The lure of reading the wt is equivalent to a college education came about

by MTSman 4 Replies latest jw friends

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  MTSman

  I've been out for, God, six years now. It only seems like yesterday when I was before three a-holes pleading for my life. Relecting back, I've come to realize having the ax fall on me was the best thing. If not for that dumb mistake that I was judge wicked for, I would still be a blind, idot with child like hopes and dreams. Anyway, I had often wondered where this notion of reading the publishing is the equivalent of a college education. while studying for midterms with a budy, he informed me of this collection of books called the Harvard Classics:

  The Harvard Classics, originally known as Dr. Eliot's Five Foot Shelf, is a 51-volume anthology of classic works from world literature, compiled and edited by Harvard University president Charles W. Eliot and first published in 1909. [ 1 ]

  Eliot had stated in speeches that the elements of a liberal education could be obtained by spending 15 minutes a day reading from a collection of books that could fit on a five-foot shelf. (Originally he had said a three-foot shelf.) The publisher P. F. Collier and Son saw an opportunity and challenged Eliot to make good on this statement by selecting an appropriate collection of works, and the Harvard Classics was the result.

  Eliot worked for one year with William A. Neilson, a professor of English; Eliot determined the works to be included and Neilson selected the specific editions and wrote introductory notes. [ 1 ] Each volume had 400-450 pages, and the included texts are "so far as possible, entire works or complete segments of the world's written legacies." [ 2 ] The collection was widely advertised by Collier and Son, in Collier's and elsewhere, with great success.

  So there it is. How the lure of reading the watchtower is the equivilant of a college education. I can see how reading Dickens, Hawthorn, victor Hugo and Mary Shelly and other literary pioneers can broaden an intellectual horizon, but reading a bunch of nonsensica, egotistical ramblings of a handful of egotistical men? Naw, I can't see that.
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  rmt1

  A college education is comprised of individuals, using their own brains, collecting their own data, arriving at their own conclusions, testing their findings, and then standing or falling by the review of their peers, who are able and entitled to reproduce said findings. College is also replete with different interpretations deriving from the same sources, and then engaging in the act or process of persuasion, and being subject to the court of public opinion. Conferences or seminars or conventions at the college level are busy affairs with multiple tracks in multiple rooms, with many speakers addressing handfuls or gobs of willing voluntary listeners, who paid dearly to be there to hear the new research, and not all messages or interpretations are the same, and not all agree. Differences of opinion can be polite or outrageous, and poaching turf is met with defensiveness, and undermining one's life's interpretation can lead to throwing chairs. But these behaviors are natural reactions by people who are permitted to use their own brains. A college education involves meetings where you sit around a table reviewing the latest research paper and some different person each week leads the discussion by highlighting what they found insightful or misguided in that paper, and yours is printed out and marked up and cross referenced if you prepared well. Everyone is free to agree, disagree, interpret, interrupt, question, disregard, dismiss. A college education involves weekly evening public talks by local faculty where you sit attentively, whether dressed up well or in your jeans, and you hear out the subject matter and you feel compelled based on the merits of their argument, or their presentation, and they generally have some kind of audio visual medium that provides a structure upon which to shape your understanding. A college education involves undergraduate level clubs where you meet and figure out what your volunteer activities will be and how you will interface with the public, and then you haul a bunch of crap in your vehicles, you set up shop, you face the public, and you put yourself out there and draw listeners to you to hear what your club and activity is about, and how it impacts that random person, and how that random person can become involved, or see the next iteration of activity, if they so desire.

  Manifestly, a regular habit of reading the Watchtower and Awake is the precise equivalent of getting a college education. How could anyone doubt it?
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  TTWSYF

  Manifestly, a regular habit of reading the Watchtower and Awake is the precise equivalent of getting a college education. How could anyone doubt it?

  Accordingly, a regular habit of reading Superman, Thor and Batman is the precise equivalent of getting a college education. The difference is that the latter could find employment and use his or her 'equivalency degree' in a comic book store where as the 'equivalency degree'on Watchtower and Awake material would only serve in the WTS. No one else would consider the revisionist education as legitimate....sorry guys...
  
  
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  Crazyguy

  I read somewhere that Russell said it about his movie he put out and that around the same time or after someone in Bethel was putting out a course that one could buy to make you a expert Bible peddler . The idea was to go out peddle the troof and get paid to do it by the people you teach , selling them WT books etc. The troof at some point was really a door to door sales job and being an expert in this was equivalent to having a college education.
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  berrygerry

  Twas posted on reddit today

  From Watchtower June 15, 1983:

  Would you like to grow in knowledge, obtaining an education of even much greater value than can be received in any college? You can do so by reading regularly this magazine and its companion, Awake!

  https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/113622/reading-wt-awake-x-years-college-education#1987571