to ones understanding is a key step in learning about the world around us. To hold an educational philosophy that faith assumptions are inconsequential or can be compartmentalized, from the learning process, is surely a path to dry indoctrination of stagnant dogma. A person instructed by that educational philosophy will be the person who will continuously watch iron sink and never push the boundaries of what a faith based learning process can provide.