I appreciated Kahn's (2014) argumentation for formal and informal
activities being qualifiers of student engagement. Often times when I
think student engagement, I think of engagement as a class and peers
engaging with others and/or the teacher. I have found myself preferring
asynchronous online courses as they have increased my engagement with
content, and consequently, learning. On this note, teacher role still has a
large part to play in engagement, despite certain courses following such
an independent and standardized format, such as the case with Liberty
where each course, despite the teacher, issues out the pre-made
coursework in the same fashion. When I work hard with an assignment,
despite me liking or disliking, being interested in or disinterested in the
content, I realized recently that teacher engagement is extremely
important. Recently, I took a course that was required for Liberty but
completely disagreed with the required reading and assignments. To me,
they felt unnecessary, un-educational, and a complete waste of time,
energy, and critical degree curriculum requirement. What was worse was
that the assigned instructor did not even read any of our works. This was
evident in many ways. The teacher did not provide any feedback on any
assignment, did not post any novel announcements in response to the
class' work for the following week, and issued pre-written "template"
announcements about every Monday at midnight. It felt as if the teacher
wasn't even present in the course but logged in once a week to post the
next announcement. I felt like all of the hard work I put in was for nothing
and that I was wasting my time with such a high standard for work quality
and ethic.
I did have a critique for your argument, however. I do not believe
Jesus ever told us to love ourselves. Love is selfless and the "self" is the
antithesis of love. He told us to love one another as He loved us (ESV,
2001, John 13:34). He also told us to deny thyself and take up His cross,
and whoever would save their own life would lose it, and who loses it for
Him will save it. Jesus told us that the first great commandment was to
love God, then the second to love one's neighbor (others)as if
oneself(not like one loves oneself; ESV, 2001,Luke 9:23; Mark 8:34-35;
Matthew 23:34). We cannot love others if we love ourselves for love
always puts others first and is "self"-less, for many reasons love puts
others first without regard to one's self. The concept of self-love is a lie,
for loving oneself isn't loving others, because rooted in the self breeds
greed, a concept of us "deserving" certain things, which then broods
resentment, superiority, pride, and prevents us from being selfless
(Vaughan, 2018). I highly encourage reading Vaughan's (2018) book for
more information!
References
Vaughan, J. K. (2018).The right fight: How to live A loving life. Brown
Christian Press.
