On Tue, 5 Mar 2002, Rod Hetzel went:
> Something similar happened to me in my Marriage and the Family class the
> other day. Now, remember that I am a Christian psychologist who teaches
> at a Christian university. A student raised his hand and started
> complaining about the class was a waste of his time because all we were
> doing was talking about secular theories when the Bible has all the
> answers to our marriage problems.[...]
> Well, this student never came to see me individually, but he did send me
> a lengthy email. Here is a snippet of his email (with identifying
> information removed): "I took M&F in hopes that I could learn more
> about how to be a good husband to my wife. So far I have not learned
> anything that has helped me in our relationship from the text material,
> and from the direction we're taking in class, I don't think I will.[...]"
If this student was being honest about the reasons for his
dissatisfaction with the course, maybe he would have responded to
material about what's been empirically demonstrated to predict marital
success or failure. I'm thinking of research by John M. Gottman
(which I know about only because it's been popularized), who used
brief observation of married couples in order to establish four big
predictors of divorce ("four horsemen," he called them, biblically
enough). Questions of causation remain open, but if that sort of
research isn't enough to pique your ex-student's curiosity, maybe he
doesn't have any curiosity.
--David Epstein
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
References to which I didn't actually refer:
Gottman, John M; Levenson, Robert W. Marital processes predictive of
later dissolution: Behavior, physiology, and health. Journal of
Personality & Social Psychology 63(2): 221-233, Aug 1992.
Carrere, Sybil; Gottman, John Mordechai. Predicting divorce among
newlyweds from the first three minutes of a marital conflict
discussion. Family Process 38(3): 293-301, Fall 1999.
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