Riverwood Presbyterian Church

Education

Hot Cross Disciplines

by Tim Lien

Quotation by Dorothy Sayers: (“A Note on Creative Reading,” from Begin Here)

Pray get rid of the idea that books are each a separate thing, divided from one another and from life. Read each in the light of all the others, especially in light of books of another kind. Try and see—this is the most fascinating exercise of all—whether a statement in one book may not be a statement of the same experience which another book expresses in quite different terms.

I finally got around to reading to several essays by Sayers that Jimmy Hopper handed to me. (my reading queue is backed-up for years) One of the most enjoyable aspects of reading across the spectrum of literature is that it enlivens even mundane subjects. Someone mentioning the word “coffee” around a reader may suddenly be subject to an effusive gush of knowledge about ancient Egyptians, trade-wars, horticulture, and current health statistics. Knowing that Truth informs all other truth allows nothing to be treated as trivia. Nothing is trivial. Even the superficial articles in People magazine get sent to the repository of observations about humanity’s obsession with hedonism. It has its place, it just takes some work to see how it all fits.

Education

Repelled by the Magnet

by Clay Staggs

I just don’t understand modern education.

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.

But, then again, history is sooooooo last year.

Education

A Logic Quiz

by Clay Staggs

If you’re sick of reading my posts bemoaning the fact that we don’t teach logic anymore, then you probably should skip this one. For those of you brave enough to read on, I offer the following as a quiz. Yesterday Senator Obama gave a major speech on his energy policy. As summarized by the outstanding Politico website, below are the three main points. The quiz is to see if you can identify the flaw(s) in the logic of the plan.

The three main components of Obama’s plan are:

— Get 1 million 150 mile-per-gallon plug-in hybrids on U.S. roads within six years.

— Require that 10 percent of U.S. energy comes from renewable sources by the end of his first term – more than double the current level.

—Reduce U.S. demand for electricity 15 percent by 2020.

Got that? We’re going to ADD 1 million plug-in vehicles to the electricity grid, yet REDUCE demand for electricity by 15%. Obviously, these two goals are facially contradictory. But it’s really worse. Even without the increased load that all these plug-ins would add, demand for electricity is constantly increasing, for (what ought to be) fairly straightforward reasons: the population is ever increasing, we constantly add new electric gadgets to our lives, etc. Without major changes to the way we live, how exactly can demand be expected to decrease?

Let’s take this debate a step further, shall we? Leaving aside adding 1M new plug-ins, given that we live in a (relatively) free economy, how, exactly, will the government achieve a goal of reducing the demand for electricity 15%, when the vast, vast majority of electricity is consumed by the private sector?

But the final flaw in the logic is this: why is there a need to reduce electrical demand by 15%? What’s really wrong with electricity in and of itself? After all, he’s advocating plug-in vehicles!! Isn’t the real issue with electricity how it’s generated? There was an article recently about a possible breakthrough in solar energy technology by researchers at MIT, which, if it pans out, could provide vast amounts of energy with no pollution and no C02. You can read about that here. If we could generate electricity that way, why reduce its consumption?

It blows me away that a howler like this can get past the layers and layers of speechwriters, advisers, etc., that typically accompany a presidential campaign. The question is, though, (aside from nerds like me) does anyone notice, and if they do, do they care?

Education

Economic Ignorance

by Clay Staggs

I’ve bemoaned the fact that no one teaches or learns logic so many times that I’ve lost count. But examples of people saying and doing things that are totally irrational just keep on coming. The latest one was at the President’s press conference yesterday.

The question you are about to read actually came from a White House correspondent - that is, someone who has been afforded the privilege of questioning the leader of the free world.

Q `You never mention oil companies. Are you confident that American oil producers are tapping all of the sources they have out there, including offshore?

Now, I don’t believe that a great deal of formal education in economics is necessary to know the answer to this question. Some simple logic should do. The price of oil is $140+ per barrel - a historic high. Why on earth would company fail to tap their resources and cash in? The President then obliged with an answer that should have gone without saying:

THE PRESIDENT: What about them — do I think they’re investing capital to find more reserves with the price at $140 a barrel? Absolutely. Take an offshore exploration company. First of all, it costs a lot of money to buy the lease, so they tie up capital. Secondly, it takes a lot of money to do the geophysics, to determine what the structure may or may not look like. That ties up capital. Then they put the rig out there. Now, first of all, in a federal offshore lease, if you’re not exploring within a set period of time, you lose your bonus; you lose the amount of money that you paid to get the lease in the first place.

And once you explore, your first exploratory, if you happen to find oil or gas, it is — you’ll find yourself in a position where a lot of capital is tied up. And it becomes in your interest, your economic interest, to continue to explore so as to reduce the capital costs of the project on a per-barrel basis. And so I — I think — I think they’re exploring. And hopefully a lot of people continue to explore so that the supply of oil worldwide increases relative to demand.

I probably make too much of this, but the fact that someone in the White House press corps lacks this much rational thought really bothers me. Of all the questions that could be put to George Bush, the fact that this one would have been asked is just pathetic.

Education

Because The Schools Have Nothing Better To Do

by Clay Staggs

Barack Obama gave a speech in Colorado recently on the subject of service. You can read the whole text here. I’d like to focus on his comments on service for those in middle and high school:

Finally, we need to integrate service into education, so that young Americans are called upon and prepared to be active citizens.

Just as we teach math and writing, arts and athletics, we need to teach young Americans to take citizenship seriously. Study after study shows that students who serve do better in school, are more likely to go to college, and more likely to maintain that service as adults. So when I’m President, I will set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year. This means that by the time you graduate college, you’ll have done 17 weeks of service.

We’ll reach this goal in several ways. At the middle and high school level, we’ll make federal assistance conditional on school districts developing service programs, and give schools resources to offer new service opportunities. At the community level, we’ll develop public-private partnerships so students can serve more outside the classroom.

Much criticism has been leveled at the No Child Left Behind Act, and most of it justified. In my mind, the most insidious thing that it did was to insert the ever-incompetent US Department of Education even further into what has historically been local decision-making where grade school education is concerned. It did this essentially through a bribe: Accept this increased federal funding if you want, but you have to do X Y and Z to get it. No state had to accept the funding, but if they did (as always) there was a catch.

It appears that, if elected, Obama would take that one step further. Federal aid would be dependent on the schools compelling community service from their middle and high school students. I’d like to make two points about this. First of all, the schools have all they can say grace over to actually, you know, teach the students the basics, and many are even failing at that. Is it not absurd to place yet another mandate on these schools? Is there no amount of social engineering that we won’t foist on the public schools?

On top of that, perhaps this is my reformed thinking coming through here, but if “community service” becomes mandatory, does it not lose something of its character? I thought this when Clinton did AmeriCorp - if you’re getting a reward for doing a job (in the case of AmeriCorp, reduced student loan debt) then isn’t that just employment and not true community service? Maybe I’m off base here, but I think of true community service as being at least in some measure voluntary, or maybe done without the motivation of profit. Once we make community service just another course in school, won’t it become about as noble as your 10th grade health class? Maybe it will, and nobody cares. I’m not sure which is worse.

For those interested, Paul Mirengoff at Powerline does an excellent fisking of some other aspects of this text, too.

Exit question: With all the homework requirements, accelerated reading, incessant testing, extracurricular activities, and now possibly mandatory community service, do kids ever get the chance to just be kids anymore?

Education

An update on the California Homeschooling case

by Jeff Miller

Clay recently blogged about the California judicial case regarding who may or may not be allowed to homeschool. There is an update today.

From the Home School Legal Defense Association’s Newsletter:

Court of Appeal Grants Petition for Re-hearing

Complete info HERE

There is more info in the letter about different people/groups filing amicus briefs, etc., but the fact that this motion was granted is a very important step toward (hopefully) protecting parents’ rights.

Politics

Where’s the Outrage?

by Clay Staggs

I’ve written before about the disturbing inability of our culture - especially our supposed elites - to make even the most basic moral judgments. That inability is on display again for the world to see at Columbia University.

The president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will be in NYC this week to address the United Nations General Assembly (who, I suppose, must tolerate his appearance). Yet, inexplicably, Columbia University has extended an invitation to him to speak at a forum.

This probably isn’t necessary, but for the benefit of the morally dense at Columbia, this man is evil, and represents an evil regime that is bent on the destruction of the US and our allies. He’s not even shy about it. He has repeatedly denied the holocaust, threatened the annihilation of Israel, is working feverishly for nuclear weapons, and holds to a very radical, apocalyptic view of his role in ushering in the return of the “hidden imam,” (their equivalent of the final judgment) by starting war with us infidels in the West. These statements are made in public, and frequently in English (though our press just as frequently ignores them). Ahmadinejad is also accused of having been one of the student captors of the US hostages in Tehran in 1980. The Iranian regime he represents is listed by the US State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism, is widely credited with the bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks in Lebanon in the 80s, and, just last week, US commanders in Iraq testified to Congress that Iranian munitions are being supplied to insurgents by Iranian special forces and are used frequently in attacks that kill and wound US soldiers. Finally, the litany of executions, floggings, torture, political repression, and enforcement of barbaric sharia law is too gruesome to detail here. Google it if you can stomach it.

Now, sadly predictably, the powers that be at Columbia, all the way up to its president, Lee Bollinger, when confronted with this outrage hide behind the canard of freely exchanging ideas. The whole concept of a university as a platform for the exchange and debate of ideas is centered around the pursuit of truth. This man represents everything that is antithetical to truth, and every other Western and, especially, Christian value. When one of the most prestigious universities in the US says that it is participating in constructive dialogue, but in fact are allowing a sworn enemy of this country to use them as a platform for his obvious propaganda, what is one to conclude about that university? As if exhibiting pride in their moral obtuseness, one of the deans at Columbia has said that they would have invited Hitler to speak, given the opportunity.

How about adding this to the mix: this same university, Columbia, that warmly welcomes a murderous tyrant, bans the US military’s ROTC programs from its campus. So, the military is banned, but the leader of a nation who is actively working to kill our soldiers is welcomed. We should, then, be very clear. This is NOT about simple relativism, or else the ROTC would be allowed just like Mahmoud. This is what Jeanne Kirkpatrick so accurately referred to as the “blame America first” mentality.

Lest anyone think that this is just another of my GOP-slanted rants, none less than the speaker of the NYC city council has condemned Columbia for this outrage.

These people have no discernment, no wisdom, no moral compass, and no shame.

UPDATE: The folks at the Daily Kos, the leading liberal blog and virtual mouthpiece of the Democrat party, are really jazzed up about Mahmoud’s visit. Check out this post, by a Jewish lesbian who confesses to having a crush on Ahmadinejad, because he’s so right about how evil George Bush is. Money quote:

Monday, when Ahmadinejad speaks at Columbia University in New York, I’ll be listening. Maybe with a bottle of wine and some soft music playing in the background. If I can get past the fact that, as a Jewish lesbian, he’d probably have me killed, I’ll try to listen for some truth.

For about the first time in my life, I have literally no idea what to say.

Education

Back to Basics

by Clay Staggs

The Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece earlier this week that caught my attention. It was an argument for the restoration of a standard liberal education curriculum in the nation’s universities. The writer, Peter Berkowitz, who taught at Harvard, witnessed there the ill effects of the failure to teach the works that form the core of a liberal arts eduction. Bear with me; I’m going to reproduce a couple of paragraphs in their entirety:

About the problem:

Indeed, many professors in the humanities and social sciences proudly promulgate doctrines that mock the very idea of a standard or measure defining an educated person, and so legitimate the compassless curriculum over which they preside… . Many American colleges do adopt general distribution requirements. Usually this means that students must take a course or two of their choosing in the natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities, decorated perhaps with a dollop of fine arts, rudimentary foreign-language exposure, and the acquisition of basic writing and quantitative skills. And all students must choose a major. But this veneer of structure provides students only superficial guidance. Or, rather, it reinforces the lesson that our universities have little of substance to say about the essential knowledge possessed by an educated person.

After analyzing Harvard’s recent efforts to reform its core liberal arts curriculum and finding it to be wanting, Berkowitz proposes his own:

Crafting a core consistent with the imperatives of a liberal education will involve both a substantial break with today’s university curriculum and a long overdue alignment of higher education with common sense. Such a core would, for example, require all students to take semester courses surveying Greek and Roman history, European history, and American history. It would require all students to take a semester course in classic works of European literature, and one in classic works of American literature. It would require all students to take a semester course in biology and one in physics. It would require all students to take a semester course in the principles of American government; one in economics; and one in the history of political philosophy. It would require all students to take a semester course comparing Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It would require all students to take a semester course of their choice in the history, literature or religion of a non-Western civilization. And it would require all students to demonstrate proficiency in a foreign language of their choice by carrying on a casual conversation and accurately reading a newspaper in the language, a level of proficiency usually obtainable after two years of college study, or four semester courses.

I commend the entire article to everyone. It’s a fascinating read. Find it here.

Now, I’d like to offer two comments about this. First, I heartily support what Professor Berkowitz suggests. I agree with his assessment that modern university education tends to convey the notion that “there is nothing in particular that an educated person need know.” I can support this with my own experience. I graduated with a liberal arts degree (majoring in English) without ever being required to take a course in European history or Western Civ (nor had I been required to do so in high school). The implicit message there is that there’s really nothing particularly important about the history of the West that I needed to know. Today, I find that utterly appalling. How can one possibly hope to understand literature without the background of the history in which the works are written?

The simple fact, reviled by relativists (and, I think, many liberal arts professors), is that “knowledge is cumulative and that some books and ideas are more essential than others,” to use Prof. Berkowitz’s formulation. As Christians, we should understand and support this concept most of all because we know that there is objective truth, and we know the source.

My second reaction to the article is to take it a step further: why wait until university to teach these fundamentals? Two hundred years ago, the idea of waiting until university to expose the learner to the fundamentals of history, literature, religion, etc., would have been thought foolishness. Because, at that time, under the classical education structure, by the time the student made it to the university, those fundamentals has LONG been mastered. The classical structure taught the basic facts of history, religion, art, language, and mathematics by what we know as the 6th grade. This was known as the “grammar” phase. From there, the student was then taught the rules of logic during the next few years. Then, during what we call high school but they called the “rhetoric” phase, the student was taught to take the basic facts he or she had learned already, apply logic to them, and to express their critiques of ideas and arguments in writing and oral speech. This three phase sequence was referred to as the trivium, and it’s the very pattern we follow today at Riverwood Classical School.

Classically, because the student had already been taught in grade school what Prof. Berkowitz advocates for college freshmen and sophomores, the university was reserved for four areas that required scientific and relational reasoning to evaluate: higher arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Only after these subjects were mastered, did the student proceed to study what were considered the ultimate intellectual inquiries in graduate school: philosophy and theology.

Compared to what classical education accomplished, Prof. Berkowitz’s suggestion seems timid at best. I’d like to think that Riverwood has started making small steps to restoring what western educators seem to have willingly lost.

Education

A Little More than “Poor Judgment”

by Clay Staggs

This is outrageous. Absolutely outrageous. While on a field trip to a state park, the assistant principal, teachers, and other staff members from the Scales Elementary School in Murfreesboro, TN, decided to have a little drill with their 6th graders (11 and 12 year olds). They staged a fictitious attack by an assailant with a gun, yet told the terrified children that it was not a drill. The kids, who were hiding under tables sobbing, later were told that this was a “learning experience.”

According to the AP account:

During the last night of the trip, staff members convinced the 69 students that there was a gunman on the loose. They were told to lie on the floor or hide underneath tables and stay quiet. A teacher, disguised in a hooded sweat shirt, even pulled on a locked door.

Now, I suppose that there’s nothing wrong with having drills for emergencies. After all, we had tornado and fire drills regularly when I was in school. But to tell the children that it wasn’t a drill? And the teachers were the ones who apparently cooked up this idea and executed it? What is going on here?

One might be tempted to think that it would go without saying that the adults involved would be immediately dismissed or at least disciplined in some fashion. But not so fast:

Principal Catherine Stephens declined to say whether the staff members involved would face disciplinary action, but said the situation “involved poor judgment.”

That’s the understatement of the year.

Maybe I’m just having an emotional reaction to this, but if this were my kid, I’d be apoplectic. What’s to be gained by this? I suppose that (sadly) it may not be a bad idea to have an emergency plan in the event of an intruder, but to stage such a thing off campus and to lie to the children that it’s real? Isn’t this just like the little boy who cried wolf? Who will believe the teachers the next time if there’s a real threat from a gunman? I mean, don’t we learn these types of lessons as kids? Where is the thinking and discernment on the part of the adults in charge?

Yeesh.

Education

Kookabunga

by Tim Lien

There is an old schoolyard joke that has undergone various revisions—each with different levels of the grotesque and explicit. It goes something like this:

Two missionaries head into the heart of the Amazon jungle. They stumble into a clearing headlong into the Kookabunga tribe. The chief and his tattooed warriors are evidently hostile and blood-thirsty. Through broken Portuguese/Spanish/English, the chief lets the missionaries know that there will be punishment for violating their sacred ceremony. The missionaries are presented with a choice: Death or Kookabunga. The first missionary steps forward and chooses: “Kookabunga,” he says. The chief nods and commences the punishment. The missionary is branded, tattooed, dipped in boiling water, hung upside down for three days, given hallucinogenic poisons, beaten constantly, force-fed angry ants, blinded, and permanently mutilated. Barely alive, he is released to crawl through the jungle. The chief gives the second missionary the same choice: Death or Kookabunga. Horrified by his partner’s ordeal, the second man quickly selects Death. The chief nods knowingly, raises his spear, and shouts the command: “Death! Death by Kookabunga!”

This pertains to a “letter to the editor” (Tuscaloosa News, April 6, 2007) that I recently read. Here it is, below: Reread the second highlighted section. Considering the author’s wish for prosperity in the U.S., this smacks of postmodern pragmatism. Instead of promoting critical thinking and the pursuit of integrated truth, he has settled for two variables which he thinks are foundational for success. But his selection of Salary and Citizenry result in the same thing he bemoans. Understanding and participating in the political process still requires thought; it does not suffice for someone to ably push a “chad” completely through a voting card, and to pay their bills and taxes. That is mere Socialism eking out an existence. Advancement does not come, primarily, through participation, but rather, through excellent, superior, and creative thinking. It is like accepting a mass of bad decisions over and above a singular good one, because “there were more people involved.” Failure to foster critical thinking in the educational process leaves many with choices that seem oddly alike: Death or Kookabunga.

Education

Mary, Mary, Why Ya Buggin?

by Clay Staggs

I am a fan of Macintosh computers. I work on a MacBook Pro, which I adore, and there are no fewer than 7 other Macs in my house. It’s one of my interests. So, I peruse several Mac-related websites on a regular basis.

Recently, I came across an article where Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, who is famously liberal (Al Gore is on Apple’s board of directors), made some very pointed comments about teachers’ unions. He said:

“What kind of person could you get to run a small business if you told them that when they came in they couldn’t get rid of people that they thought weren’t any good?”

“Not really great ones because if you’re really smart you go, ‘I can’t win.’”

“I believe that what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way.”

“This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the-charts crazy.”

Now, I didn’t really think that comments like those would go unnoticed. And it’s one thing for union supporters to disagree, but, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan observed, everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

Enter Mary Bergan, president of the California Federation of Teachers. Mary is upset with Mr. Jobs, and has decided to take him on. She, on behalf of the CFT, has demanded that he either attend their annual conference to respond or issue an apology for his “insulting comments.” Should he fail to do either, then the CFT will award Mr. Jobs its inaugural Rotten Apple Award, “for the individual who best personifies the need to think differently about public education and teacher unions.” Clever play on Apple’s “Think Different” ad campaign, no?

Mary apparently put all this in a letter to Steve. She tried to turn the tables on him, writing:

How well could a business — say, a computer company — operate if you paid its professional employees so poorly and put them in work environments so unsupportive that nearly half of them left the company within five years? … How long could that business survive if it had to hold bake sales to get enough chips to build its machines?

This made me wonder just how poorly teachers were paid in California. So I did a little googling. According to the California Department of Education, in 2003, beginning teachers’ salaries ranged from $33,000 to $37, 000, varying with the size of the school. A midrange salary is $50,000 to $58,000. Now, I realize that the cost of living is higher there than here, but that didn’t exactly sound like poverty level living to me. So I googled to find a standard of comparison. According to the US Census Bureau, the median household (note that there are two earners in many households) income in California from 2002-04 (in 2004 dollars) is $50,000. So a midrange teacher’s salary (alone) equals or exceeds the median household income.

But what about that bake sale part? What’s the state of California putting out each year per pupil? According to the National Education Association, $7,860.000 in 2003. I believe that would cover just about any private school tuition here, and I suspect many fine ones in California too.

Mary is definitely buggin. She certainly does not have to like Steve Jobs’s view of teachers’ unions. But why attack him with accusations that are disprovable with a few Google searches? A cynical reader might think that Mary couldn’t refute Steve’s points, and was just trying to change the subject.

Education

News Flash: Sun Rises in East

by Clay Staggs

Sorry for the snarky title, but stories like this really get under my skin. Lo and behold, there’s now an academic study that says that praising your children when praise is not deserved is - brace yourselves - counterproductive. Stop and ask yourself how many stories you’ve read from the supposed experts in childrearing and education about the crucial importance of the child’s self-esteem. Some have even gone so far as to advocate that children be allowed to pursue “inventive spelling” of words, urging teachers and parents to “ignore spelling and grammar errors, unless the learners ask to be corrected,” and “respect learners and be sensitive to their feelings as you help them build confidence in writing.” Yes, heaven forbid that anyone be corrected, lest their feelings and self-esteem suffer irreparable injury.

Only, now there’s evidence (as if any were really needed) that it’s all baloney. You see, it turns out that if you praise your child for being smart (even in the face of their failures and mistakes) they come to believe that they are indeed smart, and need not expend all that much effort on learning since they’re so smart already. The study also found that, if, instead, you praise a child for his or her efforts or hard work, then the child believes that effort and hard work yield good results and he or she tries to work harder and put forth more effort. Read the whole story.

If you really need to.

Books

On “Thirteen Moons” and Selective History

by Jimmy Hopper

The Riverwood Book Group recently completed Charles Frazier’s second novel, Thirteen Moons; his first novel, Cold Mountain, having been an extraordinary effort. As always, we had some great conversations about the book and the ideas generated both by the book and by the conversations.

Thirteen Moons essentially concerns the Southern Cherokee tribes and their interaction with the United States, the new nation formed on lands that they, and other tribes had considered their own. The group enjoyed the novel but it was, in my opinion, a mixed bag with a driving narrative through the first third and the “Trail of Tears” section, but meandering otherwise. It seemed to me that Frazier tried to both realistically portray certain of his characters but to also use them as symbols for such ideals as youth, a way of life, etc. In some cases, particularly the the part Indian girl Claire, he ended with neither.However, this post isn’t a book review, but a look at selective history.

The term, “Trail of Tears,” has been known to me since my youth, but as a fact of American history; and I’m an aficionado of American history, I knew nothing except that it concerned the removal of Southern Indians to Oklahoma. I knew no details, no human history, no politics; nothing except the fact that the removal had to do with the land being overrun with settlers and there was no place for the Indians. I guess I should have figured something, if only because of the word “tears” in the description. Walking from North Carolina to Oklahoma is with your possessions is enough to make one cry, I supposed. I also should have figured out how it was done from the simple fact that Andrew Jackson was president at that time. There was simply no way there was any consideration for humanity toward them from a man who didn’t consider them human.

The truth of it is that the entire episode was a disgrace; one in a long series of disgraces culminating in the Wounded Knee massacre that now exemplifies the taking of this country from its original inhabitants. I remember reading Thomas Jefferson’s comments to Meriweather Lewis regarding the tribes he would find “beyond the wide Missouri” and realizing that the the Manifest Destiny was there from the beginning as a matter of right. The tragedy of the Trail of Tears is well described in Thirteen Moons, in fact, the capture and execution of “Charley” (Tasli in history) and his men is unforgettable. There is a sense in which the Cherokees and Creeks were lucky, however. There was still an Oklahoma to which they could be sent. As the movement neared the Pacific Ocean, limited genocide became more in vogue. The ganeral aspect of untaught, sanitized American history probably served the country well when an astonishingly patriotic nation was called on to save the world from Fascism in the 20th Centrury.

Recently I found and read a historical marker on the street to the west of the new Tuscaloosa News building and near Capitol Park. It commorates a speech given by Chief Eufaula of the Alabama Creek Indians to the state legislature immediately before they embarked on the “Trail of Tears.” In it, he speaks of how he believed that the “men who built the great houses” had sought to destroy his people.” Now, he says that he feels that the “white Father doesn’t want harm to come to his “red children” but has their best interest at heart. He gets his shots in, though. They are being moved from the land of their ancestors, where “their fathers’ bones are buried.” They are forced to obey “laws they don’t understand.” He closes, poignantly, with the statement that “the Indian fires are going out in Alabama” and that, hopefully they will be re-lit in the west. He concludes with “This is all I have to say.” The sum of it is heartbreaking.

The question raised with the Book Group had to do with where the Christians were during all this. Christians were conspicious by their absence. There was not even one Bonhoeffer speaking out against injustice and evil, made official by an impersonal bureaucracy but still evil.

Education

The edges of truth

by Peggy Drinkard

My eighth grade son and I have the privilege of participating in a trial run of Patria Institute’s first upper level mathematics course. It is taught by James Nickel, author of MATHEMATICS, IS GOD SILENT? (a book I recommend to anyone, but especially those involved in any aspect of education.) Yesterday’s lecture was on the Pythagorean theorum. As background, Mr. Nickel gave some historical information about Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans (his discipuli). In essense, Pythagoras recognized that the cosmos is full of mathematical “harmonies” (patterns, schemes) but did not acknowledge the One behind the harmonies. There were, at that time, many synagogues in Greece where the Living God was proclaimed, but Pythagoras did not accept this knowledge. The creed of Pythagoras became, “Numbers rule the universe,” and a somewhat mystical brotherhood was created around this creed. Dr. Nickel explained that a tool , numbers, God gave to us for understanding and describing his works, was turned by Pythagoras and his followers into something divine in its own right, and that man does this with many things. For the Greek philosophers, it was reason….for modern man, perhaps science or money or fame or etc. This information was followed by the demonstration of two proofs of the Pythagorean theorum…2 out of over 370 such proofs. (Here Mr. Nickel explained how the many approaches to demonstrating one truth reflected another pattern built into the universe; that of unity and diversity, reflecting the Trinitarian nature of God.) All of this was fascinating study, but I especially appreciated a quote he gave of Bernard Ramm. ” If we do not fear God, we shall forever be at the edge of truth, and to crown our folly, we shall view the edge of truth as the center.” Viewing the edges as the center is a concept I’ve been meditating on since. It relates well to the contents of a Tim Keller sermon as related to me recently, titled “The Girl Nobody Wanted.” The text was the marriage of Jacob to, supposedly, Rachel, but in fact, Leah. In essence the theme was that anything we put as the focus of our lives….that one thing that we think will fulfill all our needs, and look to it as opposed to our Maker for this fulfillment, will always let us down. Jacob had such a driving focus on Rachel, but he awoke to Leah. If I remember correctly, Mr. Keller’s analogy was that when we create these idols, we are always going to “wake up to Leah”. Our idols not only let us down, but create for us many woes and sad consequences we can’t foresee. I’m sure we all know something of this from our own life experiences, (i.e. that plasma TV is going to be outdated by the time we can afford it, ha!) but it was good to hear it all put so succinctly.

Education

Fat Studies

by Clay Staggs

It never ceases to amaze me what passes for scholarship at universities today. Yes, apparently the next wave in victim-identity pseudo-studies is upon us, and it’s fat. The New York Times has a write- up that you can read here.

Honestly, I suppose it’s just easier to sit around and philosophize about why fat folks are mistreated in the world rather than to do the hard work of education and true scholarship. According to the Washington Post, only 31% of college graduates can read and process written information properly.

According to the Times, “Fat scholars believe they are serving justice and many hope that one day fat studies will be as ubiquitous on campus as Shakespeare.” But if the students can’t read and comprehend either, what difference will it make? The Times article provides the disturbing answer, from Professor Robert Bucholz, a history prof at Loyola University in Chicago:

There’s an element of trying to right the balance,” he said. “It’s time for the fat to receive their due.

So there you go. It’s not really about teaching or learning, it’s about the fat getting their due, which obviously does not include an education.

Education

Bulletproof Books?

by Clay Staggs

I know that everyone is concerned about school safety, but has it really come to this?

Education

Civic Illiteracy

by Clay Staggs

Here’s a link to an interesting article about the civic literacy of American college grads. If true, the fact that seniors only scored 1.5% better than freshmen is yet another devastating critique of the state of higher education in America.

The fact that the elite universities fared among the worst doesn’t surprise me, though. When Kimberly and I were at NYU, she looked into taking some extra classes at the law school while we were there. NYU’s law school consistently ranks in the top 10 in the US. Kimberly’s area of interest in the law is real estate, so we figured that there would be lots of really interesting classes there that wouldn’t have been available to her at Alabama.

Boy, were we wrong. There were two property related classes offered in the Fall of 1998. Basic Property (the class first year students are required to take) and Trends in Land Law in Africa. That was it. No course on mortgage law, no course on zoning and land use planning, no course on development (all of which had been offered at Alabama).

Sadly, I fear that this study is right on the money. It seems that our university system is abandoning the traditions of Western Civilization in favor of the fad du jour. I also fear that the author’s predicitions about the consequence of this trend are correct.

Education

I Was Eavesdropping

by Tim Lien

I was sitting in a booth, reading my paper—initially, minding my own business. A cell phone rang behind me. It started out as Inadvertent Overhearing. And then it progressed into Casual Curiosity. And then it ended with Intentional Eavesdropping:

“Hello.”

 [pause]

“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with ‘er”

 [pause]

“She fine.”

 [pause]

“Y’all quit botherin’ my girl.”

 [pause]

“Amber doin’ great. She the homecoming queen.”

 [pause]

 [and then heatedly,]

“That’s y’alls’ problem for eight hours every day.
Don’t be calling me every 10 minutes everyday.”

 [pause]

“We’ll see, won’ we , we’ll see.”

 [pause]

“Ya’ll better be ready, ‘cause I’m gonna be there at 7:45 Monday mornin’.”

 [cell phone slams down on table.]

So I paused right there in the middle of the sports section. Sure, the lady behind me needed a couple of well-placed verbs. Sure, her logic wasn’t airtight. But she had a point.

Whether it was done purposefully, subconsciously, or accidentally, the lady expressed a fundamental flaw in the federal socialization of education. The System requests that you relinquish your God-given mandateto educate or supervise the education of your child. The System also politely requests that you remove yourself from being too curious, helpful, or inquisitive. Changes in the System’s curriculum are impossible to implement, because the System has its hands tied by the System. The System asks that you help with fund-raisers. The System asks that you join the PTA. But when it comes to the mind, the System will take it from here, thank-you-very-much. If your child misbehaves, the System will take disciplinary action utilizing all the pre-approved System-worthy procedures. However, if unruliness persists beyond the System’s capacity to direct behavior, then the System will give you a call. In other words, the System does not need help with education of the mind, just with discipline of the child.

And this is the flaw. True discipline had been inappropriately excised from education. Because if education is truly an education it will be disciplined, and if discipline is truly good, it will seek to educate. The lady behind me was expressing the logical end to institutional education—it must encapsulate both if it has professed superiority in the education of children. The System cannot have it both ways. They cannot demand parental involvement in discipline and then philosophically stop them at the training of the mind. The two are inseparable. They should come from the same hand.

Education

Doing Some Homework on Homework

by Clay Staggs

I’ve heard several friends complain about the amount of homework that their elementary age kids have to do. Just a few years ago, I would have thought that such comments were just whining and that the kids needed to suck it up. My views have since changed. In fact, when we were deciding on policies for the classical school, we all agreed that homework in the elementary years should be limited (no more that 15 minutes for the first three years, if memory serves, and then only 30 minutes after that through the 5th grade).

Now it seems that there’s some science to back us up. This comes courtesy of the Instawife (married to the Instapundit, the granddaddy of blogs). Interesting reading.

Education

Must Reads

by Jimmy Hopper

The September Salt and Light is now up on this web site under “Ministries”, “Newsletter” and Peggy Drinkard’s page, “Our Kids” is a must read. It is the first of two successive articles on the catechism for children but, as background, she addresses not only the loss of an overall cultural Biblical knowledge; knowledge that was, and is, an essential part of the Western Canon, but in a very real sense, the loss of the Canon itself. This dearth of knowledge that is such an important part of our heritage and even the essential part of Western Civilization, must be addressed as we educate our children. This idea is the driving force behind the establishment of the Riverwood Classical School, which looks to provide a rigorous academic program based on the Bible and Biblical principles. Be sure and read Peggy’s thoughts on this important subject and I look forward to next month’s concluding article.

Also be sure to check out Dana Miller’s very inspiring thoughts on dealing with pain as a Christian in the Reflections section. It is titled “Finding the Profound in Pain.” Read it and marvel at God’s interaction with Dana.

Education

John Knox Spins in his Grave

by Clay Staggs

Our good friends in the PCUSA have published a book (under their Westminster John Knox imprint) that purports to examine the events of 9/11 from a Christian perspective. Apparently, the book ultimately concludes that there was no attack. Instead, people in the administration conspired to bring down the World Trade Centers in a controlled demolition and foist blame on the countries they desired to invade. [Full disclosure: I have not read the book myself.] The Washington TImes article on the book can be found here:

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20060818-122729-2030r.htm

Lest anyone doubt the paper’s veracity, if you point your browser to the publisher’s site, this book is the LEAD book being promoted as I write this. Check it out:

http://www.ppcbooks.com

Now, there are any number of comments one could make about the PCUSA’s decision to publish this book, and I reserve the right to come back later to those (or perhaps commenters can pick up my slack). The thing that struck me the most, though, has to do with education, and, more specifically, the consequences of lack of historical knowledge on the public’s part.

On the publisher’s page, there are several reviewers’ comments. This was the one that got me:

“Do American Christians want the United States to act like the New Rome, invading other countries to impose its imperial rule and its control of other peoples’ resources? That is just what the U.S. is doing, increasingly so since 9/11, explains David Griffin. In this gripping summary of evidence for the truth behind 9/11 and the 9/11 Commission report, Griffin makes a compelling case that the imperial practices of the American government have become a destructive force in the world. And he clarifies the biblical and theological basis for Christians to challenge the resurgent American imperialism that often claims divine blessing on its destructive actions.” - Richard A. Horsley, Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and the Study of Religion, University of Massachusetts, and author of Jesus and Empire: The Kingdom of God and the New World Disorder

Opinions about what the US is doing in the Middle East surely vary, and people of good will can disagree. However, what the US is doing is certainly not replicating the Roman empire. To my knowledge, we’re not collecting any taxes from the lands we’ve supposedly conquered. We’re not persecuting religions there that offend our government. We’re not conscripting Iraqis and Afghans into our military.

Now, Distinguished Professor Horsley probably knows exactly what the Romans did in their empire. What’s disturbing is that he can make such comments and have them taken seriously by mainstream organizations, and, by extension, parts of the general public. I would like to think that the PCUSA’s publisher would be embarrassed to publish such comments because their readers would scoff at their obvious inaccuracy.

Mark this down as yet another argument for broad liberal arts education.

Education

An Argument for Liberalism

by Tim Lien

And I mean “Liberalism,” as in a “Liberal Arts Education.” And by “Liberal Arts Education,” I mean integration of learning across academic disciplines. As I’ve told some of you, I’ve been on a John Steinbeck kick, lately. It struck me, again, while reading the introduction to To a God Unknown, that other disciplines outside of our “niche” or “vocational specialty” are needed for true excellence in our respective fields of expertise. Self-admittedly, writing To a God Unknown was Steinbeck’s greatest challenge— he wrote it over a period of 4 years. The first draft was roundly rejected by many publishing houses. He, himself, said the book was flat and void of real interest. However, he attributes its re-vitalization to the time he spent reading poetry of Jeffers, ancient literature, and studying marine biology and philosophy with a close friend. These seem tangential and unnecessary; however, Steinbeck felt he was enriched and energized by the task of thinking outside of his craft. Today’s educational system has seemed to prefer the quick assessment of aptitude so that a student can be gradually funneled towards specialization. Two year vocational schools have done very well at placing graduates into secure, well-paying jobs, but at what price? Ignoring the elements of a “well-rounded” education actually stunts the growth of our specialties. Am I saying that a welder could benefit from a Fine Arts course? Yes.