Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

CURRENT AFFAIRS

**  Is Attorney William Barr President Trump's lap dog?  No.   The accusation stems from the incessant anti-Trump propaganda campaign.   See:  "AG Barr does hand-to-hand combat with NPR"

**  Good News: AG Barr is investigating the domestic terrorists.

**  Bad news from China:   China Trying to "Rewrite the Biblc, Force Churches to Sing Communist Anthems.

** Hypocrisy!   Minneapolis city council members who voted to defund police are getting taxpayer-funded private security.

** Black Lives Matter leader:  "If America doesn't give us what we want we will burn down this system."

** "Teen Vogue Magazine Pushes Marxism on Its Young Readers"

**  Horrible News for Democrats:  After a Month of Leftist Rioting, Looting and Arson Trump's Approval with Black voters Remains at 28%

**  Black Lives Matter Rally with no black people.   A black Republican couple look on from a distance and laugh.  

ROD DREHER AND THE STATE OF OUR TIMES

It's important to keep reading Rod Dreher.  I do not have time to offer additional or better comments on the three posts listed below, but perhaps I can do so at a later time.  Each is important reading.

 --  Here is a post on Trump's evangelical support and it's pervasive pessimism -- which reflects my own thinking.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/evangelicals-trump-shield-2020/

--  See also this on the religion of the New York Times:  https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/new-york-times-editorial-staff-meeting-racism-oberlin-faculty-senate/

And this on progressive education in California - https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/california-to-become-yugoslavia-ethnic-studies/

UNIVERSITY TRUSTEES PRIZE PERKS; SHRINK FROM REFORM

Paul S. Levy - University Boardrooms Need Reform 

Writer Paul S. Levy resigned from serving as a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania over Pen Law's treatment of law professor Amy Wax.  He received no support.   Levy writes:  Nobody in the university community has an incentive to speak out, and everyone seems afraid to do so.  Professors fear retaliation; students worry about social ostracism... 

Trustees and donors candidly admit in private that they do not want to jeopardize their children's chances for admission...  There's no incentive to rock the boat, and universities make sure they don't get much opportunity.  At the trustee level, the board is large and its formal meetings are entirely show and tell, with discussion severely limited and vote outcomes never in doubt.  Penn Law overseers do not vote on anything. 

Levy's conclusion: "When universities violate their values, trustees and overseers should resign, and donors should close their wallets.  Until that happens, nothing will change. 

Me:  Until students, professors and trustees develop a spine and convictions that overcome their self-regard for reputation and well being, universities will remain in the lamentable P.C. condition in which they currently wallow, a disgrace to founding documents and historic principles of intellectual debate.   

Colleges fail in teaching how to think

Douglas Belkin at the Wall Street Journal reports:

Freshmen and seniors at about 200 colleges across the U.S. take a little-known test every year to measure how much better they get at learning to think. The results are discouraging.

At more than half of schools, at least a third of seniors were unable to make a cohesive argument, assess the quality of evidence in a document or interpret data in a table, The Wall Street Journal found after reviewing the latest results from dozens of public colleges and universities that gave the exam between 2013 and 2016. (See full results.)

KIDS NEED TO BE IN THE KITCHEN

I greatly enjoyed an article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal titled "There's No School Like the Kitchen."  The online version carries the subtitle, "Cooking helps kids learn, appreciate different cultures and refine their motor skills."  I found Lorraine Allen's article both intriguing and convincing.  She writes:

My husband and I cook daily for our 8-year-old daughter because, like 15 million other Americans (an estimated two children per classroom), she has food allergies. For our daughter, this ritual is inspiring and educational. She loves helping out—rolling dough, mixing sauces—and creating her own dishes, from tarts to homemade linguine. At age 6 she opened her own allergy-friendly bakery. I’m no gourmet chef, but I spent much of my own childhood helping my grandmother in the kitchen, a lucky thing, I now know.

As our child grows, I’ve come to realize that helping in the kitchen develops far more than basic cooking skills. Children gain countless crucial developmental skills, and because they absorb these lessons in a hands-on, playful way, they are immediately engaged without parental nagging.

For toddlers, the kitchen is a perfect place to hone their gross and fine motor skills, using their hands to wash and peel produce, stir sauce, or dig out a measure of flour or pinch of salt. A preschooler will gain important cognitive skills from sorting forks and spoons, matching lids on sippy cups, and avoiding a hot stove.

A CAMPUS FREE SPEECH ACT IS DESPERATELY NEEDED

George Leef writes in National Review Online:

I wrote last week about the importance of the model bill drafted by the Goldwater Institute — the Campus Free Speech Act. In my latest Forbes article, I elaborate on the problem and why state legislators must take action.

Free speech is far too important to leave to the campus crowd of administrators, faculty, and zealous students who are little inclined to stand up for free speech. Mostly, anti-speech views rule — that is to say, speech is tolerated only if it aligns perfectly with “progressive” ideology. Since campus officials have shown that they cannot be entrusted with the crucial task of justifying and defending free speech, it’s time for state lawmakers to step in. Sure, the academic elite will howl that such legislation interferes in “their” domain, but public colleges and universities are not theirs to run.

Let us hope that legislators who want to restore the First Amendment and its values on our campuses introduce the model bill in each state. It certainly won’t pass everywhere, but the debate will be enlightening.

** Update:  Lt. Gov. Dan Forest of North CArolina issued a news release 2/7/16:

Lt. Governor Dan Forest to Push for Campus Free Speech

Raleigh, NC – Lt. Governor Dan Forest today announced his intention to work with members of the General Assembly to pass the “Restore Campus Free Speech Act”.  Recently, in spectacles that have been broadcast around the nation, speakers at college campuses are being denied their first amendment rights to freedom of speech.  This proposed legislation would ensure the First Amendment right of freedom of speech is upheld on North Carolina public university campuses.

QUICK TAKES

  -  David Pryce-Jones - It Would Be Foolish for Britain to Remain in the EU 

  -  David French - It is Only Going to Get Worse -- Jonathan Haidt on the Crisis on Campus.  -  On Leftist domination in the university and plus the effects of raising "fragile kids".  Valuable also for introducing me to Heterodox Academy website.  

  -  Luca Volontè  - European Resistance to Cultural Suicide

                                - Europe, Multiculturalism, and Nihilism

RALPH PETERS - IVY LEAGUE THINKERS CAN'T COPE WITH STREET LEVEL INTERNATIONAL REALITY

The actual title of Ralph Peters' article is Putin vs. the preppies and the Ph.D.s:  Outsiders, not insiders, change the world.   My thoughts:  Ivy league elites, hidebound and limited in experience and street-level savvy, can't cope with street-level international reality.  Peters nails it.  I have long felt that Obama's "education" narrowly ideological, his knowledge of history abysmal, his grasp of (sinful) human nature non-existent, and his prejudices blinding.  Here are two pull-quotes from Peters' valuable article:

Once-great universities have turned into political indoctrination centers worthy of the high Stalinist Era or the age of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Their aims may be more benign, but their unwillingness to consider alternative worldviews is every bit as rigid. . . .

Putin, that “petty bureaucrat,” has won every significant confrontation with the West, conquering foreign territory and humiliating presidents. Iran’s negotiators have outmaneuvered their Western interlocutors so spectacularly that they really don’t need Obama’s deal, having gotten most of what they needed: time and partial sanctions relief. And the Islamic State has confounded not only our elite’s prejudices about how the world should work, but demolished their platitudinous nonsense that “All men want peace.” In fact, some men delight in inflicting grotesque forms of violence on others.

LEFTIST INTOLERANCE OF CHRISTIAN HIGHER EDUCATION

- Update 2/10/15:  Gordon College not in danger of losing accreditation  but there still seems be a question.  (See also the National Review Online editorial.)

- Original post:

David French draws attention to the persecution of Gordon College.    As leftists go after restaurants (Chick-Fil-A) or craft stores (Hobby Lobby), on the basis of the Left's sexual orthodoxy, the right takes action. But not many know about isolated colleges in the northeast being hounded and persecuted and under threat of losing their accreditation because it has a policy they believe sex should be in marriage only.  

French suggestrs a remedy:

The new conservative congressional majority must put the Department of Education on notice that it will not be permitted to “recognize” any accrediting agency that seeks to impose an ideological litmus test on private, religious colleges. If the New England Association has given Gordon College a year to toe the leftist line, Congress should give the Department of Education and the New England Association six months to reaffirm its regulatory requirement to respect Gordon’s religious mission.

WATCH TUESDAY - COMMON CORE: THE GOVERNMENT'S CLASSROOM

From the Family Research Council:

Confused by all the talk about the Common Core in education? You're not alone. Join FRC live Tuesday evening via webcast as experts and leaders come together to discuss the coming overhaul in testing and curriculum that is part of the Common Core State Standards Initiative. The entire program will be available to view free online at frc.org/commoncore.

 

Program guests included:

• Neal McClusky (Associate Director of Center for Educational Freedom, CATO Institute)
• U.S. Representative Tom Cotton (R-Ark.)
• Dr. Sandra Stotsky (Professor Emerita, University of Arkansas)
• Governor Bobby Jindal (R-La.)
• Jane Robbins, Esq. (Senior Fellow, American Principles Project)
• Will Estrada, Esq. (Director of Federal Relations, Home School Legal Defense Association)

Highlights from the evening included Rep. Cotton's discussion of the Student Success Act, which seeks to support state and local accountability measures for public education; Jane Robbins's insight regarding data collection and privacy rights; and Will Estrada's assessment of parental rights and the effect of Common Core for homeschoolers and private schools. FRC received many questions and comments from parents, teachers, and citizens - many of which were addressed on the program. Please watch and share to inform your friends, family and community about the government's classroom.

Note: This post has been edited since its original posting

COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS: FRC POSITION

 On July 30, 2014, the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. hosted a Common Core forum, a video of which is available  here  

Sarah Perry of the Family Research Council has formulated FRC's 10-point position as follows:

1. The children of this nation belong first to their parents and families, not to their communities or governments. The primary authority over and direction of a child's education lies with that child's parent or guardian.

2. The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were created without benefit of transparency, by a non-profit organization, with the involvement of very few educators, and majority funded and influenced by corporate interests. Democratic participation, educator input, and opportunity for revision during the "closed door" development of the Standards were utterly lacking. The Standards were introduced and later adopted without benefit of field testing, and multiple members of the Standards validation committee refused to approve them.

3. The CCSS "dumb down" the teaching of America's students by emphasizing "perspectives" and "critical thinking" over content and facts. The CCSS utilize uniform standards that not only eliminate more advanced material from previous teaching curriculums, but also prohibit teachers from teaching students individually and instead promotes a "one size fits all" approach to teaching. CCSS also lower the standards of higher-performing states in order to align educational content and testing to the CCSS.

4. The CCSS Initiative represents a massive and dangerous overreach on the part of the Federal government.The principle of states' rights is outlined in the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which states that any powers not delegated to the federal government are granted to the states. Education is best accomplished when it is left to local communities, parents, teachers, and states.

5. The CCSS Initiative has resulted in, and will continue to result in, an exodus and demoralization of the nation's experienced educators. With the elimination of teacher creativity in content and approach, the CCSS shifted the delivery of education from teachers to technology, with test scores serving as the ultimate standard of educational success. [1]

LEFTIST ATTEMPT TO CONTROL HIGH SCHOOL TEACHING OF U.S. HISTORY

Paul Kurtz, in a blog post titled "New War Over High School U.S. History," writes:

Americans are only just now waking up to a quiet but devastatingly effective effort to replace the teaching of traditional American history in our high schools with a new, centrally-controlled, and sharply left-leaning curriculum.

The College Board, the company that issues the SAT and the various Advanced Placement (AP) exams, has created an elaborate new framework for the AP U.S. History Exam that will effectively force nearly all American high schools, public and private, to transform the way they teach U.S. History.

The traditional emphasis on America’s founders and the principles of constitutional government will soon be jettisoned in favor of a left-leaning emphasis on race, gender, class, ethnicity, etc.

A NEW LEFTIST ASSAULT ON AMERICAN EDUCATION

Stanley Kurtz, writing in National Review Online Corner, points out a new development that should be a concern to everyone, and especially to those who have seen Dinesh D'Souza's new film, America: Imagine the World Without Her. Kurtz writes:

. . .  It turns out that D’Souza’s film could not be better timed. Although it has barely registered yet in our public debates, the teaching of American history in our high schools has just been seized in what a few sharp-eyed critics rightly call a “curricular coup.” The College Board, the private company that creates the SAT test and the various Advance Placement tests, has issued a new set of guidelines that is about to turn the teaching of American history into exactly the sort of grievance-based pedagogy that D’Souza decries in his film.

Leftist academics have finally figured out a way to circumvent state and local control over America’s schools and effectively impose progressive political indoctrination on the entire country. Once the AP U.S. History test demands blame-America-first answers, public and private schools alike will be forced to construct an American history curriculum that “teaches to the test.”

Up until the last few months, the College Board has provided high school teachers with only a brief topical outline for the AP U.S. History test. The brevity of this outline has permitted states, school districts, and teachers across the country to approach American history in their own way.  Now, however, the College Board has created a lengthy and detailed “framework” for their AP U.S. History test.  That framework effectively forces teachers to adopt an ideologically left-leaning approach to American history, heavily emphasizing our country’s failings while giving short shrift to our founding principles.  [more . . .]

HEATHER MACDONALD - THE UNIVERSITY'S ROLE IN THE COLLAPSE OF THE WEST

"The University's Role in the Collapse of the West" may not be MacDonald's title but it comports well with her alarm at what has happened to Western culture via the universities and in particular the humanities.  Her article, "The Humanities and Us," begins with this paragraph:

In 2011, the University of California at Los Angeles decimated its English major. Such a development may seem insignificant, compared with, say, the federal takeover of health care. It is not. What happened at UCLA is part of a momentous shift in our culture that bears on our relationship to the past—and to civilization itself.

Until 2011, students majoring in English at UCLA had to take one course in Chaucer, two in Shakespeare, and one in Milton—the cornerstones of English literature. Following a revolt of the junior faculty, however, during which it was announced that Shakespeare was part of the “Empire,” UCLA junked these individual author requirements and replaced them with a mandate that all English majors take a total of three courses in the following four areas: Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Disability, and Sexuality Studies; Imperial, Transnational, and Postcolonial Studies; genre studies, interdisciplinary studies, and critical theory; or creative writing. In other words, the UCLA faculty was now officially indifferent as to whether an English major had ever read a word of Chaucer, Milton, or Shakespeare, but was determined to expose students, according to the course catalog, to “alternative rubrics of gender, sexuality, race, and class.”

The Incredibly Depressing Answers College Students Gave When Asked What the Holocaust Was and Where it Began

Sharon Schwartz writes in The Blaze -

A Pennsylvania woman set out with a video camera to learn what college students in her state know about the Holocaust — and discovered an incredible lack of knowledge not only of the genocide of the Jews, but of basic facts about U.S. history and World War II.

Rhonda Fink-Whitman visited college campuses in Pennsylvania this fall, including the venerated Ivy League institution the University of Pennsylvania, where she was repeatedly faced with a remarkable ignorance about events that took place in the last century. 

Students didn’t know where Normandy was, why U.S. forces landed there, why the U.S. even entered the war or who was president at the time. (Wilson, Eisenhower and JFK were among the guesses.)  One student didn’t know who Anne Frank was, because he said he never read the book.

Another student thought African Americans may have been targeted in the Holocaust.  [more . . .]

Me: The ignorance uncovered by Ms. Schwartz is eye-opening and scary. 

9

THE NARNIAN STORIES IN C.S. LEWIS' VISION OF EDUCATION

C.S. Lewis's views on education are marvelous.  Amy K. Hall, writing in the Stand to Reason blog, talks about the Minneapolis C.S. Lewis conference this weekend (which I blogged about here) and says:

       Joe Rigney, one of the speakers, has put together a book of collected essays on his topic, Live Like a Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis’s Chronicles. In the introduction, he explains that good stories play a part in shaping a person’s true perception of reality by developing a proper taste in the reader for the good, the true, and the beautiful:

      But it’s not enough to simply feel something in response to the objective reality of the world. You must also feel rightly and proportionately to the way the world is….

          Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought [The Abolition of Man, p. 26].

     These three realities form the foundation of true education. They also shape the aim of education….

         The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting, and hateful [p. 26-27].

     Following Plato, Lewis believed that we ought to initiate the young into these right responses, even before they are able to rationally understand or explain what they are feeling. The goal of such inculcation of right responses is that, when a child raised in this way grows up and encounters Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, he will welcome them with open arms, because he has been prepared for, and indeed, resembles them already.

    Which brings us, finally, to the function of the Narnian stories in Lewis’s vision of education. The Narnian stories display through imaginative fiction and fairy tale the way that the world really is. Here is courage and bravery in its shining glory. Here is honesty and truth-telling in its simplicity and profundity. Here is treachery in all its ugliness. Here is the face of Evil. Here also is the face of Good. A child (or adult) who lives in such stories will have developed the patterns of thought and affection that will be well-prepared to embrace the True, the Good, and the Beautiful (that is, to embrace Jesus Christ) when he finally encounters them (Him!). Like John the Baptist, Lewis and his cast of Narnians will have prepared the way.

Common Core: The Dangers of Federal Power in Education

From the Family Research Council:

FRC:

There are few things parents care more about than their children's education. That's why the current push for Common Core (CC) curricula is so troubling. In a lecture and panel discussion today at FRC, Dr. Allan Carlson of The Howard Center and editor of "The Family in America," Maureen Van Den Berg of the American Association of Christian Schools, and FRC Senior Fellow and former Reagan Administration Department of Education Bob Morrison official outlined the dangers of CC to children and families.

Dr. Carlson noted that CC calls for "more testing, more centralization, more 'experts,' and more money for a failing (public education) system." He also said that CC has been "stripped" of Judeo-Christian values to make it appear "neutral" about worldviews and what's right and wrong. Mrs. Van Den Berg said that given its federal orientation, CC is "easily influenced by cultural norms" and observed that CC will, if widely adopted, lead to national testing controlled by the federal government and also threaten the autonomy of private, religious, and home schools. Bob Morrison summarized by paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson, that in America, the people historically have shaped the government, but "under Common Core, the government shapes the people."

The good news is that increasingly, state governments are wary of this top-down imposition on our educational system. Just yesterday, Gov. Rick Scott of Florida said his state would be "dialing back its participation" in CC testing. Contact your state officials and encourage them to avoid CC and its lure of federal money. A rotten Core is worse than no core at all.

THE END OF THE UNIVERSITY AS WE KNOW IT

Nathan Harding's article in The American Interest is of major importance when we try to visualize higher eduction in the future.

n fifty years, if not much sooner, half of the roughly 4,500 colleges and universities now operating in the United States will have ceased to exist. The technology driving this change is already at work, and nothing can stop it. The future looks like this: Access to college-level education will be free for everyone; the residential college campus will become largely obsolete; tens of thousands of professors will lose their jobs; the bachelor’s degree will become increasingly irrelevant; and ten years from now Harvard will enroll ten million students. - See more at: http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=1352#sthash.pDUKS4rY.dpuf

ARTICLES WORTH READING

     - Michelle Malkin spotlights the secretive educational agenda that is undermining the curriculum in our nations' schools in her column, "Rotten to the Core: The growing grassroots revolt against Common Core."

     - Charles Krauthammer exposes President Obama's "The Sky is Falling" rhetoric regarding sequestration.

     - Claudia Rosett pulls back the curtain on the United Nations' anti-Semitic "Alliance of Civilizations"

DENNIS PRAGER - YOUNG CUBAN-AMERICANS PROGRAMMED BY U.S. EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM AND MEDIA

Prager's article carries the title, "Cuban-American Vote Explains Everything."  (HT: Bob)  Excerpt:  [my bolding]

[...] Most American elementary schools and high schools, and nearly all colleges and universities, teach everything that is significant from a liberal/left perspective. Multiculturalism has replaced E Pluribus Unum; the American past is villainous; the country is racist; morality is relative; and the left-wing cause of the day -- now global warming -- is taught as incontrovertible truth (ask your children if they have been shown Al Gore's global warming video, "An Inconvenient Truth," or if they have been taught both sides of the man-made-global-warming-leading-to-catastrophe hypothesis).

American schools, especially universities, are left-wing seminaries. The only difference between your local college and a Christian seminary is that the latter are more honest. The Christian seminary announces its goal -- to graduate committed Christians. The universities deceive when they say they have no agenda other than to open minds. They may believe this deception but it is one nevertheless. Almost no university ever has a conservative speaker at its commencement exercises; nearly every professor in liberal arts departments is a Democrat (and a left-wing Democrat at that), and on the few occasions that conservatives do receive an invitation to speak at a college, they are likely to be continuously heckled, may well need body guards, or their invitation is rescinded, as Fordham University did to Ann Coulter last week.

Members of the second Cuban-American generation have been far more influenced by their schools and by television shows than by their parents. And the same holds true for second and third and fourth and fifth generation Americans of every background.

A long time ago schools taught American history, not Politically Correct American history, as mandated, for example, by California law -- which forbids the use of any textbooks that do not emphasize the roles of women, blacks, Hispanics, gays, lesbians, bisexuals and the transgendered. . . .

.. . The left has been utterly clear about what leftism stands for and has used schools, the news media and the entertainment media to transmit its values.  As a result, the American trinity of Liberty, In God We Trust, and E Pluribus Unum have been supplanted with egalitarianism, secularism, and multiculturalism -- Europe's trinity.

And that is why the children of Cuban-Americans, like the children of virtually every other group in America, including white Anglo-Saxon Protestant children, increasingly vote left.

Either conservatives -- from presidential candidates to the rest of us -- learn what we stand for and communicate it, or the greatest experiment in making a good society will come to its end.

 

QUICK TAKES

- - Reading Advice from Edmund Burke.  I found this post from Walter Russell Mead fascinating:

A wonderful appreciation of the British orator, parliamentarian and essayist Edmund Burke appears in "The American Scholar" this summer, written by Brian Doyle. Read the whole thing is our advice. One (of many) highlights in the essay: Doyle tells us what Burke read.

It’s a paragraph any aspiring writer, reader and orator should study: read like this, and whatever talent you have will shine more brightly than it does now.

What did he read, this wonderful writer? Dryden’s prose was Burke’s great favorite, reported his friend Charles Fox; Demosthenes was his favorite orator, according to Chauncey Goodrich; “he delighted in Plutarch … and was particularly fond of Virgil, Horace, and Lucretius, a large part of whose writings he committed to memory. … Shakespeare was his daily study. … But his highest reverence was reserved for Milton, whose ‘richness of language, boundless learning, and Scriptural grandeur of conception’ [said Burke], were the first and last themes of his applause.” He read Bacon’s essays again and again, and clearly had read Cicero closely; he read Gibbon and Sheridan, whom he knew from Parliament; Johnson, Goldsmith, and Boswell; and he either still regularly scoured, or had a ferocious memory for, the Bible—“the most valuable repository of rhetoric in the English language,” as Burke’s later editor Edward Payne remarked. Was this, too, how Burke expended his little time alone, in his root-house in Buckinghamshire, reading avidly, widely, hungrily, happily, delighted to swim in eloquence other than his own? I hear him laughing quietly at a wry and piercing passage from Plutarch, or reciting the swinging cadences of Cicero in sheer admiration of the music of the man, or chanting lines from Lear, or reading aloud, with a shiver of awe, the Lord declaiming to Job: Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Who laid the corner stone thereof, when the morning stars sang together? Who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb? Declare, if thou hast understanding …

-- Scott Walker Prepares to Reform Higher Education in Wisconsin 

On June 19, Walker and officials from the University of Wisconsin announced a “revolutionary” flexible degree program. From the press release:

The unique self-paced, competency-based model will allow students to start classes anytime and earn credit for what they already know. Students will be able to demonstrate college-level competencies based on material they already learned in school, on the job, or on their own, as soon as they can prove that they know it. By taking advantage of this high quality, flexibility model, and by utilizing a variety of resources to help pay for their education, students will have new tools to accelerate their careers. Working together, the UW System, the State of Wisconsin, and other partners can make a high-quality UW college degree significantly more affordable and accessible to substantially more people. . .

AMERICAN PARENTS WANT THEIR CHILDREN TO LEARN CHINESE

At least some do.  And they go to great lengths to achieve their goals,  including a year in China (or Singapore, or Taiwan) in order to effect total immersion in Mandarin.  I found the following article intriguing, "To Improve Kids' Chinese, Parents Head to Asia."

DEBORAH KENNY - "WHY CHARTER SCHOOLS WORK"

I found Kenny's article informative.  We desperately need innovation in the school situation in the U.S.A.

Charters succeed because of their two defining characteristics—accountability and freedom. In exchange for being held accountable for student achievement results, charter schools are generally free from bureaucratic and union rules that prevent principals from hiring, firing or evaluating their own teams.

Read the whole thing.

U.S. ELEMENTARY AND HIGH SCHOOL TEXTBOOKS WHITEWASH ISLAM

How do you react when you become aware of blatant lies being fed our youth?  I find myself upset, angry -- and amazed.  What kind of mentality is so bold as to put forth not only distortions of the truth, but outright, bald-faced lies?   Are publishers in the pay of Saudi Arabia that they would agree to print such material?  How can school districts agree to use these textbooks?   Enquiring minds want to know

Erick Stakelbeck of CBN news reports:

WASHINGTON -- Through the years, American public schools have taught students that Nazism, communism, and other totalitarian ideologies should be opposed.

But when it comes to the current war with Islamic jihadists, public schools are taking a much different course.

According to a new report, students are getting a white-washed version of what our enemies believe, and it could have dangerous implications for America's future.

Sugar-coating Islam

For students in America's middle and high schools, 9/11 is a distant memory. Some were still toddlers when the World Trade Center towers fell.

But if they're looking for answers in their history textbooks about who attacked the United States and why, they may be disappointed.

One 2003 world geography textbook widely used in public schools gives the following explanation for the 9/11 attacks:

"On September 11, 2001, terrorists hijacked four passenger planes, crashing two of them into New York City's World Trade Center and the third into the Pentagon. The devastation and loss of so many lives made the United States firmly resolved to rid the world of terrorism."

Guy Rodgers, a former public school teacher who is now executive director of ACT! for America Education, noted that while the text mentions terrorism or a terrorist attack, it never mentions Islam or that the attackers were Muslim.

"The closest they'll get to it is they'll mention al Qaeda," Rodgers told CBN News. "But they don't typically define what al Qaeda is or describe it."

PARENTS: BEWARE THE LEFTIST ASSAULT ON YOUR CHILDREN

Marybeth Hicks has written a book that seems "Must-reading" for parents.  It's titled, Don't Let the Kids Drink the Kool Aid:  Confronting the Left's Assault on Our Families, Faith, and Freedom.  I saw her interviewed on the 700 club yesterday.  

 

Her book receives praise from people I highly respect:

“Fellow moms and dads: It’s time to unite and reclaim the hearts, minds, and souls of our children from socialist indoctrinators! In shocking detail and with investigative zeal, Marybeth Hicks exposes the Left’s cradle-to-grave campaign to undermine religion, the traditional family, and free market capitalism. The best defense against this corrosive culture of entitlement and grievance is a good offense. Don’t Let the Kids Drink the Kool-Aid provides an invaluable playbook for parents who reject the Nanny State.”
—MICHELLE MALKIN, nationally syndicated columnist and author of the New York Times bestseller Culture of Corruption

“This is a tremendously important and timely book about the greatest disaster that could befall our country. No, it’s not economic—as bad as the economy is—it’s cultural, with a generation growing up utterly divorced from traditional American ideals. As Marybeth says, if we want to perpetuate America we need Americans, but our culture is rapidly undermining our children’s commitment to faith and freedom. Reading Marybeth Hicks’s Don’t Let the Kids Drink the Kool-Aid might be the most patriotic thing you do this year. If you care you about this country, please buy it, please read it, and please spread the word.”
—ERIC METAXAS, the New York Times bestselling author of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy and Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery

“As important as it is to win the political battles, as Marybeth Hicks shows in her stunning new book Don’t Let the Kids Drink the Kool-Aid, if we don’t win the cultural battle for our children’s minds and hearts, we’ll have no future at all. Too many of us dismiss the propaganda of the liberal media, the public schools, and popular culture as harmless, but as Marybeth shows, it has demonstrably changed the way the next generation of Americans is thinking. Buy this book, be warned, and better yet—follow my friend Marybeth’s advice and take action.”
—DAVID LIMBAUGH, nationally syndicated columnist and author of the New York Times bestseller Crimes Against Liberty

Her columns for the Washington Times can be found here.  Previous books include Bringing Up Geeks: How to Protect Your Kid's Childhood in a Grow-Up-Too-Fast World and The Perfect World Inside My Minivan -- One mom's journey through the streets of suburbia.

"COMPROMISE" WITHOUT "CHANGING COURSE" = CRASH!

Via Ed Morrissey:

IBD’s two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez puts the crises in spending, long-term debt, and leadership into single-frame perspective this morning:

Ed Morrissey writes:

Also, be sure to check out Ramirez’ terrific collection of his works: Everyone Has the Right to My Opinion, which covers the entire breadth of Ramirez’ career, and it gives fascinating look at political history.  Read my review here, and watch my interviews with Ramirez here and here.  And don’t forget to check out the entire Investors.com site, which has now incorporated all of the former IBD Editorials, while individual investors still exist.

TYNDALE HOUSE, CAMBRIDGE - A LIBRARY UNDERGIRDING EXCELLENCE IN BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP

Justion Taylor interviewed Dr Peter J. Williams, Warden of Tyndale House, Cambridge, the premiere research library for biblical studies.  Biblical scholarship doesn't usually rank high on the priority list of most lay persons,  but its worth is utterly important.  Williams points out:

Christians accept that it may take vast sums of money to train a soldier or a doctor, and yet sometimes we are unwilling to accept that, if we want Bible scholars as well trained as our medical specialists, it is also going to involve serious investment. Investing in Christian scholarship is a long-term strategy and will usually seem less appealing than more obvious and apparently pressing needs. However, if the church does not have robust scholarship then it will be highly vulnerable to false ideas.

Williams' suggestion for mature charitable giving makes sense:

Evangelicals need to divide up their giving in sensible proportions, giving some to urgent and immediate causes, but also making adequate provision for ministries that tend only to yield fruit in the longer term.

THE LATEST "SOCIAL CONSERVATIVE REVIEW: THE INSIDER'S GUIDE TO PRO-FAMILY NEWS, FEBRUARY 3, 2011

These compilations from a variety of sources by the Family Research Council continue to offer interested people a gold mine.  A new edition appears every two weeks.  Readers will find in each a wealth of information not readily found elsewhere. For previous reviews I've posted, click here.   For a complete list of articles from this latest edition,  click "continue reading" below.

Meanwhile here's a quote from Hadley Arkes' article on Ave Maria University in south Florida:  (my underlining)

But a collision of worlds – and a serious challenge – came out at dinner with a dear friend, an accomplished professor, a graduate of Harvard transplanted from the Northeast. He has two daughters at Ave Maria and he said, when I pressed him, that he wouldn’t send any of his children to Harvard. The new sexual ethic, whether on pornography, promiscuity, abortion, homoeroticism, is so pervasive, touching every aspect of life, that there is little room for those who will not pay homage to that reigning ethic. I do think that it is mainly the schools with a religious character that can offer now real academic freedom and a course of study in the humanities not warped by ideology.

Me: What an extraordinary admission!  For "real academic freedom" and a "course of study in the humanities not warped by ideology,"  it is to religious schools one must go.

THE CHINESE STYLE OF PARENTING - AMY CHUA

- (See updates at the end of the post; also, we need to be reminded that genes play a role not discussed in the article)

The Wall Street Journal recently published a "cat-among-the-pigeons" piece by Amy Chua, "Why Chinese Mothers are Superior."  It's subtitle is equally provocative:  "Can a regimen of no playdates, no TV, no
computer games and hours of music practice create happy kids?  And what happens when they fight back?"

It's an extreme approach, no doubt, but the article  definitely offers a counter to the laissez-faire method currently in vogue in America.  In the Chua household the two daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to attend a sleepover, be in a school play, watch TV or play computer games, choose their own extracurricular activities, get any grade less than an A, or play any instrument other than the piano or violin.

Here are a few excerpts from Chua's article:

  "..When Western parents think they're being strict, they usually don't come close to being Chinese mothers.  For example, my Western friends who consider themselves strict make their children practice their instruments 30 minutes every day.  An hour at most.  For a Chinese mother, the first hour is the easy part. It's hours two and three that get tough."

Video: The 12 days of "Winter"

Educational dogma in America today.  (HT: Ed Morrissey)

 

MEMORIZATION AS AN ALLY OF LIBERATION

I've always thought it good and valuable -- yea, essential -- for youngsters to memorize great poetry and speeches, not to mention verses and chapters of the Bible.   I wish I had done more myself.  As I look back, one of my "singular accomplishments" (miniscule though it be) was memorizing Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address for a 5th grade assembly program.  I can still recite large portions of it and am the better for being able to do so.  Michael Knox Beran has written a superb essay, "In Defense of Memorization" which explains the benefits of memorization.    The article begins:

If there’s one thing progressive educators don’t like it’s rote learning. As a result, we now have several generations of Americans who’ve never memorized much of anything. Even highly educated people in their thirties and forties are often unable to recite half a dozen lines of classic poetry or prose.

Yet it wasn’t so long ago that kids in public schools from Boston to San Francisco committed poems like Shelley’s “To a Skylark” and Tennyson’s “Ulysses” to memory. They declaimed passages from Shakespeare and Wordsworth, the Psalms and the Declaration of Independence. Even in the earliest grades they got by heart snippets of “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” or “Abou Ben Adhem.” By 1970, however, this tradition was largely dead.

Should we care? Aren’t exercises in memorizing and reciting poetry and passages of prose an archaic curiosity, without educative value?

Yes we should care.  Kids -- and our civilization -- are being deprived.  Read the whole thing...

P.S. on the Gettysburg Address. . .   Beran says:

American kids learned the Gettysburg Address, as profound a statement of the national ideal as anyone ever uttered; and those who remember as adults Lincoln’s affirmation of the nation’s dedication to the proposition that all men are created equal—and to government of the people, by the people, for the people—never can lose sight of what makes America exceptional.

WHEATON COLLEGE THE TOP SCHOOL IN AMERICA?

That sounds pretty amazing.  Yet First Things magazine offers that assessment in its commentary on top schools in the nation.  Kevin DeYoung summarizes the magazine's list of schools according to various categories.

WHAT KEEPS THE LEFT FROM UNDERSTANDING THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT?

Education.  Or the lack thereof.  Peter Berkowitz makes important points:

[...]  "Leading history departments have emphasized social history and issues of race, class and gender at the expense of constitutional history, diplomatic history and military history.

Neither professors of political science nor of history have made a priority of instructing students in the founding principles of American constitutional government. Nor have they taught about the contest between the progressive vision and the conservative vision that has characterized American politics since Woodrow Wilson (then a political scientist at Princeton) helped launch the progressive movement in the late 19th century by arguing that the Constitution had become obsolete and hindered democratic reform.

Then there are the proliferating classes in practical ethics and moral reasoning. These expose students to hypothetical conundrums involving individuals in surreal circumstances suddenly facing life and death decisions, or present contentious public policy questions and explore the range of respectable progressive opinions for resolving them. Such exercises may sharpen students' ability to argue. They do little to teach about self-government.

They certainly do not teach about the virtues, or qualities of mind and character, that enable citizens to shoulder their political responsibilities and prosper amidst the opportunities and uncertainties that freedom brings. Nor do they teach the beliefs, practices and associations that foster such virtues and those that endanger them.

Those who doubt that the failings of higher education in America have political consequences need only reflect on the quality of progressive commentary on the tea party movement. Our universities have produced two generations of highly educated people who seem unable to recognize the spirited defense of fundamental American principles, even when it takes place for more than a year and a half right in front of their noses.

Me:  The failure of higher education is mind-bending.  If anyone sought to strategize on how to destroy a nation, one could hardly produce a more negative effect than the teaching of the past two generations.  I'll have to return to this subject another time.

DINESH D'SOUZA NAMED PRESIDENT OF THE KING'S COLLEGE IN NEW YORK CITY

Breaking news:

The best-selling author and Christian apologist Dinesh D'Souza has been selected as the new president of the King's College, a small Christian institution located in the Empire State Building.

Mr. D'Souza is the author of books like Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus and What's So Great About Christianity. He was a White House policy analyst in the Reagan administration and is a former fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. In recent years, he has become well known for high-profile debates against atheists like Christopher Hitchens.

In some ways, Mr. D'Souza is a surprising choice. He doesn't have a background in academic administration, and he is a Roman Catholic, while the King's College's has "its roots in the Protestant evangelical tradition" according to its Web site.

But in an interview Mr. D'Souza said that would not be a problem. He attended a nondenominational church in San Diego and has called himself "a believing Catholic but a poorly practicing one." He said that the college was "very well administered," and his job would be to help tailor its mission—along with bringing in more students and more money.

"I've been kind of a think-tank scholar for most of my career," he said. "In that sense, I've been part of a faculty of scholars, but in some ways I've seen myself as a lone operator, and this is a chance to spearhead an institution with a great history."

Mr. D'Souza said he would like to see the college grow from 450 students to four or five thousand. He said he wanted to take something that is "very young and build it into something." . . .

Me:  D'Souza is a fine scholar.  It will be interesting to see what kind of dynamic he brings to the college.  I find the choice intriguing.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY FUND SELLS ALL ISRAEL HOLDINGS

Story here.  No explanation given.  One can guess.  (HT: Drudge)

JOHN EDMISTON - TEN WAYS THE INTERNET IS CHANGING EVANGELISM AND MISSIONS

Edministon writes:    (HT: VirtueOnline)

There are currently 1.7 billion active Internet users; another three billion are expected to be added in the next five years. The developing world will soon go online as cell phones become smartphones and as cheap digital devices such as netbooks and e-readers proliferate.

The rollout of fiber-optic cable in Africa and massive satellite communication projects will also mean that bandwidth availability and reach will increase. Within five years, at least half the globe should be online; within fifteen years, Internet reach should be almost universal. Global proclamation will soon be within the reach of any Christian with a computer.

The changes are not only quantitative, they are also qualitative. The very nature and dynamic of Christian ministry are being fundamentally altered due to the new possibilities for relationship, connectivity, and information delivery that

VIDEO: UNIVERSITY MAKES DIPLOMA DEPENDENT ON SUPPORTING GAY RIGHTS

We are talking here of Augusta State University and Jennifer Keaton, a student in the counseling program, who was told she must undergo a "remediation program" concerning her biblical views on homosexuality.  Ed Morrissey has the video and offers commentary.

The Family Research Council adds:

Unfortunately, this is not the first such story of political correctness in the counseling profession reaching totalitarian levels. ADF [Alliance Defence Fund] is representing a student who was already kicked out of a similar program at Eastern Michigan University, and another woman who was fired as a counselor for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, her story appears on our video "ENDA: The End of Religious Freedom in America?." This radical agenda--not just to officially affirm homosexuality, but to forcefully crush any dissent--is exactly what Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan has endorsed. When will they learn that we have no intention of forfeiting our constitutional right to free speech and freedom of religion?

FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL (FRC) COLLATES VALUABLE ESSAYS AND ARTICLES

The Family Research Council is launching The Social Conservative Review.  An e-mail states it will constitute

"a unique summary of news of interest to social conservatives. The focus of this comprehensive collation of stories, journal articles, and op-eds is the intersection of moral  concern and public life, the issues that reflect and shape not only events and legislation, but the nation's very soul.

FRC will send the Review out twice monthly.

It will feature important pieces from the country's leading newspapers, magazines, journals and conservative Web sites. FRC's goal is to help keep you informed -- and ready to act -- about the policies and proposals, research and reports that bear directly on life, liberty, family and Christian faith.

Me: I have reproduced the e-mail below, complete with links.  It looks to me like a fabulous service.

---

The Social Conservative Review: The Insider's Guide to Pro-Family News

April 29, 2010

Educational Freedom and Reform

• "The ACLU: Unwelcome Schoolyard Bully?"
  Cynthia Hill, Family Research Council
• 2010 April School Reform News (full text pdf)
  Edited by Ben Boychuk, The Heartland Institute
• "Making Men without Chests: The Intellectual Life and Moral Imagination"
  R. J. Snell, First Principles Journal
• "Are There Harms of Home Schooling?"
  Christopher O. Tollefsen, The Witherspoon Institute
• "Expulsion may await campus pro-lifers"
  Bill Bumpas, OneNewsNow
• "Teach Social Justice-Or Else"
  Mark Bauerlein, Students For Academic Freedom
• "Education Spending in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: Stimulating the Status Quo"
  Lindsey Burke, The Heritage Foundation

Environmental Issues

• "How a Climate Change Treaty Threatens You, Your Nation and Your Church"
  Dr. Cal Beisner, FRC Family Policy Lecture
• "My Tribute to Earth Day"
  Jeanne Monahan, Family Research Council
• "Titles You Can't Make Up: Cleaner Air Could Speed Global Warming"
  Tom McClusky, Family Research Council Action
• "Creation and Man"
  Chuck Colson, Prison Fellowship
• "Getting Into Hot Water: Evangelicals and Global Warming"
  Benjamin B. Phillips, Acton Institute, Journal of Markets and Morality
• "Polls on the Environment and Global Warming"
  Karlyn Bowman, Andrew Rugg, American Enterprise Institute
• "Celebrate Earth's Best Friend"
  James M. Taylor, Heartland Institute
• "The Green Shepherd: The White House Wants Churches To Advance It's Climate Change Agenda"
  Meghan Clyne, The Weekly Standard
• "Environmentalism is now a religion, and being overtaken by extremism"
  Robert H. Nelson, The Catholic Thing

Faith and Policy

• "Fiscal Conservatism Is Not Enough: What Social Conservatives Offer the Party of Lincoln"
  Robert W. Patterson, The Family in America Journal
• "Prophet Jim Wallis and the Ecclesia of Economic Ignorance"
  John Couretas, The Acton Institute
• "Living Under God"
  Ken Blackwell, Family Research Council

Health Care

• "States Face Their First ObamaCare Test"
  Grace-Marie Turner, The Wall Street Journal
• "Hospital Visit Horrors? Here's the Rest of the Story"
  Peter Sprigg, Family Research Council
• "Ten Ways Consumer-Driven Health Care Is a Proven Success"
  Greg Scandlen, The Heartland Institute
• "The Separation of Health and State: What happens when all medical decisions are political"
  Opinion, Wall Street Journal
• "Krugman Admits Rationing (Death Panels) From Obamacare"
  Wesley J. Smith, First Things
• "The Tea Party Spirit and Lawless Health Care Reform"
  Charles R. Kesler, Claremont Review of Books
• "Bad Medicine: The Public Square"
  Joseph Bottum, First Things
• "US Is Turning Into Dependency Society"
  Lee Edwards, Ph.D., The Heritage Foundation
• "Where's the Administration's Cost Estimate?"
  James C. Capretta, National Review

Homosexuals in the Military

• "FRC's Tony Perkins Condemns Franklin Graham's Rescinded Invitation" to participate in Pentagon prayer event.
  FRC Press Release
• "Sex Matters in the Military"
  Peter Sprigg, The Washington Times
• "Homosexuals in the Military"
  Mackubin Thomas Owens, The Ashbrook Center
• "The Real Anti-Christian Bigotry"
  Jay Sekulow, American Center for Law and Justice

Judiciary

• The Judicial Review
  Family Research Council Action's Constitutional and Legal Commentary
• "The Coming Constitutional Debate"
  Judge Stephen Markham, Imprimis
• "Koh Fails the Democracy Test"
  John Fonte, Hudson Institute
• "Delegitimizing the Roberts Court"
  David Marion, The Ashbrook Institute
• "ADF on striking down the National Day of Prayer Statute"
  Alliance Defense Fund
• "More Prayer than Protests"
  Tobin Grant, Christianity Today

Marriage and Family

Family Economics

• "The Family GDP: How Marriage and Fertility Drive the Economy"
  Patrick F. Fagan, Ph.D., Family Research Council
• "The Economics of the Family Household"
  Patrick F. Fagan, Ph.D., Family Research Council Family Policy Lecture
• "Family Policy Lecture: The Crushing Burden of Student Loans on Family Formation for Generation X+"
  Dr. Allan Carlson, The Howard Center, Family Research Council Family Policy Lecture
• "Obamacare Update: About That Only Tax the Rich Thing . . ."
  Tom McClusky, Family Research Council Action
• "The VAT's in the Fire"
  Ken Blackwell, The Patriot Post

Marriage

• "Facing the Bad News (on out-of-wedlock births)"
  Patrick F. Fagan, Ph.D., The Catholic Thing
• "Culture Clash: Monogamy vs. Polyandry"
  Patrick F. Fagan, Ph.D., Family Research Council

Pornography

• "The Effects of Pornography on Individuals, Marriage, Family and Community"
  Patrick F. Fagan, Ph.D., Family Research Council
• "Standing for Truth"
  Daniel Weiss, Citizen Magazine
• "Pornography and the Muslim World"
  Carson Holloway, The Public Discourse
• "Public urged to take action to prevent .xxx web domain"
  Erin Roach, Baptist Press

Religious Liberty

• "Wall of Separation Between Church and State: Myth, Reality, Results"
  Dr. Kenyn M. Cureton, FRC Lecture
• "High Court Says Mojave Cross in California Can Stay"
  Robert Barnes, The Washington Post
• "Supreme Court Protects War Memorial Cross"
  Jay Sekulow, American Center for Law and Justice
• "Texas students see religious bias with 'year of Our Lord'"
  Casey Curlin, The Washington Times
• "Homeless in Binghamton"
  Faith J.H. McDonnell, Front Page Magazine
• "Western Civilization on Trial"
  Paul Marshall and Nina Shea, National Review Online Symposium
• "Hastings Case Tests Religious Freedom on Campus"
  By Newt Gingrich, Jim Garlow, The Washington Post

Sanctity of Life

Abortion

• "Post-Abortion Suffering: A Psychiatrist Looks at the Effects of Abortion"
  Dr. Martha Shuping and Chris Gacek, J.D., Ph.D., Family Research Council
• "Virginia Cuts Funding of Abortions"
  Jeanne Monahan, Family Research Council
• "Abortion Isn't Painless"
  Editorial, The Washington Times
• Oklahoma Senate overrides governor's vetoes to pass abortion laws
  Joe Sterling, CNN
• Legal status of induced abortions around the globe
  CBC News

Adoption

• "A Passion to Serve, A Vision for Life"
  Family Research Council Publication
• "Louisiana Senate panel rejects gay adoption expansion"
  Bill Barrow, Times-Picayune
• "Visits to mission result in adoption"
  Rob Hedelt, Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star

Cloning

• "UK Scientists Clone 3-Parent Embryos"
  Dr. David Prentice, Family Research Council

Bioethics

• "Obama Administration Eyes a More Active Role in Genomics"
  Rachel Lehmann-Haupt, BNET
• "Panel to take broad view of bioethics: President Obama appoints commission to advise on stem cells, clinical trials and more"
  Brendan Borrell, Nature
• "The First Christian Voices Against Euthanasia"
  David W.T. Brattston, The Weekly Standard
• "Euthanasia Bill turned away, but work goes on"
  Charlie Butts, One News Now

Stem Cell Research

• Family Research Council's major adult stem cell initiative, "Adult Stem Cells Saved My Life" ("Stem Cell Research Facts") features compelling video stories of persons whose lives have been transformed through adult stem cell implantation. The site also contains leading-edge information on this dynamic, transformative and entirely ethical type of stem cell treatment.
• "Vatican Funds Adult Stem Cell Research"
  Dr. David Prentice, Family Research Council

Other Articles of Note for Social Conservatives

• "Apologist in chief"
  Ken Blackwell, World Magazine
• "A Crisis Republicans Should Not Waste"
  Hadley Arkes, Weekly Standard
• "After Virtue: Localism and the Restoration of Character and Community"
  Austin Lipari, First Principles Journal
• "How America became a 'secular-socialist machine'"
  Newt Gingrich, The Washington Post
• "Schumer: Obama's 'counter-productive' Israel policy 'has to stop'"
  Ben Smith, The Politico
• "The Foreign Policy of Self-Abasement"
  Mona Charen, National Review
• "When Free Speech Wins"
  Eric Giunta, Front Page Magazine

SENDING A YOUNG MAN OR WOMAN OFF TO A CHRISTIAN COLLEGE?

Joel Belz, founder of World magazine, has some advice for young people going off to college:

  . . . So before making any commitments, sit in on at least a handful of classes. And don't just walk away then from the classroom. Go up, pointedly and politely, and tell the professor you're thinking of enrolling there. And ask very directly: "Can you tell me how your teaching is different because you're a Christian? Can you tell me how your trust in the Bible affects your teaching?" Pay close attention to the answers you get.

GLENN BECK - INDOCTRINATION IN OUR SCHOOLS

Yesterday I was working at my desk.  Glenn Beck was on. (I have a TV in the corner of the room.) It's rare I have an opportunity to watch him.  As I listened with one ear, I thought to myself: "This man is performing a valuable service with what he is saying about indoctrination in education."  I didn't hear everything, but in the hopes that the whole is as good as the part I heard, I am posting his program.  It comes in four parts.

RAVI ZACHARIAS NAMED UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR AT LARGE FOR TRINITY INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY

Trinity International University's announcement:

Ravi Zacharias, who earned his MDiv at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in 1976, is coming home to Trinity to teach. Recently named a university professor at large for Trinity International University, Ravi will again visit Trinity's Deerfield campus to address the community and to inaugurate his new role with the university on April 12, 2010.

Ravi’s professorship is one facet of a recent partnership announced between Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM) and Trinity. Trinity and RZIM are in the midst of developing an educational initiative that takes advantage of the strengths of the institution for the preparation of leaders in ministry for the worldwide church. Ravi and his team from RZIM will have a regularized presence on campus, focusing

WHY MONOPOLIES ARE BAD, AND WHY SCHOOL CHOICE MAKES SENSE

Ed Morrissey writes   

The Center for Freedom and Prosperity released another of its Econ 101 video series today, this time with Isabel Santa of Cato discussing the problems of monopolies — especially in regard to school choice. The government-imposed school monopoly squelches innovation and provides an inefficient model for education, Santo argues, much as monopolies in other areas make inefficient use of capital. [more . . .]

CHUCK COLSON IS STEAMED . . .

Why?  Because the political chicanery of Washington makes high-sounding speeches, but then ruthlessly eliminates a program for the poor that actually works!  To what are we referring?  The DC Opportunity Scholarship Program.   Colson has reason to be steamed.  He writes:

Cutting this program is a disgraceful example of how our leaders often pander to special interest groups than protect our most needy citizens. . .

So why did Congress cut it out? The National Education Association wanted them to do so.

C.S. LEWIS COLLEGE IN THE WORKS

C.S. Lewis College announcement: (HT: VirtueOnline)

The C.S. Lewis Foundation has long envisioned establishing a C.S. Lewis College in the U.S. as a fully accredited Christian institution of Great Books and Visual and Performing Arts. That vision is now about to become a reality as plans move forward to launch C.S. Lewis College on the beautiful campus in Northfield, Massachusetts, recently acquired for this purpose from Northfield Mount Hermon School. This property has been purchased for the use of C.S. Lewis College by Hobby Lobby, a privately held retail chain of arts and crafts stores based in Oklahoma City, OK.

Subject to securing all appropriate approvals, C.S. Lewis College currently plans to commence instruction in Fall 2012.

Comments offered at the press conference:

ANDREE SEU - NOVEL IDEAS FOR ANYONE WISHING TO START A NEW SEMINARY

Andree Seu, a writer for WORLD magazine, has "a modest proposal for a new seminary."  She herself is a seminary grad, so her opinions have personal experience (and a critique) behind them. 

Biographies are very important. Prime real estate in the curriculum should go to Charles Finney's "Holy Spirit Revivals," Trevor Yaxley's "William & Catherine" [The Life and Legacy of the Booths, Founders of the Salvation Army], the lives of Adoniram Judson, George Mueller, etc. (Philippians 3:17). These strengthen the soul because they are not mere history but testimonies, and "the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy."  . . .

. . . Study the Bible rather than theological systems, which are once-removed. God's power is in His Word, not in man-made constructions superimposed on it. Verse-by-verse is most helpful. All the rest will fall into place nicely.

. . . Allot enough time for a reading assignment to encourage the student to praise and pray his way through the book. The act of storing knowledge without immediate responsive worship is toxic to the soul. There is no subtler snare than intellectual pride. 

. . . Invite speakers from outside your camp. You'll be surprised how much of the Bible you missed. Close the seminary down for a week and have everyone listen to Beth Moore's "Believing God."

. . . If you find yourself reading more theology books than Bible, quit seminary immediately. 

There's a lot more. . .

Me:  When I read Seu's views, I was at first sympathetic.  I still am to a large extent.  I agree with the need to make Bible study central, and it's true that a "devotional approach" is commonly lacking at many (most?) seminaries, but on the other hand, it would be a disservice to exclude serious theological study and even comparative religion.  The mind must be expanded as well as the heart.  Critical thinking must proceed hand-in-hand with compassion, humility, and prayer.  I suspect Seu would agree with my comments.

THE TRAVESTY OF "SOCIAL JUSTICE" (MIS)EDUCATION IN THEORY AND PRACTICE

- Update 11/25/09 - What this post spotlights has become a hot issue at the University of Minnesota.  Read about it here.

- (Original post) - In perusing some reader comments on quite a different subject, a person recommended Sol Stern's Spring 2006 City Journal article, "The Ed Schools' Latest -and Worse- Humbug." It's a long article, aptly subtitled: "Teaching for “social justice” is a cruel hoax on disadvantaged kids."   I gladly confess that I read every word of the essay.   Through this and other materials, I am slowly becoming aware of what is taking place in educational departments in universities throughout the United States.  It's actually quite shocking. 

The article I am referencing begins with a discussion of Bill Ayer's influence on educational practice (note: this was written before Barack Obama became linked in the public mind with Ayers), and ends with words surveying the dismal wreckage wrought by "social justice" emphases in poor neighborhoods in the United States.  I can't do justice to the article in this short space.  If anyone wishes to regard me as some unreasonable hidebound conservative, okay, but you had better read the article first.

Below are a few excerpts towards the end of the article:

It cannot be repeated often enough: ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have bad consequences. The Freirian theories that carry over to social justice teaching are incapable of “liberating” the children of America’s so-called oppressed. As E. D. Hirsch has exhaustively shown, the scientific evidence about which classroom methods produce the best results for poor children point conclusively to the very methods that the critical pedagogy and social justice theorists denounce as oppressive and racist. By contrast, not one shred of hard evidence

KEVIN JENNINGS, OBAMA'S "SAFE SCHOOLS CZAR" HAS GOT TO GO!

What a crazy, irresponsible, "in-your-face" appointment.  Disagree?  Then read this Family Research Council report:

The Obama administration is spending precious capital protecting its Safe Schools "czar," but many believe that loyalty carries more political risk than reward. Last week, Kevin Jennings's "aw, shucks" response to covering up child sexual abuse should have sounded the alarm over at the Department of Education. Instead, Secretary Arne Duncan used the opportunity to praise Jennings as "uniquely qualified" to serve on the team. That may not be the consensus for much longer, since FRC has uncovered a series of op-eds that show Jennings's incredible hostility toward Christianity.

In at least two Huffington Post columns, Jennings attacks people of faith with complete and utter disdain. When the former director of GLSEN tried to implement a series of Gay Straight Alliances in classrooms back in 2007, Jennings described a Christian who fought the idea as having "not-yet-fully evolved views maybe because of his proximity to the Everglades (from whose ooze he may have recently climbed), [but] I can't dismiss them as the ravings of a single troglodyte. Instead, they represent a classic example of how

IS THE BRICK AND MORTAR COLLEGE A THING OF THE PAST? "YES"; IS ONLINE EDUCATION THE FUTURE? "YES"

So says Dr. Marvin Olasky, a 30 year veteran of higher education.   Olasky begins by asking basic questions:

Can online education match the classroom experience? And, since college tuition buys not only education (sometimes) but higher status and improved future earnings, will online diplomas be satisfactory union cards?

Olasky offers the following answers to these questions:

Some new evidence suggests that the answer to both questions will soon be yes. More than 1,000 studies of online learning have been published during the past 13 years. A U.S. Department of Education analysis of them concluded that, on average, "students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction" in the same courses. One reason is that face-to-face is often not face-to-face: Many college students snooze in big lecture halls. In good online courses, though, instructors 

COLLEGE CLASSROOMS: WHICH IS MORE EFFECTIVE, POWER POINT or HANDOUTS?

Perhaps surprisingly, handouts seems the clear winner.  Alan Jacobs, Wheaton College English professor and New Atlantis blogger, writes:

This fits with what I hear from students all the time:

A study published in the April issue of British Educational Research Journal found that 59 percent of students in a new survey reported that at least half of their lectures were boring, and that PowerPoint was one of the dullest methods they saw. The survey consisted of 211 students at a university in England and was conducted by researchers at the University of Central Lancashire.

Students in the survey gave low marks not just to PowerPoint, but also to all kinds of computer-assisted classroom activities, even interactive exercises in computer labs. "The least boring teaching methods were found to be seminars, practical sessions, and group discussions," said the report. In other words, tech-free classrooms were the most engaging.

I think when slide presentations are used well the story isn’t quite so sad, but they are almost never used well — and, as Edward Tufte never tires of saying, there are few lecturing situations in which a paper handout is not considerably more useful than a set of PowerPoint slides.

I consider The Handout a great pedagogical art form, and devote a lot of time to preparing handouts for classes. The keys are to (a) provide as much information as possible on the page (b) without overcrowding and (c) in a format that gives clear differentiating structure to the different points, ideas, and quotations. One of my minor fantasies is to be asked to give a seminar in handout preparation for my fellow teachers. Alas, it’ll never happen.

Me:  I found this observation encouraging, especially since I've never learned how to use Power Point!

GEORGE VERWER, MISSIONS MOBILIZER AND FOUNDER OF OPERATION MOBILIZATION, RECEIVES HONORARY D.D. FROM BIOLA UNIVERSITY

George Verwer is without doubt one of the most amazing men of our time.  I (along with thousands of others!) am privileged to know him.  His 2009 commencement address to the students of Biola University is vintage Verwer --  15 minutes of high energy, humor, vital connection, and powerful challenge.  Click here for the YouTube coverage.  You won't see another graduation speech like it anywhere.

Verwer's personal website is here.  Operation Mobilization's website is here.  And an 8 minute semi-humorous history of Operation Mobilization can be found here. The photo on the right is Verwer receiving his honorary degree.