An “Edumacation” Devoutly to Be Wished

   Now, I can’t say I would recommend the weblog this came from as a general rule, but the irony of someone as liberal as the author making this suggestion just kills me. (I’m not going to provide a link, since many of the other posts are downright foul.)

Mothers let their wild little beasts roam free like giraffes on the Serengeti. They apparently believe that to control them will somehow stunt the growth of their self-esteem. In the radiology waiting room, there was one wild little beast, age approx. three who kept licking his mother's arm and laughing like Hannibal Lechter until she said, “Stop it, go away”, at which point he crawled over to me and started licking MY flip-flopped feet. I had a feeling that I couldn't gently kick him to get him to stop, so I just glared at the mother. She gave me a sheepish look like, “Well, what can you do, haha.” What can you do? Oh I don't know, you could yank your little [brat] up off the ground and edu-ma-cate him a little with the ol’ spankin’ hand. Conclusion: Parents today are . . . wimps that want to be “pals” with their kids instead of parents.

   An “edumacation” devoutly to be wished, in the case of many wild little beasts, no? “Spare the rod and spile the chile,” is some down-home wisdom which could make many parents better wild animal trainers — which our society has thrust aside to its own undoing.
   You know, that brat is going to grow up to be shocked when the world does not cater to him as does his misguided mother. How much better would it be for him to grow up strong and self-controlled than pampered? And as far as a healthy relationship goes, I know that well-disciplined children are much closer to their parents than free-roaming Serengeti wildlings. One British woman who had never much disciplined her children, soon after beginning a systematic, fair, and predictable order of discipline, was told by her now under-control and loving son, “Mummy? You do a very good job being a mummy.” (No Greater Joy, Jul/Aug 2004, pg. 20)
   It’s certainly not for no reason the Bible says, “He that spareth the rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.” (Proverbs 13:25)

Crosspost: Scraps, Harbour in the Scramble, Academic Musings

"I Only Had an Eighth Grade Education."

In reference to The Book of Confusion, August 17, 2004.

   Jason asks an interesting question. Could you have passed the eighth grade in 1895?

This is the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 in Salina, Kansas, USA. It was taken from the original document on file at the Smokey Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina, KS, and reprinted by the Salina Journal.

   You’ll find below some highlights from the exam (an ordeal which required, or granted, up to five hours for its completion.

“Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.”
   I’m not so sure that today’s high-schoolers could do that. Wait. On second thought, I know most of today’s high-schoolers could never do it: not well enough for me to grant them a “C”, anyways.

“Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.”
   Do they teach anything of the sort these days? Mayhap the word “fundamental” is too politically incorrect for most educator’s tastes.

“District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at  $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?”
   Again, a comparison with today’s high-schoolers. Do they even teach such concepts before Accounting 101 in college these days? I don’t think so.

“7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: bi, dis, mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, sup.
“8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.
“9. Use the following correctly in sentences: cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.”

   With the loss of phonics in reading instruction has come the loss of etymology in orthographic instruction. I was fortunate enough to be home-schooled, and so had access to a superb etymological curriculum in high school, and I as well learned spelling etymologically throughout elementary school — like the proverbial child who can sound out any word (q.v. NRRF), I can spell any word, and tell you what most words likely mean, from simply hearing them.

   My answer to this travety — may I call it such? — is to ask you to take a moment of your time to read another page from the National Right to Read Foundation, entitled “ADD: America’s Deficit Disorder”. Are we as Americans so eager to classify and label our children with “ADD” and “ADHD” that we forget our own responsibilities?
   I have seen too many children “doped up” on Ritalin, etc. merely for being kids, to deceive myself, or to allow anyone else to deceive themselves, that psychiatrists and pediatricians are prescribing medications only to children who truly need them. I have seen too many children walking around looking hung over because of their medicine to allow America off the hook on this one. I plead with you: before you give that kid a pill, ask yourself,

“What could I be doing differently?”

Crosspost: Harbour in the Scramble, Ergle Street, and Academic Musings

Movie: Oceans 11

From a time less objective (Jason).

Later that day I went to Sara’s house to watch Ocean’s 11 for the first time. It was really stylized and witty, but I found it rather dry for deeper themes and ideas. The good guys are the ones who steal $160,000,000.00 of legitimately earned cash…it’s kind of sad in hindsight that American culture this desperate for entertainment ideas. It may relect some kind of Robin Hood theme, but one on a massive steroid overdose.

   And might I contrast my view with Jason’s implied approval of Robin Hood. While the original Robin Hood, I would argue, was a capitalist, stealing from the thieves (rich tax-collectors and extortioners) and giving to the robbed (poor tax-payers and extorted), he has in our present day been recast as a social (read: socialist, communist) “hero” — so much so in fact that ”steal from the rich and give to the poor” has become an idiomatic synonym for Robin Hood.
   The fact, then, that Ocean’s 11 can be viewed as having a “Robin Hood theme” is one more count against it, philosophically. Ayn Rand’s John Galt, in fact, vowed to slay Robin Hood (meaning the present misinterpretation of Robin Hood as an ideal), and never to rest until he did.
   Ocean’s 11, then, is just philosophically bankrupt in one more way. Not only does it glorify thievery, it flaunts socialism (and from there, humanism and relativism) in the face of capitalism (and hence the “Protestant work ethic” and the Law of Sowing and Reaping).

Crosspost: Scraps, Academic Musings, Harbour in the Scramble, and Ergle Street

News: N.J. Governor Admits to Homosexual Affair

From Yahoo! News, via The Book of Confusion.

“‘My truth is that I am a gay American,’ McGreevey said.”

My Truth? Folks...there is no my truth or your truth. There is truth and falsehood. Now I admit that it can be difficult to tell the two apart sometimes, but we can’t go calling everything Truth. If everything is true…then NOTHING is true.

There are lot of ways he could have said that. That phrase more than anything shows his world view. It’s not one I can support. I honestly have more respect for someone who holds to a standard of absolute truth – even if it’s different than mine – than I do for those who think it’s all good.

   Relativism is definitely the scourge, intellectually of our age. I have had people, in very recent order, tell me that they “don’t believe in absolute truth,” in a scientific sense! If your disbelief in absolute truth goes so far as to encompass what you can see, measure, and repeat, God doesn’t really stand a chance, does he?

“Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,” Romans 1:22

Crosspost: Scraps, Academic Musings, Harbour in the Scramble, Ergle Street

Missionary: Voices from the Gambia

Voices from the Gambia

   The piercing voice breaks the stillness of the evening, disturbing the solitude. The noise was startling at first, then distracting, as other voices chime in.
   Is it an announcement? Some sort of singing? Chanting? The loudness of the P.A. system make it sound like it’s right next to our compound, but it is coming from the village mosque, over one kilometer away.
   The voices continue. Concentration is difficult.
   We ask: “What is happening?” “Oh, perhaps a ‘teaching’ for a special holy day; or maybe recitations for someone’s marriage or death. It’s in Arabic. Difficult to know what they are saying. Get used to it; happens often.”
   The voice returns. It’s still dark. It is 5:30 AM! “It’s a call to prayer:; the first of three over the next hour, each coming from a different mosque. We try to sleep; but we think . . . If they are praying, whay aren’t we? We who claim to know the Living God and call Him “Father”.

   It’s early Sunday morning: voices of children come drifting into the compound. They seem to be reciting verses and singing songs. What a beautiful sound! Is it a Sunday School class? “Yes, in a way. It’s the boys and girls attending classes at the nearby Koranic School going through their recitations and praises to Yallah.” We long to teach them about Jesus . . .
   A weekday afternoon: we hear the sound of singing. We go outside. A vanload of men passes by on the road, amplifying their songs as they drive through the town. “It’s a men’s retreat. A Muslim version of ‘Promise Keepers’.” We pray: “May it someday be a Christian group.”

   Evangelism and training go on almost daily in our village here. But we are not part of it. We are the “outsiders”, the “unbelievers”. How we wish this very religious atmosphere could be one of true worship — not only of God, but of His Son, the One Who came to be the Saviour of the world, the One they do not know.

   So wrote Missionary Jim Entner on October eighth, 2003. It raises an interesting question, does it not? Why are so many lost, dying, and yet more devout than we who have the truth? Have we no care for their souls?
   The Muslim has no Father God, since Islam teaches of an Allah who is a taskmaster: easily provoked and hardly appeased, capricious, even. We who know the true God, the one who loves and cares for the world, surely can be more devout worshippers of and witnesses for our God than they can theirs — don’t we have it infinitely better?

I read this prayer letter at Mission Prayer Band while at Pensacola Christian College
Crosspost: Scraps, Academic Musings, Harbour in the Scramble, Ergle Street

Cold Waters to a Thirsty Soul

   Merely as a point of interest, I offer you the following story pulled from April of five years ago, from the Savannah Morning News.

Louis E. Nelsen IV has joined Liberty Bank as a customer service representative. Nelsen will be responsible for opening new accounts, performing teller functions, maintaining customer account records and selling all deposit and lending products. A native of Louisiana, he holds a bachelor’s degree from Pensacola Christian College and is a member of Bible Baptist Church in Savannah.

   I do get a small “that’s my people” feeling whenever I read something about PCC alumni. It’s a fellowship I can feel with total strangers. I guess good old Grandpa Mullenix (I use that term out of anything but disrespect for Dr. Joel Mullenix, Vice President for Public Affairs of Pensacola Christian College and Pensacola Theological Seminary. He is one of the many who make PCC the wonderful institution that it is.) is right in calling everyone, whether faculty, staff, or students, former or current, “the PCC family”.
   In that short article, I see a family member who I never met, and who quite likely I never will meet (and who perhaps graduated before I was born — but that’s not to imply I think you’re old, if you’re reading this, Mrs. Nelsen!), but a family member nonetheless.

Proverbs 25:25 As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.

Point of Interest: Many everyday events go by unnoticed but by those immediately affected by them. As a writer, I am constantly fascinated by such things: “somebody else’s problem”s (see my previous post, “Funerals and Poetry”).

Article: Home Schooling: Not Your Grandma's Social Movement

“Home Schooling Gets More Students”
     That was the quite pleasant subtitle of an article in my local newspaper (The Ventura County Star) today. It was subtitled with a statistic which has been long and opposed in its coming: since 1999, home-schooled students are up 29% nationwide, to nearly 1.1 million students (Education Department, National Center for Education Statistics). The article is from the AP wire; here is a shorter version I found online at the Indianapolis Star.
     Ian Slatter, of the Home School Legal Defense Association’s National Center for Home Education, says,

Home schooling is just getting started. We’ve gotten through the barriers of questioning the academic abilities of home schools, now that we have a sizable number of graduates who are not socially isolated or awkward — they are good, high-quality citizens. We’re getting that mainstream recognition and challenging the way education has been done.

     The two cannons usually leveled at home education are its alleged lower quality of education and a lack of socialization. Since nearly every year the National Spelling Bee is won by a home schooler, home schoolers have SAT scores consitently in the top five and ten percent, and home schoolers (contrary to popular belief) can usually take their pick of colleges — all of which are more than happy to accept someone with such high standardized test scores — this first charge doesn’t worry me to terribly.
     As far as socialization, I think that over-, rather than under-socialization is detrimental to a child’s maturity and emotional well-being, I would level the “socialization” cannon at public schools. I realize that this position is not one usually taken, so I shall attempt to explain.
     When I play chess, I try to seek out opponents who are more skilled than I — better players. It is only from a better player that a less-skilled player can learn, improving his game. In the same way, it is only from those more skilled at life, more skilled with interpersonal relationships and etiquette, that a child can learn how to function in society.
     As evidence, I offer up myself. I never cared for the company of my peers, since it was not thrust upon me. My parents never forced me into situations where my only socialization outlet was my peers, and in the presence of adults, I usually ignored my peers — and this is from three years old and up. There are few who would call me socially maladjusted, introverted, or out of touch with the world. Growing up around grown-ups did in no way damage my current gregariousness and self-confidence.
     I’m not sure it would be exactly politic to propose this on a wide-reaching medium, or even here on my weblog, but may I submit to you that it is public schools which have a lower standard of education, and that it is public schools which are damaging to children’s social lives. I, for one (and one of many millions of satisfied home school graduates) would never trade my education for a public education: I would feel cheated.

Crosspost: Scraps, Harbour in the Scramble, Academic Musings