From what I'm told by my broke-ass TBM newlywed nephew who needs to move back in with mom and dad in California because he can't afford to support his new wife on his janitor's wage, BYU's accreditation doesn't mean a whole helluvalot to secular colleges. He told me that about 90% of his core class credits will not transfer, even to Cali's community college system (otherwise known as 13th grade).
BROTHEREN AND SISTEREN, THE GLORY OF GOD IS INTELLIGENCE!
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/14/2012 08:07PM by jaredsotherbrother.
Many majors at BYU do teach critical thinking skills. BYU departments regularly send people to top ranked graduate programs which wouldn't be the case if the school didn't prepare students well in secular subjects including the sciences.
I think the key point is that members are taught not to apply those critical thinking skills to the Mormon faith. You have secular ways of thinking which Mormons often use quite successfully in their professional careers and then there is another 'spiritual' way of approaching matters of faith which involves feelings rather than reason. Its a matter of compartmentalization.
I'm fairly certain that they teach Philosophy and good writing skills. I'm no fan of BYU. Its academics are incestuous. But it is clearly a bit more complex than you are giving it credit for.
Depends on the class. Critical thinking is not needed for the required religious classes. Those are about strengthening a testimony and spiritual witness.
I second what blackholesun said. That was my experience at BYU, I think if anything BYU just highlights the serious cognitive dissonance that TBMs can live with. You can spend 5 days a week in classes learning secular subjects and applying critical thinking skills to the subjects quite adeptly, but you step into church on Sunday and quickly turn that part of your brain off. I remember being taught regularly in SS that spiritual knowledge is not attained in the same way that secular knowledge is, it's not about facts and reason but about feelings. But I was never taught that in the academica classes I took at BYU (except of course the religion classes which were basically just like institute classes). In my experience people don't look down on BYU as an institution (I work in higher education, it's on my resume and when people do comment on BYU, which isn't often, they say positive things and I live outside the Morridor).
I went from BYU to a PhD program at an Ivy League university. I felt as well prepared as my peers, perhaps even more so. But my religious life was separate from all that. To a large extent I wasn't even aware at the time of many of the problems with Mormonism. Rough Stone Rolling, An Insiders View, By His Own Hand, and No Man Knows My History were like a revelation to me. Then it became a question of personal integrity. I couldn't stay LDS.
(because I was a language major), I redid my freshman English at the U. YBU had very little if any study of critical thinking. I remember more from high school. The U. spent a lot of time teaching critical thinking skills, and required us to analyze texts, and advertising.
The stated mission of BYU is “to assist individuals in their quest for perfection and eternal life”. All instruction, programs, and services are subordinate to that mission.
BYU’s application to establish a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa honor society for the liberal arts and sciences has been rejected three times because BYU was not deemed “academically mature enough”. PBK was of the stated view that BYU's "narrow mission statement precludes inquiry. . . . If students are unable to question, there is no liberal arts education." (see “The Lord’s University: Freedom and Authority at BYU” by Bryan Waterman and Brian Kagel)
BYU has a good reputation in a number of areas. BYU faculty are restricted in teaching contoversial areas that might be contrary to the church. But, these things are brought up but obviously not advocated or gone into in detail. I think in some areas like business (marketing, accounting, management), engineering, law, education, etc., they are in great shape. Possibly, in the Social Sciences and even hard sciences, they could be too narrow in their focus.
But, BYU attracts strong students and those students will have opportunities at good graduate schools. It might be more due to their intelligence and ability to get a high GRE, LSAT, MCAT, or GMAT score, then a BYU education. Certainly there are students from every university that get admitted to strong graduate school programs. I also think BYU programs (especially graduate) vary a great deal across colleges and departments. BYU has a difficult time attracting high level faculty in certain areas but not in other areas.
BYU teaches critical thinking skills, and in a recent check-up survey they e-mailed me there were a lot of questions about how well I felt I had learned those skills from diverse classes. I put very low scores for my religion classes.
BYU teaches the skills, but never applies them to the mormon church. You're not allowed to apply them to the mormon church, it just doesn't happen. BYU also doesn't provide you with any resources or arguments to help or prompt you to apply them to the mormon church.
In general, I feel that the critical thinking skills at BYU are so under-emphasized, that nobody who graduates from there really puts much effort into using them, except as far as they can do so to build their testimony (ie. analyze the scriptures and gospel principles to debunk false doctrines, or the like)
Lots of schools are really stinky about transferring credits. It's a real racket that needlessly increases education costs.
Another racket within university systems is changing requirements for graduation midstream so that effectively schools don't even transfer credits within the same school.
Credit transfers get particularly iffy across state lines and across the private/public school divide. BYU to the California state system obviously involves both simultaneously.
My experience with BYU science education (I am a physicist) is that I was well prepared for graduate school at a high ranking midwestern public university. There was a slight culture shock at being in a more competitive environment but that was about it.
Interestingly although critical thinking about religion snuck up on me a bit during graduate school it wasn't until after I graduated that the lessons started coming home. This was probably more a function of increasing maturity than education.
That being said, of course BYU religious education is the antithesis of critical thinking.