WTF....... Billy are you saying that your going out in service ?
Did you have higher ed when you were in? If so how were you treated as a result?
by highdose 38 Replies latest jw friends
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skeeter1
I can spell, but just type too fast.
I left before I attended college. But, I talked about going to college in the KH. I was told by a sister, "You don't believe in the Truth. You are being materialistic if you want to go to college. What's the use of a college education, the generation of 1914 is nearing its end...before you can even finish school."
That was 1984. I never said much about going to college after that. I just quit going to the KH and went to college.
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Billy the Ex-Bethelite
tto: "WTF....... Billy are you saying that your going out in service ?"
Haha, no, not anymore, but I'm turning in a phantom hour monthly until I move to uni.
- special full time service = bethel (includes special pioneers, COs, DOs, but "better" than pioneers)
- full time service = pioneering + special full time service (this is the number that counts for "seniority" in the bOrg)
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NewChapter
I just went back to college, but I'm inactive, (faded). However, I'm studying for a degree in the arts with emphasis on english and history--certainly not focused on a particular profession. I went back to enrich myself. Now that I'm here, I realize that if you take your education to heart, it would be VERY difficult to stay in the org. Knowledge like this, not watery highschool knowledge, really does bust the narrative wide open.
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DagothUr
I already had a university degree when I joined the dubs. There was just 1 other JW in that congregation who has graduated a university. The biggest problem I had was at the Ministry School. My public-speech style was too smart for the average JW, it seems, so I was counciled to lower the pole a little. As a result, all my speeches became boring and mainstream. I hated that. I felt like a horse forced to pull an empty wheelbarrow: so much wasted power. In the JW world, they want you to be stupid.
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nolongerwaiting
My two brothers got a little flack but I never did. I suppose it calmed down for me. I think we were the first in a long time that went to collage and that was at our parents pushing. We never missed meetings and went in FS so I guess that helped. I do feel sorry for all the young ones now with the very anti collage blah blah stuff going on. Though the collage education didn't make me leave the JW's like they seem to be so scared about.
NLW's wife
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thetrueone
Gullible, stupid, naive people with weak analytical thinking skills and pliable ignorant is what the WTS. wants inside their organization.
Add some fear induced provocation and these are the people who can be controlled the easiest.
The WTS has always watched over the flock and made sure they didn't get too educated or at least denounced this endeavor.
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C6H12O6
Yes, I got mixed reactions as part of the R&F. Before I enrolled in college, there was a lot of pressure to forget about college and pioneer. Even a missionary CO's wife from a another circuit was discouraging me to go. However, my parents insisted heavily that I go (Asian parents value education a lot, in fact i met an Asian mother in field service that wanted to throw away a WT because it was bashing college). So I did.
Ever since I was in college I was told that it was "a waste of time, you're better off pioneering, it's a foolish choice because armagedon can come any second, what if college interfered with your meetings and study," and other negative opinions. It affected my standing in that "I have weak faith and relying too much on the world."
Others were curious about college and asked a lot of questions like what i was studying, which college i'm going to, and what college was like. However, a lot of witnesses asked me how many years I had left to graduate...at almost every meeting.
I guess they weren't too happy when more R&F were considering college after I proved that going to college and remaining an active JW was possible.
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Bungi Bill
In the hyped up JW world of the years leading up to 1975, they thought I was going slightly too far in even qualifying for University Entrance - which I did at the end of my last year of high school. (During those times, most Witness parents I knew took the WTS's instructions all too literally about only needing the bare minimum of "secular" education - and pulled their children out of school as soon as it was legally possible to so).
At the end of my final year at high school, a large organisation offered to sponsor me through the Engineering Degree Course at university (something I was very keen to undertake):
- but at that point, the elders had enough clout with my father to get that canned.
Instead, I took on a job with a Telecommunications company, in the which trainees studied part time for the Engineering Diploma Course. This was not good enough for the elders, either; after twelve months , they got me to throw that job in. This led to an almighty row with my father, in which I was obliged to use physical force in order to defend myself from violent attack (something I still have bitter memories about, some 40 years later).
Six years down the track, I found myself married, a family on the way, and not a marketable skill to my name. Fortunately, I managed to get into an adult apprenticeship, eventually learning the electrical trade.
Many in the congregation - whom I can only describe as narrow minded - had the daggers out for me even for doing this. However, I had learned enough of what was what by then to mentally give them all the famous "Two Fingered Salute"!
At the end of the apprenticeship course, my employer offered to sponsor me through the Engineering Diploma Course. The elders, and others in the congregation, were down on me for even thinking of doing that! However, it was family considerations that put a stop to any further academic studies for me (Three children under the age of five, plus an invalid wife!)
It was my experience amongst the JWs that not only was university education strongly disapproved of, but many - certainly a large minority - thought that even undertaking trade qualifications was inappropriate:
- i.e. tying up four years of your life in an apprenticeship, when "Armegeddon is just around the corner" etc. etc. etc.
Little wonder a disproportionate number of them are forever stuck as window cleaners - until they get so old that they practically fall dead on the job!
Bill.