A gunman opened fire Sunday morning at a Sikh temple outside of Milwaukee, killing six people and wounding at least three others, including a police officer, before being shot to death, police said. (here)
I saw the news, I took a nap. We can be outraged, but does anyone still care about Aurora? If you case you forgot, that happened just a few weeks ago (before the Olympics). Of course, now, it doesn’t really matter – these were Muslims or something. /s/I don’t care – they weren’t Christians and they wear towels./s/ This could have been a hate crime, I guess. But, what is a hate crime? I don’t know, I mean, I think must crimes occur with some level of hate in the heart.
Until the population does something…
Joel L. Watts holds a Masters of Arts from United Theological Seminary with a focus in literary and rhetorical criticism of the New Testament. His interests include exploring the role of mimesis in human civilization, specifically in the study of religion and media, as well as science fiction and the way in which it has allowed mythology to be explored in light of scientific discoveries of the past century. He is the author of Mimetic Criticism of the Gospel of Mark: Introduction and Commentary (Wipf and Stock, 2013) and a co-editor and contributor to From Fear to Faith: Stories of Hitting Spiritual Walls (Energion, 2013).
Website: → Unsettled Christianity
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Sarcasm is a dangerous tool. It is too easily taken amiss.
I would hate to see, “I don’t care–they weren’t Christians and they wear towels” quoted without context.
True. I will tag it better.
Sarcasm or not, political pundits most always quote out of context (and sometimes are simply untruthful) so we can be free to believe what we agree with and not believe what is counter to what we agree with and feel good even if we have done little to determine the truth behind the opinion statements.
Unfortunately, most Americans couldn’t place India on a map, let alone tel the difference between a Sikh and a Muslim, or Punjabi and Arabic.
Of all world religions, Sikhism has much in common with Christianity.
Unfortunately, this lack of knowledge includes a very significant portion of our teachers and clergy. My impression is that for the most part they just don’t care. Learning just for the sake of knowledge just seems to be dead as I have seen virtually zero effort to promote this ideal. I honestly don’t understand why most people I know just don’t want to think for themselves .
Pubic school
home school
Well partly, but also all of the tripe we are fed from the media starting with TV as a baby sitter.
and parents who are too busy to engage their children…
No self-starters anymore
I agree. Kids are on electronics too much also. A documentary that shocked me and changed my whole view was “Ultimate History Lesson” about John Taylor Gatto.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQiW_l848t8
I was on the fence about homeschooling until I saw this.
No offense, but homeschooling as the same pitfalls as public school. Same side of the same coin
How do you know? And what are they? You’re speaking as if you homeschooled and noticed your children are dumbed down like public school kids.
Actually, I did homeschool my children. They are now in public school. I know more homeschooling parents and their kids are about as backwards, socially inept, and as uneducated as the worst students in public schools. Nate is right.
I know I am late to this conversation, but as a public school teacher I feel I must respond. I could go a million directions, but I will try and limit my thoughts. In my opinion the average school teacher is better and more dynamic than has ever been in the past. I am constantly trying to engage students and coax them to higher levels of thinking, as are most teachers.
The difficulty I have is that students want a lesson to be a production and the want one on one attention or they will not listen. Students watch the history channel or the discovery channel that have graphics, animations, and dynamic music. And students expect this from all learning. Now I do use these resources in my classroom, but sometimes there is not a video for an area of content or an idea that I need to cover. Actually, many areas of content lack slick production pieces. If you read the comments on youtube videos people write things like, “…if only my teacher was this interesting.” Fair enough, give me a script, multiple takes, and no interruptions and I can be damn interesting. But that isn’t reality.
The reality is sometimes, learning complex information is difficult and requires focus and discipline. Guess what areas American students struggle to maintain, you guessed it focus and discipline. Students and their parents expect you to teach a concept so well the first time that the student understands the information the first time, without any practice.
Bottom line, you get out of education what you put in, if a student doesn’t care then he or she won’t do well. If a student cares he or she will learn no matter the teacher.
The question of why American students don’t care is too complicated to get at in a blog comment, because the answer isn’t a one word response. I could go on and on, but I have to go.
Oddly enough, I experience quite the opposite. Kur homeschooling network has the brightest kis I’ve seen in a long time. Most of the are unschooled, although I don‘t prescribe to that method. Public schooling is based off of the Prussian model to train obedient factory workers. Kids are not really learning. They are learning just enough to pass a test. Maybe it’s diffent in NY, but it’s considered urban chic.
I’m not arguing that home school students aren’t capable students. I’ve seen the result vs. public schools. Home schooled students score fairly well, however, is that due to the fact that they are home schooled or that those students have parents that are involved in their life and come from backgrounds that value education. I contend that the home school students would score just as well if in the local school.
Also, I would like to push back verse against the idea that kids aren’t learning or be taught to think. That has not been goal of education for as long as I have been a teacher. Actually, all the training I have had to attend is how to create critical thinkers, not just obedient factory workers.
The reason for the tests is governments are trying to decide the easiest way to assess learning. That comes from the top down, not from the schools.
You’re right about when the parents value education. I’ve always believe I could teach my child better than a stranger for 6 hours a day. These are my children, not yours. Wouldn’t you know your own child’s needs better than someone else’s bratty kid?
My daughter is 4 1/2 and she can read. We taught her with “Teach you child to read in 100 easy lessons” by Siegfried Engelman.
Brett at http://schoolsucksproject.com is more eloquent about the problems of modern education than me.
Does this mean, Ant, that you would do your own surgeries as well? Doubtful. Your own banking? Doubtful.
What about science – can you teacher your children well about actual science?
The “stranger” thing is a bit over done, breaking done easily enough when applied to other situations.
That is a stereotype, and unfounded.
Check out the blog http://schoolsucksproject.com
that guy was a teacher and has a ealth of info.
Sory for the typing. I find it difficult to type well on my tablet+
That is one teacher. Sorry, but anecdotal doesn’t always qualify.
He’s been doing this podcast for over 5 years and he has 3 people of the podcast with him, and many guests. To put it to you honestly, the only reason we started homeschooling is because my wife didn’t want to give my daughter up. We live in one of the best school districts in NY state, and I had no opinion. Not until after my wife mad the decision, was School Sucks recommended to me. Our homeschooling group has 250 families, with maybe 40 or 50 families having teachers in them! I asked myself, why would a tenured teacher leave to home school their child? Most them were already having issues with the “system”, and all of them read John Taylor Gatto’s “Underground History of American Education” available online free here:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm. I read the book and watched the 5 hour documentary “The Ultimate History Lesson” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQiW_l848t8
It completely changed my viewpoint. The funny thing is, our family and maybe 5 others are christians in the group. (It is NY after all), which honestly shocked me.
I went from no opinion to a very strong opinion. There is a dichotomy between what one MUST know and what one should know. The three ‘s are mandatory. Calculus and trig? Not so much. But there are many online website with videos thst teach it. Our homeschool network offers “tutors” to help kids with the advanced stuff that parents may not know. We have a doctor teaching biology and health, another guy teaching Calculus, I teach languages and computers. (Interesting mix, right?)
It’s not for everyone. I never listen to podcasts, but since I’m on the road all the time for my business, I listen to “school sucks”, and I also listen to Peter Schiff.
http://www.tragedyandhope.com/ is another blog/podcast about unschooling. If you really want to be freaked out, look into uncolleging!
I think Peter Thiel is the one that challenges high school graduates to learn a trade or take the college loan money and start a business with it. The best education ever. I’ve had 5 businesses, and most of them failed, (I ever did churhc planting) and I’m not doing one thing I learned in college.
But I still can’t make the leap to support uncolleging.
Ant, this seems to be your SOP – to shift opinions radically.
You are simply drawing from sources that feed your own intentions.
While college is not for everyone, the move to do away with higher education, and education at any level, except for the individual experience is going to wreck this civilization. Unschool and uncollege will lead only to uncivilization
I don’t agree with uncolleging, but have you looked at the sourced I listed? They would counteract what you said.
An interesting quote I heard last week from my friend who is a philosophy professor. He said “There are too many educated college graduates, and not enough workers.”
I have looked at the source. It is silly.
Well, the truth is that we are all home schooled. The problem is what and how much we learn at this home school. I learned far more and more important things at home than I learned in 16 years of schooling. The first and foremost lesson was to be self reliant, learned at a very early age. I got “A”s in English grammar all through school by simply deciding what sounded right. Spelling I never learned well at home or school but my Dad and I played definition games all the time. I learned most of my science, history and geography from 4 encyclopedias that I read constantly. Of corse public schooling added to my knowledge but not all that much. Unfortunately one thing I learned there was to be lazy in my study habits because the teachers demanded very little of me and I was self motivated only in areas that were of a real interest to me. I remember in junior high school thinking that this math thing was silly because every year they started out showing us a different way to do essentially the same thing as last year and I thought we could easily learn all they were covering in maybe 3 months instead of 9 months. At any rate, a system that has a goal of teaching everyone to a minimum standard and boring everyone else just cannot produce what we want. I think this is the reason home schooling exists and we should realize that if the child was given a portion of attention at home as home schooling provides everyone would be better off. As I see it now, an awful lot of parents take little time for teaching their children anything due to their own selfish interests. This is a problem that only gets worse as it feeds on itself generation after generation and the only solution is an improved and vigorous moral and political leadership. This is where many nations have a leg up on the USA.
OK: I didn’t mean corpse but rather course. I told you I never learned spelling but I think I can blame this on the keyboard and the dictionary that thought I really meant corse.
One could say that there are too many uneducated college graduates. College degrees need to mean more and require more. Many new hires I have worked with were sadly lacking in all around knowledge. I balieve that only about 25% to 30% of high school graduates are candidates for serious advanced studies on a university level.
Agreed. It used to be college was a ticket to a job. That’s not the way it is anymore.
Agreed – good book – Academically Adrift.
What’s a good book?
Never mind