trump and Christian nationalismism-extremist-threat 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2024/03/07/trump-christian-nationalism-extremist-threat/72869355007/

This is one of the most thoroughly researched articles I have read! 

Educator find

 Educator from usc?

Do I need an Education??

They keep on doing their survival dance, because no one has told them about their sacred dance. (Falling Upward Richard Rohr P14)

 

One of the factors in my inability to express my christian faith in a public arena is fear of misinterpretation. I don't want the interpretation of labels: catholic, protestant or fundamentalist. I desire for people to "listen to my intent" not just re-contextualize the "words". I am just finishing a re-draft of a Chem II college lab curriculum. It struck me how much interplay there was between the theoretical underpinnings of chemistry and the performance of lab activities. Students need some theory to understand the lab but once they perform the lab, they add (hopefully?) to their broader understanding of Chemistry. This process of re-contextualization is, I believe, one of the keys to learning. However, what I believe real education rests upon is the ability to see into one's own re-contextualization. A mature student realizes not just the fact that more knowledge was gained but that different contexts provide nuanced  interpretations of  knowledge. Public education it seems has codified its opposition to religion in separation of church and state mantras. It has set up a context . Unfortunately, it's unaware of its context. Yet on the outside millions of people go about doing the experiment of integrating thought and spiritual life . This estrangement  may in part have come about because  many of us in education are worried about being misinterpreted. Hence, students proceed as if there is no experiment necessary  or even see that there is an experimental model. We in public education have decided the context and the tune of the dance. Does "public" have to mean "secular" in its narrowest sense? Is there no room for soul in the machine of education? I thought the goal of education was to teach us dance? Does the dance have to be so robotic?

Rethinking Paradigms

This blog has been mostly dedicated to exploring education perspectives on public education locally and nationally (US). But since I retired from teaching in August 2013, I have found myself re-examining and rethinking the paradigms that dominate the discussion of education. Here's the beginning of this thought process.


Can we measure all that is education? Does it matter if Charter Schools do as well as Public Schools on tests that rely on accumulation and recapitulation of knowledge if these tests do not describe what we mean by education. I have become sceptical of the model that I for so long have endorsed. This begins to bear  a whole realm of factors in which I have more recently been more vested. What is the relationship between my Christian commitments of long ago and understanding education? How do we move to a new model that incorporates these spiritual understandings without sounding like "Christian" education is the answer?

For those of you who know me, the change in direction of this Blog will not be a surprise. For the anyone else you might well question.

The Best Rt

New Directions

New directions has that inherent goodness of double meaning. I hope to expand on this theme. So here it is ....


"The things I thought were so important - because of the effort I put into them - have turned out to be of small value. And the things I never thought about, the things I was never able to either to measure or to expect, were the things that mattered." Thomas Merton Fire Watch, July 4th, 1952

 

Tyrrell's Re-education

Re-statement of Faith

"Something exciting is happening at the intersection of Christianity and culture. Christians are becoming dissatisfied with the postures they adopted toward culture in the twentieth century: condemning it, critiquing it, copying it, or just consuming it. More and more, we want to be people who cultivate: people who tend and keep what is good. And we want to be people who create: adding new cultural goods that move the horizons of the possible in places as wide as the world and as small as a home." 

See Andy Crouch http://www.culture-making.com/about/site

NYU Professor Ravitch does an analysis of NAEP test and most recent NYS elementary standardized test scores and finds that the levels of learning don't match. Fueled the fire's for the opt out movement?

Link below

http://dianeravitch.net/2013/08/09/will-the-new-york-testing-fiasco-fuel-the-anti-testing-movement/