Perhaps I’m just too deep in the tank with the classical model to be objective, but I don’t think that’s it. I think it’s a case of the emperor having on no clothes. Case in point: the new magnet school being opened by the Tuscaloosa City Schools in the fall of next year.
The Tuscaloosa News ran a story on the school yesterday. It describes the curriculum approved by the school board as “project-based learning.” Here’s a description of what that means from the article:
Students will be required to come up with a topic to study, for example global warming. Instead of doing a paper on the subject or listening to classroom lectures, as they would in a typical learning environment, the students would tackle global warming by using all major subject areas.
The students might do experiments involving global warming in their science classes while also studying the social impact of global warming, as well as developing the math skills to tackle specific problems related to the phenomena. Students might also incorporate the arts by writing and producing a play on the subject.
It’s hard to know where to start with this. If someone had set out to find the most backwards approach to education possible, this is very likely what would be produced.
First of all, note who’s driving the train. Is it the adults who (ostensibly) know what knowledge needs to be imparted and when? Of course not - that’s not 21st century at all. In the 21st century, the inmates run the asylum. It’s the children who will dictate the subjects that they will and won’t study. I wish my law school professors had been so modern. Then I wouldn’t have had to have been bothered with all that boring stuff about contracts and property and crimes. That kind of throwback stuff doesn’t benefit my clients at all.
Now, to the extent that this method is applicable to elementary school students, anyone who’s spent any time around children of that age can tell you that they completely lack critical thinking and logic skills. And it is NOT because they haven’t been taught them. It’s because their brains are not yet mature enough to handle them.
Middle schoolers do respond well to logical reasoning. However, you can only begin to appreciate how to apply logic to a given set of facts if you have two components: the facts, and the rules of logic. Nowhere is there any indication that this will be pursued in the “project-based” curriculum. In fact, the old fogey “classroom lectures” found in the “typical learning environment” (you know, where the teachers teach and the students learn) is banished. In fact, the teachers aren’t teachers, according to the article, they’re “facilitators,” as if education is some flowing stream to which the adults merely “facilitate” the little cherub’s access, and everything after that happens by some sort of learning osmosis.
Bravo Sierra!! Teaching is hard work, and so is learning. There’s no “facilitating” to it. Because doing it right is hard work, it ought to be called what it is and not reduced to some bureacracy-speak nonsense.
Now, lest we forget the fine arts angle to all this, these elementary and middle schoolers are going to be writing and producing plays. I certainly do not deny that God has given each of us a measure of creativity. Indeed, I believe that is a part of the image of the Creator on us. However, there must be some mastery of the underlying medium (like grammar, spelling, diction, proper sentence structure, etc.) and something of substance to convey through the artistry of employing that medium. If that sounds beyond the capabilities of someone in the fourth grade, that’s because it is. That’s not a knock on fourth graders, it’s just reality. Given the proper background training, in 5 or 10 years, they may be capable of some reasonable first efforts. But what’s being proposed here is just silly.
But the very worst of all of it is the compartmentalization of learning. Consider the example given of global warming (which, by the way, suggests to me that politically correct groupthink will be a mainstay of this program). How can one truly be expected to understand the complex interrelated issues at play - political, geological, astrophysical, and sociological - on such an ad hoc basis? Can one understand enough of the effect of solar radiation and cloud formation on climate without having had basic earth science and physics?
This is completely backwards from 2000+ years of learning in Western Civilization. Back then, educated people had the quaint notion that first, one mastered the basics. Only afterwards was it appropriate to move into more specialized inquiry.
Learning basics is so - what’s the word? - basic. It’s not cutting edge, hip, or 21st century. But if you send your kid to learn to play football, they don’t start by giving him JP Wilson’s playbook. They start with the fundamentals and build on those. Why - WHY????? - should training the mind be any different? It makes me want to pull my hair out that no one is asking these jarringly obvious questions.
This type of curriculum can be guaranteed to do two things: produce points of view consistent with those of the teach- oops, sorry - facilitators, and fail to provide what has historically been considered a good education.
Victor Davis Hanson is a professor of classics and history at Stanford. He regularly contributes to National Review and other conservative-leaning publications. I enjoy his writing and recommend it highly.
This morning I ran across an article of his that could fairly be described as a list of the 10 worst things going right now in American culture. The article is here. I’d appreciate hearing anyone’s take on the list. As a teaser, being the fan of classical education that I am, I’m going to post his first point, with which I heartily agree:
1. Four years of high-school Latin would dramatically arrest the decline in American education. In particular, such instruction would do more for minority youths than all the ‘role model’ diversity sermons on Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, Montezuma, and Caesar Chavez put together. Nothing so enriches the vocabulary, so instructs about English grammar and syntax, so creates a discipline of the mind, an elegance of expression, and serves as a gateway to the thinking and values of Western civilization as mastery of a page of Virgil or Livy (except perhaps Sophocles’s Antigone in Greek or Thucydides’ dialogue at Melos). After some 20 years of teaching mostly minority youth Greek, Latin, and ancient history and literature in translation (1984-2004), I came to the unfortunate conclusion that ethnic studies, women studies—indeed, anything “studies”— were perhaps the fruits of some evil plot dreamed up by illiberal white separatists to ensure that poor minority students in the public schools and universities were offered only a third-rate education.
I’d only quibble to add that Latin should start in Kindergarten.
Last week I picked up the morning paper and read that Mark Cuban, perhaps best known as the volatile owner of the NBA Dallas Mavericks, had been indicted for insider trading by the Securties and Exchange commission. He sold shares of a company prior to its public offering supposedly based on confidential knowledge, thus saving himself from a loss of $750,000. I have absolutly no “confidential knowledge” of Mr. Cuban’s guilt or innocence; and given his great resources, the verdict will probably be innocent no matter what the facts; such is our system, but the indictment shocked me.
Mr. Cuban has a reported net worth of $2.5 Billion; that’s with a “B”. He can put his hands on 2,500 groups of a million dollars. Thus, as ridiculous as it sounds to you and I, $750,000 fits the description of “chump change” to Mr. Cuban. Apart from any moral reasons, why in the world would he put himself in a position that had the potential of this one for trouble or even jail time (see Martha Stewart and Leona Helmsley.) Three possibilities came to mind.
First, Mr. Cuban is a highly competetive individual. This competetitiveness is often visible on the sidelines fo Mavs games, as he is very much into every play and nuance of every play. One would assume that he brings this same competitiveness to his business ventures, so is this indictment simply a result of a “game on” mentality?
Secondly, is Mr. Cuban so secure in his wealth and power that he considers himself bullet proof and its adjunct, that he is, literally, above the law? This is certainly not unprecedented, and there are many instances that could be pointed to in that regard. Ms. Helmsley’s famous statement, “We don’t pay taxes. Little people pay taxes” is a prime exemple. Also significant in the decision making process is the fact that she, another billionaire, served time for tax evasion.
Thirdly, there is the title of this post, “How much is enough?” When billionaire J. Paul Getty was asked this, his reply was “Just a little more.” Is this a function of the two possibilities above or is it a related to the fallenness of man in a fallen world; our Reformed world view?
Tim, in a sermon recently, spoke of the fact that money and power does not corrupt the king; he is corrupt to begin with and the money and power simply allows him to indulge himself more. This situation can very easily speak to that, but what stands out to the Reformed Christian is that the world is fallen, and that “a little more”, even at another’s expense is what is expected in a world that is corrupt at its very base and core.
The RPC book group has recently taken two weeks for a specific and unique task. We were asked to read and review a forthcoming book called Eve by Elissa Elliott. As a framework, the author had wanted to get an impression of the book from the perspective of religious readers. The comments I will offer here are a compilation of group members’ thoughts, ideas and impressions, hopefully presented in a cohesive and clear manner.
Using Eve (or any Biblical person) as the subject of a novel is a dicey proposition in itself. Indeed, any historical fiction runs the risk of becoming a documentary, a propaganda piece or a piece of fantasy with only a remnant of truth. Biblical fiction has those same problems, but also has issues concerning theology in its purest sense- what it says about God. The writer is faced with myriad decisions about how much and in what ways they should expand on Scripture in order to tell a story. Inherent in these decisions is the underlying worldview of the author. As an example, for some it matters greatly that anything that God says in their work be consistent with His character shown in all of Scripture. For others, it matters not as long as the story is coherent or interesting or marketable, depending on their priority. More on this later…
Another risky proposition is the novel’s structure. This novel is told in narrative by Eve and her daughters. Much of it is told in flashback/memory style late in Eve’s life and it is more of a familial diary than anything else. The author shifted very smoothly between speakers and her dialogue was generally very fluid as well. The only negative comment on this score is that the story could have perhaps been just as thoroughly explored in 200 -250 pages, rather than roughly 400.
Considering these things as well as the fact that this is Elliott’s first published novel, she is to be given high marks for even taking it on. It would have been much less risky to have set a different family of women characters and tell much the same story since most of the action is centered on the women’s relationships and interaction. As it is, Eve comes across as an Oprah-esque everywoman in a tale of a very dysfunctional family. Herein lies the problem. Stylistically, the group generally appreciated what was written. We had much more discussion regarding content.
As a piece of framework, none of us expected at the outset for this to be a novel that would necessarily reflect our theological distinctives. We didn’t know where the author would be in these matters. While we didn’t expect these things, we did find it difficult that a novel based on a person from Scripture struggled to stick closely to the Biblical narrative or orthodox Judeo-Christian teaching from the past 2000 years.
The biggest single problem we seemed to have as a group is that Elliott seems to have created a God in her own image. She states in the afterword, and on her website, that she was really at a loss for words regarding Elohim. This showed as Elohim was represented as a sniveling, weak, worried, and very sensitive (perhaps to the point of metrosexual) God. One of the things we have discussed as material presented itself is that God is outside of the boundaries and scope of time. The author makes a point for God to declare to Adam and Eve that He is “In Time” (p.66). It may be no wonder, then, that the Creator of the Universe is, in this story, very frustrated by being bound by time and His creation’s actions & decisions. This narrative would work very well into the so-called “Open Theology” movement of recent years. Elliott still wanted Elohim to be in control from time to time and want to stick to the story of expulsion from the garden, but yet be bound by the onslaught of evil, conflicted with jealousy of Adam and Eve’s relationship (this calls the Trinity into play), and unable to control His creation (pp 38-40). In this construct, God is not sovereign-just a darn good engineer.
In her afterword, Elliott explains/describes her research and methodology in preparing to write the novel. She states frankly that in order to create the story she has mixed/crossed historical periods and cultural creations. This license, while understandable in creating a story, has caused the book to have some feel of schizophrenia. There is both creation and evolution. There is evidence of the fall in a pre-fall garden (death of plants, Eve lying, disappointment, sadness). There are languages before the Tower of Babel. There is a whole culture of people apart from Adam & Eve which apparently have never had to deal with the issue of the Fall. This leads to too much having your literary cake and eating it too. If we can’t trust any single area of the author’s knowledge to be factual, we find ourselves not able to trust any area to be factual at all. There is much research to be praised here, but when the facts are stripped from the tapestry of context and rewoven into the fabric of the story we find that the threads lose their dynamic color and impact. In other words, this could be the story of so many broken people that there is little unique in it at all.
On that note, the one key concept that showed through to all in the group was the idea of human depravity. Even the best of works shown in the book are tinged with selfish angles. Even election can be inferred from the differences in the characters such as Cain and Abel & Naava & Aya. There were also scattered items of what I would term nuggets of truth form Biblical precepts. Eve struggled with the very idea that Elohim could forgive her. She and Adam began to realize that the root of their sin in the garden was idolatry (of each other, of being like God, etc.) which manifested itself in the eating of the fruit. Again, the problem is that these nuggets are scattered over 400 pages among many other thoughts contrary to Scriptural teaching.
All in all, we felt that while the novel has some literary worth, it is not one which merits re-reading or commendation to others. This is an example of our fleshing out our worldview. As we often talk about at RPC, the creative work carries the stamp of our Creator, but the total creation is open to discussion, debate and criticism based on our working out of a Biblical worldview and our knowledge (hopefully expanding) of stylistic craftsmanship.
As I have said before, I purposely declined to enter the fray, because I was less concerned about the outcome of the elections and more concerned about what people were believing and saying.
John Piper has a fantastic little clip where he discusses the most important issues in the elections.
My favorite part?
When confronted by an animated person prior to the elections who was painting a doomsday picture if his opponent won, Piper asks, “Are you a Christian?” I think I spit some Sprite out on my keyboard.
There is almost too much here: (How’s that for a channel name, by the way? Presumptuous?)
But, again, you can see the dangerous conclusions that people make when they begin with the erroneous assumption that America=the people of God. Lou Engle, perhaps, is the most passionate when he begins to pray for forgiveness onbehalf of America…not for the impurities, sins, heresies, and weaknesses within the Church…but in America. To extend the illustration, that would be like the Hebrews starting to confess for the Philistines’ transgressions. We just don’t see that in the Bible, do we?
The Pre-Election Rhetoric Accountability Forum continues:
Perhaps you received this impassioned plea from the desk of Don Wildmon, president of the American Family Association (AFA), during the month of October: Its contents, below:
Please vote! Our children’s future depends on it!
In my 70 years, I have never seen an election where coverage was so one-sided and biased or where censorship by the liberal media was so widely practiced and where media coverage was so slanted as I have seen in this election process. Their plan is working. The only chance conservatives have is to make sure they care enough to vote.
If the liberals win the upcoming election, America as we have known it will no longer exist. This country that we love, founded on Judeo-Christian values, will cease to exist and will be replaced by a secular state hostile to Christianity. This “city set on a hill” which our forefathers founded, will go dark. The damage will be deep and long lasting. It cannot be turned around in the next election, or the one after that, or by any election in the future. The damage will be permanent. That is why it is so important for you to vote and to encourage friends and family to vote. This is one election where your vote really counts.
Summarial bullet points:
• The last tool available to the religious conservative is voting
• America is a Christian nation
• America is also New Jerusalem
• An Obama presidency will wreak PERMANENT damage. Not capable of redemption.
The impassioned rhetoric this election season was nauseating. And I’m not talking about the candidates or their handlers. The Christian Right supplied enough portions for every American to have second and third helpings. I purposely laid a low profile during these heated exchanges, but now that we have seen that Election Day did not, in fact, usher in the Apocalypse, perhaps Chrsitians will be able to reconcile an Obama win with the Sovereignty of God.
Case in Point: LA Times Blog
Prayer at McCain rally by Rev. Arnold Conrad:
“I would also pray Lord that your reputation is involved in all that happens between now and November, because there are millions of people around this world praying to their God — whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah — that his [McCain’s] opponent wins for a variety of reasons.
And Lord I pray that you would guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their god is bigger than you, if that happens. So I pray that you would step forward and honor your own name in all that happens between now and Election Day.
Oh Lord, we just commit this time to you, move among us, make your presence very well felt as we are gathered here today in Jesus’s name I pray.”
Which brings some important questions to the fore in this post-election season:
1) Did McCain really win, and there has been a giant conspiratorial cover-up?
2) Is God strong enough to fight the wave of Obama fever?
3) Has God been publicly punk’d by the American electorate?
4) Does this prove that Obama is bigger than God?
(Yes, the previous questions carry sarcastic tones)
How does the Christian Right reconcile their “godly” champion (McCain) losing?
You cannot have your pre-election rhetoric and then abandon it, post-election.
That does not sit well with me. We must call for accountability for the spiritual statements made prior to Tuesday night. And I have begun. And please, nobody post a comment about how, “just maybe Obama is God’s judgment on America.”
The RPC book group has recently taken two weeks for a specific and unique task. We were asked to read and review a forthcoming book called Eve by Elissa Elliott. As a framework, the author had wanted to get an impression of the book from the perspective of religious readers. The comments I will offer here are a compilation of group members’ thoughts, ideas and impressions, hopefully presented in a cohesive and clear manner.