Reflections on God … Man … Life
All sin is rebellion against God’s righteous and reasonable commands. All sin is foolish. I became a rebel and a fool at a time in my life when I had many blessings from the Lord. As I noted in my last two posts, He had given me the headmastership of a Christian school and had shown me a Biblical way of educating. Yet I decided to be a fool just when He was giving my life its real meaning. Too… Read more »
Yesterday, I wrote about how I, much to my amazement, found myself becoming a teacher. As headmaster of a new Christian school in the late 1970s, I had both administrative and teaching responsibilities. I found out, though, that I had a lot to learn about real education. We started that first year with a prepackaged program called Accelerated Christian Education (ACE). It made education “easy.” Students sat in their cubicles and filled out workbooks. They would then take exams at… Read more »
I didn’t want to teach. Public speaking always created a knot in my stomach, so to make that my everyday experience wasn’t attractive. I remember, as a freshman in high school, trying out for the school play only because my friends did. The shock was that they didn’t receive a part, whereas I got a high-profile one. I thought I would be sick and seriously considered bailing out. Yet I survived and did quite well. I went on to “star”… Read more »
Government is not our savior. Government policies, while significant, are not the primary drivers of a civilization. The old maxim that in a representative system the government is a reflection of the people who elected it remains true. Our government can only do what the people allow it to do. Right now, we are allowing it to control more of our lives than ever. What does this say about us as a people? I write often about the necessity of… Read more »
One of the devotional classics is The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis. There is some historical dispute as to whether he is the actual author or just the compiler of this fifteenth-century aid to living the Christian life. Of course that’s not what really matters; it’s the substance of the book that counts, and substantive it is. As I was reading through some excerpts yesterday, one stood out to me because it took aim at my profession—education. There… Read more »
There are a number of different critiques of the state of American education. Some are most concerned about the lack of discipline in the schools. Others decry the dumbing down of the standards. They point to the decline in scores on standardized tests such as the SAT. A lot of that decline has been hidden by the trick of “centering” the scores. For instance, a 1200 on the SAT today means a whole lot less than it meant in 1963…. Read more »
Chicago public school teachers are out on strike. They’ve been treated so unfairly there was just no other option. After all, in a city where the median income is $47,000 per year, they make only $76,000. Sure, they get all their benefits on top of that, but since they are the most important people in the city, they deserve more. So you can understand why when they were offered a measly 16% raise, they hit the roof. How insulting. Wouldn’t… Read more »