OERs: Right for Community Colleges (1)

OER stands for Open Educational Resource. An OER is any educational resource that is either (a) in the public domain or (b) licensed in a way that makes it permissible for anyone to use. In other words, it's free.

In January of next year, Dr. Eric Fauss, a history professor and one of my colleagues at Amarillo College, and I will be teaching other faculty at AC about "How to Adapt an OER Textbook to Your Class."

The idea for the session grew out of our practice of using an OER in teaching American History at AC. Specifically, we use a free, online textbook called The American Yawp. (The title was inspired by a line from Walt Whitman's poem "Song of Myself"--"I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world").

Something we want to bring out in our session is that one of the best things about OERs is the price. A 2018 article in The Atlantic magazine featuring AC and its president took note of something that Eric and I witness routinely: at this school "poverty intrudes into the classroom every day."

Back in the early 1980s, a few months after I graduated from high school, I experienced one of those American college-going rites of passage: sticker shock at the bookstore. As young and dumb as I was, I understood all about tuition. You had to pay to go to college. But I had no idea the textbooks for my classes would be so expensive. What made it relatively painless for me was that my parents and my scholarship could cover the cost.

But what about students who aren't as fortunate as I was? For them, the prices of textbooks can be a serious problem. Every member of the AC faculty has heard about any number of students who began a semester without a required course book. Student loans or grant money had not yet arrived. In other cases, no money was on its way, and the student simply couldn't afford the book.

Because it is an online OER, The American Yawp eliminates those kinds of problems. No paying. And no waiting for it to arrive.

Anakin and Luke Skywalker in Paul's Theology

One of my current reads is Michael F. Bird's new book Introducing Paul: The Man, His Mission and His Message. Bird says that his aim is to introduce Paul "without losing people in the mire of scholarly debates and complex technicalities" (p. 6).

I'm about a fourth of the way through and have already decided that, barring some sort of unexpected problem with this book, it will replace F. F. Bruce's introduction as the supplementary text in the "Life of Paul" class that I teach every spring. Bird's explanations and overviews are really good and, for the most part, accomplish his goals quite well. I especially like the way he deals with the Adam-Christ typology in Paul's thought:

The argument of Romans 5:12-21 involves a synkrisis, or comparison between two 'types' or figures, Adam and Christ. In Adam we have a story of a world gone horribly wrong. As the one who was made to rule over creation is now subject to it, he forfeits his wonderful privileges of intimate fellowship with God. He suffers a severe loss of fortunes, loses divine favour, is exiled from paradise, and even his own being becomes disfigured and corrupted. The one created for immortality experiences the painful horror of death, and so do all of his offspring, . . . Death begets death. Sin dehumanized humanity, so that, despite possessing the divine image, they act like little more than complex beasts, fighting and devouring one another.

But in Christ we have a story of a world put right, as Christ is faithful where Adam was faithless, and is obedient where Adam was disobedient. Through his act of righteous obedience, Jesus overturns the transgression of Adam and so is able to deliver and transform the fallen progeny of Adam. Christ creates in himself a new humanity, which, through the renewing power of the Spirit, is able to undo the effects of the fall and become the new Adamic race.

In want of a modern analogy, George Lucas's six-part saga Star Wars can be called a "Tale of Two Skywalkers", and in many ways mirrors the Adam-Christ contrast of Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15, where Adam and Christ stand for the two respective heads of humanity. They are representatives or types of either a corrupted humanity (Adam) or a redeemed humanity (Christ). The first Skywalker (Anakin Skywalker) faced the temptation to give in to the dark side of the force: he gave in to it and death, destruction and chaos followed. In contrast, the second Skywalker (Luke Skywalker) faced the same temptation, but was faithful and obedient to the Jedi vocation, and consequently hope, life and the triumph of good followed. In fact, Luke was able to redeem the first Skywalker, his father Anakin, from evil through his faithfulness (pp. 42-43).

Now there's a fun sermon possibility.