the development of doctrine seen through 80s hair metal

No, seriously.

source;  Facebook--with slight edits by yours truly.

Three years ago, in this blog's infancy, I threatened an extensive post on "hair metal" bands of the 1980s.  Folks, that day has arrived.

Advice:  Turn up the volume--then continue reading.

Prologomena:  "Metal" is both an adjective and noun, and no, I don't mean the chemical form.  Metal means heavy metal music: loud, abrasively rhythmic, searing guitar riffs and solos, usually piercingly high (male) vocals, and often dark, gothic lyrics.  Metal sings both of human depravity and resistance.  Metal songs can celebrate the crass debasement of sexuality...or it can illuminate the downtrodden nobody else knows about. It does so retaining some sort of melody, too.  Metal is not punk, at least not in its origins.  Crafted and spawned in American, British, and Canadian working classes, metal has defended "the rock and roll lifestyle" long after other genres sold out for better sales, better haircuts, and more exposure.  Hence the adjective:  "metal."  Something metal means it's tougher, harder, unfiltered...and transcendent. 

Metal  resurrects because in its frequent celebrations of death it also looks to life beyond death. If it's metal, it might be dangerous, occasionally unholy, and a stark threat to your entire personal being...and afterward you'll want another shot.  Metal is not a drug;  in fact, most illicit drugs offer only ersatz metal experiences.  Metal overwhelms, pulverizes, and remakes your previous self.  Metal is simultaneously cathartic and converting.  Overkill's 1989 classic "Elimination" includes the defiant line "Fatal?  You're sh*****g me!  A second opinion's what I need!"  Metal resists, even when it might seem all resistance is futile.  Metal certainly disdains--and, let's face it, often seeks to destroy--Victorian tact and prim morals.  Nevertheless, metal certainly understands Christian martrydom and the question of (apparently) unredeemed suffering.


Prologomena, part II:  Thus, despite stereotypes rooted mostly in the shallowness of white, evangelical Protestantism, metal and Christianity are not mutually exclusive.  Roman Catholics especially enjoy theological, spiritual, and even historical connections to metal.  Born-again Christians are stuck eschewing Led Zeppelin's classic Stairway to Heaven, concerned that nobody goes to the Father except through Christ (John 14:6).  They are, of course, correct on one level, but, really, who can listen to that song and not see Tolkien's Lady Galadriel pondering Frodo's free offer of the One Ring?  (H/T to Hillsdale's Dr. Bradley Birzer for that hermeneutic.)  The song itself balances acoustic grace with, well, leaden guitar chords, just like a Gothic cathedral's own chiaroscurro.  Led Zep recalls Tolkien--whose Catholic credentials need no defense here--in several other songs:  "Misty Mountain Hop," "Ramble On," etc.  Sometimes metal recognizes with frank clarity how the Christian faith's struggles amid the world's turmoils, needing God's grace and intervention to make it through.   Skid Row's 1991 Quicksand Jesus (written by guitarist David Sabo, whose lyrics exude Catholic sensibility) offers an eloquent example.

liberal, as in liberating

as opposed to servile, which means "an exceeding willingness to serve" something else.

WHAT WILL WE DO WITH THE LIBERAL ARTS?

As noted previously on this blog, that version of college education has taken some hits recently. Why study the classics and old-fashioned disciplines (Religion, History, English, Biology, Sociology) when what the kids (and their parents) really want is job-training? Out with the liberal arts, in with "Competency Based Education" (CBE)!

And the hits keep comin'...Steven Ward sees this high-level vocational training as furthering an already troubling bifurcation in American education. Liberal education has become elite education.

However, in the rush to emphasize marketable skills over a deeper liberal knowledge content, proponents of CBE in all forms are forcing students (particularly the underserved in lower-tier institutions, whom they claim to be helping) into a “knowledge-less” version of liberal learning in order to “hurry things along” and not get in the way of their job training.

Despite the rhetoric of “serving the underserved” and “closing the skills gap,” they are responsible for generating new hierarchies between those who receive a cheap, fast food-style or “good enough” education from those who receive a quality one. They are forging new barriers and strata in an already highly stratified higher education system, not removing them as they often claim.

More:

CBE stands in marked contrast to a past emphasis on quality, across-the-board liberal learning to be acquired regardless of the type of student or institution that was at the heart of general liberal education. This was partly what a Dewey-style social democratic vision of liberal arts education was supposed to be about -- general knowledge available to and shared by all -- a kindergarten for adults.

CBE essentially gives up on this dream of democratizing knowledge and promotes a division between those who need a thorough, content-centered liberal education and those who only need a light, fast and vocation-friendly version. It suggests that the big questions, or what the British sociologist Basil Bernstein referred to as powerful or sacred knowledge, where the unimaginable becomes imagined, is not really relevant for most middle- and working-class students who attend community colleges and regional state universities where most of the CBE experiments are being played out.

These students will not need to concern themselves with the bigger questions of theoria -- those can be left up to those with more elite training who will occupy the corridors of power, making laws and running things, but can instead stick to the mundane knowledge and the basics of everyday praxis happening in their assigned cubicles.

In this new model, students in more elite institutions will go on receiving broad liberal training and having access to powerful knowledge as a core part of their university experience, while those at lower-tier public institutions will be loaded up with watered-down, box-checking skills and vague competencies like “critical thinking” or “intercultural understanding” to be provided by standardized, online platforms.

Read it all here.