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Winning Essay: Accelerated Distance Learning, Better Than All the Rest?

by Spencer Ian Brontë

Accelerated Distance Learning. Just what is it? Some new scheme, prone to eventual failure? Another newfangled way to "earn" one's education? Or is it something more? Something...better?

Why is it gaining ground? Why are many beginning to blaze its trails? What they say, is it really true? Save time? Money? Avoid the pitfalls of traditional colleges? To find the truth and the answers to these questions, we're going to have to dig around a bit.

What Is Accelerated Distance Learning?

The “Accelerated Distance Learning” (ADL) method, as popularized by Global Leadership Institute founder Brad Voeller, combines the use of independent study, credit-by-examination, portfolio assessment, correspondence and online courses, community colleges, internships, and anything else that can help the student get a degree in record time, all the while having spent only a fraction of the cost of your usual college. ADL is new and cutting-edge, and with an emphasis on individualized learning, it has the upper hand over traditional educational institutions. Free from the limitations of your everyday college, students have a better opportunity to learn what is more up-to-date, more relevant, and more useful to their own personal career needs, plus the chance to gain knowledge from a global perspective.

The New Face of Higher Education

In today’s “information age,” the old ways of the academic institutions are proving to be more and more inefficient and inept. On a moral basis, the prospect of a student struggling to survive the depravities of dorm life are proving unpalatable to Christians homeschoolers. With little knowledge having been gained and much morality having been lost by those who graduate, things are ripe for change. It's time to find the best path to true success, to learn more, to learn better, and to spend less time and money in the process.

If new opportunities and approaches are open to the student, why not pursue them? Why be imprisoned by the pressures of the day? Why allow peer pressure and modern cultural trends to control your education, your future life? Wouldn't following the path of the better, quicker, and less expensive degree make more sense?

In an age when following the crowd and "fitting in" are deemed more important than learning and education, there's little wonder why we live in a society with an emphasis on the traditional methods. If true learning was really valued as it should be, then the most effective ways to obtain knowledge would be pursued, not simply the kinds conforming to people's comfort-zone mentality. Trust the professionals, leave it up to the professors, they say. Spend a fortune, spend years1, throw away your own discernment and place yourself in the power of those who make it their business to mold and shape young, impressionable minds to conform to the status quo.

A Personalized Approach

On another note, in your traditional classroom environment, personalized learning is neglected in favor of mass teaching techniques. Being bound to a class schedule is perhaps not the best choice for a student. Why be constrained by the perspective of one college, or one professor? Why be held back by the pace of other classmates? Why not opt for the better, more individualized options of accelerated and distance methods? Why not learn what is best for you and your future career, and why not learn it at your own speed instead of being bound by "everyone else"?

With all this going for it, you'd think this fantastic new method of obtaining one’s college education would be the preferred path. Though the ADL method is gaining ground, let's face it: it simply isn't encouraged or discussed much by the secular world. So why is it up to the Christian homeschool community to promote it?

It’s About Worldview

Well, therein lies the answer. ADL also has one more advantage, one more feather in its cap—particularly to those same Christian homeschoolers. It's the age-old war of the worldviews, and both sides--both armies--desperately desire victory. In the age of liberal humanism, colleges of the day are much more than neutral educational establishments. They are training centers, indoctrinating our nation's youth with ungodly ideas, evil propaganda, and sinful ideologies.2 An Evolutionary view of science. A liberal view of history. A loose view of morality. An atheistic view of the universe. The enemy, with their academic stranglehold, continually pump out more misguided young men and women, more drones. More and more we see the decline of true morality; faith3, integrity, chastity, chivalry, femininity. More and more we see the advancement of sin and godlessness; drug use, illicit sex, violent crimes, rape, murder, even shootings.4

No, this is not just a purely neutral education. This is philosophical indoctrination of a most vile sort. As said by the great theologian Robert Lewis Dabney, "To educate the mind without purifying the heart is but to place a sharp sword in the hands of a madman."5

The very use of "higher education" is to prepare one for their future career, their life. How can we allow the very people who are in rebellion against God lead the fruit of our land in the pursuit of knowledge? Proverbs 1:7a says, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge” (KJV). If we surrender this fundamental area to the enemy, can we really expect victory?

The thing is: we can’t. If we wish to "fight the good fight"6, to further the cause, to prepare our hearts and minds for the struggles of our own part in this war, we must be trained in the bootcamp of righteousness. Accelerated Distance Learning gives us the opportunity to do just that.

To the student, who desires learning; to the eager, who wishes to save time; to the thrifty, who wishes to save money; and to the Christian, who desires to save his soul, Accelerated Distance Learning is better. For each and every one of us.

Footnotes

  1. Eisen, David, "College: The New Four- Six-Year Degree", MSN Encarta Lifelong Learning.

  2. Kurtz, Howard, "College Faculties a Most Liberal Lot, Study Finds" (Washington DC: The Washington Post, March 29, 2005), p. C1, cited in Wightman, Scott & Kris, College Without Compromise, (St. Louis, MO: The Homeschool Sampler, 2005), p. 29.

  3. Boyd, Bob & Geri, "Issues in Education" radio show interview with Dr. Brian D. Ray, excerpted in Homeschoolers Grown Up: What do the Facts Show?, (Johnson City, TN: Homeschool Headquarters, 2004), p. 6, cited in Wightman, Scott & Kris, College Without Compromise, (St. Louis, MO: The Homeschool Sampler, 2005), p. 29.

  4. Seamen, Barrett, Binge, What Your College Student Won’t Tell You: Campus Life in an Age of Disconnection and Excess, (Hoboken, NJ: John & Wiley Sons, Inc., 2005), cited in Wightman, Scott & Kris, College Without Compromise, (St. Louis, MO: The Homeschool Sampler, 2005), p. 31.

  5. Douglas W. Phillips, ed., Robert Lewis Dabney: The Prophet Speaks, (The Vision Forum, Inc., San Antonio, Texas, 2001), p. 17.

  6. 1 Timothy 6:12, KJV.



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