Education

Here's the press release Lighthouse Christian Academy issued this morning in response to the Huffington Post's faith-shaming of Christians. 1 

NYT's David Brooks is so very precious about buggery. My friend Mark Albrecht forwarded a link to Brooks's latest piece dissing Rod Dreher's exquisitely titled "The Benedict Option" while flattering Dreher for writing the most important book on religion in ten years. He points out twice in his three-minute read that he disagrees with Dreher's opposition to buggery.

Noted.

Noted again.

Dreher thinks the inspiration for his book's title is the sixth century founder of the Benedictine monastic order who wrote...

This is a talk given by ruling elder Ken Patrick at a conference held this past Saturday at his church, Trinity Presbyterian Church (PCA), in Ludlow, Kentucky. Titled "Maintaining a Christian Witness in an Increasingly Pagan Culture," the conference's other speakers were Trinity's pastor Chuck Hickey and an attorney from the Alliance Defending Freedom, Jeff Shafer. I attended the conference with my son, Joseph, and his fellow pastor Paul Belcher (both serving Christ Church in Cincinnati). Hope you find this talk as wise and helpful as Joseph, Paul, and I did.

* * *

Maintaining a Christian Witness in an Increasingly Pagan Culture

by Ken Patrick

Before we begin, let me talk about my qualifications to divine the future: I’m not a prophet; I don’t have a “word from the Lord” in the sense that I’m about to share any divinely sourced revelation with you; God didn’t appear to me in a dream.

What I’m going to share are simply observations on what may come to pass if current trends continue, and what I would do if I were in charge. If you find yourself disagreeing with what I say, hopefully you’ll stay until I’m finished. We’ll have a Q&A session where you can ask a question, and of course you can pigeon-hole me afterward.

So, to answer my own question right up front—is there a Christian ghetto in our future?—I think the most likely answer is “of course, yes” at least in an intellectual sense and perhaps in a real, physical way as well. I think it’s very possible that we’ll see both. Before I begin describing what these Christian “ghetto” scenarios might look like, let’s establish why many of us think...

[Note added by TB on May 25, 2016: Here's how Rachel Miller's feminist supporters have just summarized Son Joseph's blog post below: "the Bayly Blog post that accused Rachel Miller of countless sins — albeit without evidence." Well, read on for the non-evidence.]

When Rachel Miller took over the Aquila Report, longtime readers noted a decline in the site's Biblical commitments. Ms. Miller pushed the edge of the doctrinal envelope in a number of places, yet it was possible to think it was simply her attempt to liven up the site.

But then there was sex. This is the place where Satan is focussing his attack on God's law today, and it became apparent that Ms. Miller's editorial leadership was most toxic here. She showed her feminism on the Aquila Report, but Ms. Miller kept the worst parts of her sexual rebellion for publication on her own website titled A Daughter of the Reformation.

Feminists who want to hold onto conservative Christian credentials claim they submit to their husbands at home, in private. Occasionally they trot their husbands out online to testify to their submissiveness at home. But in their online attacks on men, these women take no prisoners. You can see it on all the Reformed sites: women condemn pastors and elders without a hint of modesty or shame.

No one suffers from these attacks more than Pastor Doug Wilson. Some of their attacks are focussed on...

Taking a survey on SurveyMonkey to help Dyslexic Advantage with the diagnosis of dyslexics just now (those with and without dyslexia are needed), I had to smile at this question:

In seminary, the education classes were even worse than the preaching classes so I haven't been shocked over the past two decades to hear IU students talk about how awful classes are in the Indiana University School of Education. It's not been uncommon for them to refer to it as the "IU School of Propaganda." Don't get me started on education because my thoughts on Christian, home, and state schooling would be sure to stir up a hornet's nest.

Anyhow, here's an interesting article on the sort of chic-radical trash that stupid educators make required reading for students trying hard to become the next generation of stupid educators. The book is Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Brazilian Paulo Freire, and according to Sol Stern over at City Journal, Freire's book is mandatory reading in the New York Teaching Fellows program which "provides an alternate route to state certification for about 1,700 new teachers annually." Stern continues...

Did you know "alma mater" means "nursing mother"? My own alma maters include tooo many schools, but I must mention University of Wisconsin (Madison).

It was UW-Madison that gifted Donna Shalala to President Clinton's cabinet where she served alongside It-Takes-a-Village Hillary Clinton and It-Takes-Tanks-and-Napalm Janet Reno. Before leaving for D.C., Shalala was UW-Madison's chancellor and, during her tenure there, she channelled her maternal instinct by passing a speech control policy so safe that English profs were left with three books still allowed on their reading lists: Pat the Bunny, Velveteen Rabbit, and Love You Forever. Under the heading "Unprotected Expressive Behavior Subject to Discipline," Shalala threatened verbal bullies and gesticulators thusly...

A faculty or academic staff member's expressive behavior in an instructional setting may be the basis for discipline if ...the behavior is commonly considered by persons of a particular gender, race, cultural background, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or handicap to be demeaning to members of that group, and ...the conduct makes the instructional setting hostile or intimidating, or demeaning to members of the group of average sensibilities.

Shalala declared her come-to-mommy-and-let-me-kiss-your-owie rules would be enforced in both "instructional" and "noninstructional settings." UW-Madison employees were left with precious few places to exercise the freedoms granted by our Bill of Rights. Since the adoption of Shalala's rules in the late eighties, Madison's speech police have been filing charges, collecting evidence and witnesses, holding trials, making pronouncements of guilt, carrying out censures, and implementing disciplinary actions. 

Still today UW-Madison profs are trying to repeal Shalala's schoolmarmish hate-speech rules, but it hardly matters since President Obama is busy remaking all of America into a "safe place." Speaking of which, UW-Madison is at it again. Earlier this year administrators and faculty adopted policies requiring profs to become even more sensitive. The new policy statement was introduced with...

Fascinating article on children's play forwarded by my daughter, Michal. There's almost nothing here that caused me to cringe or disagree. I'd simply like to point out that it may be better to think of much of children's play as simply little men and women practising for manhood and womanhood.

[NOTE: The man who, along with his wife, does an excellent job homeschooling  as I've observed for fifteen years called and said I'm largely wrong in what I've written here, so I stand half-corrected. Still, I'm not sure how I'd rewrite this given his criticisms so I'll leave the post up with this warning. Likely much of what I write here applies as much to Christian schooling and public schooling as home schooling, and the dangers I warn of are more a product of our times than a particular form of home schooling. That being said, no matter how you school your children, please listen to my concerns and take them to heart in the education of your precious children.]

Mary Lee and I put several of our children in public schools at various times, and we also homeschooled one son for three years. Most of our children's schooling, though, was done in Christian schools and this is the educational method we believe best for most parents and children—particularly boys who are becoming men. After years of watching homeschoolers in our churches and the broader Christian (and alternative) world, starting no later than Junior High School we think most boys do much better being taught by men than women. Especially their mothers. 

Even if the local Christian school option does not have male teachers, though, one of the reasons we have come to believe in Christian schooling's superiority to homeschooling is the lack of respect for authority we've seen to be endemic within homeschooling families....