cairns

Thinking about connections between ideas in different passages that have come up in different contexts, specifically 2 Corinthians 11:14’s angel of light, Ephesians 6’s armor, and Mathew 25’s sorting of the sheep and goats.

It’s on my mind because my mind and heart are torn by the pain of trying to live out the gospel to a person who has done everything in their power to hurt me and has succeeded.  It’s on my mind because I believe that we have power to protect each other through prayer and I thought the battle went well.  Then I went to sleep and was defenseless.  And the wounds were opened deep, old, and rotten.  I have to contemplate it all to find my own way to grace and past it.  I have to contemplate it all to live my beliefs in multiple contexts without allowing one extremely painful arena to destroy so much good in the others.

So I turned some of it outward to general theology instead of painful personal psychology.  And I was thinking about how badly the church hurts the church.  We damage each other at a far greater rate and cause more lasting damage than any outside force ever could.  And I wonder, is it because we let the pretender of light stay in our midst?  We put on “the armor,” but allow the enemy inside our circle of shields.  We read the famous goat passage as if it is a future tense once and for all event, but Jesus declared the Kingdom to already be upon us, and us to be the body.  Maybe we are supposed to be sorting out goats before they drive away sheep.

Problem is we always pick the wrong goats, the ones whose lifestyle we choose to call sin instead of our own, the broken man who confesses his wrongs instead of maintaining the charade of all our perfection, the woman does what it takes to stay alive and feed her kids in the only ways our societies provide (and who has those kids because she believed our pro-life message!)….

The parable says the goats are those who fail to provide love to all in need.  The goats are not those with sin in their life, but the lack of charity.  Maybe we are already sitting on our throne and we are supposed to invite those who do not live the gospel to gather elsewhere than in our midst.  I can promise there would be grinding of teeth.  The uncharitable quoters of scripture and pretenders at discipleship hate nothing more than to be without victims.  As for eternity, that is beyond me.

Caesar comes to mind, ruler of the known world, dying with the words, “Et tu Brute?”  It is the insider who does us in.  The outsider is easily kept at bay, locked out, labeled, abandoned and safe.  And if we do that, we too are goats.  We were supposed to be advancing in love to gather up all those in need of grace!  Instead we gather in our little circles of pretty light and all too often devour each other.

This is becoming circular.

When I find myself goatish I will repent or remove myself from the area where I can harm you, fail to serve you, fail to live out the love.

When I find you goatish, I am going to learn to hold my shield closer to my chest.  And, I may just be willing to watch you walk away into the night and the hands of One better prepared for the battle and the cure than I.

peace

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“It is just the same with the so-called criminals living in our midst.  To bring these people under the sway of Christianity there is only one means, that is, the Christian social ideal, which can only be realized among them by true Christian teaching and supported by a true example of Christian life.  And to preach this Christian truth and to support it by Christian example we set up among them prisons, guillotines, gallows, [electric chairs & IV drugs] preparations for murder; we diffuse among the common herd idolatrous superstitions to stupefy them; we sell them spirits, tobacco and opium [the list has only grown] to brutalize them;…we make a display of senseless luxury in the midst of suffering poverty; we destroy the possibility of anything like a Christian public opinion, and studiously try to suppress what Christian public opinion is existing [and defend it as separation of church and state?].  And then, after having ourselves assiduously corrupted men, we shut them up like wild beasts in places from which they cannot escape, and where they become still more brutalized, or else we kill them.  And these very men whom we have corrupted and brutalized by every means, we bring forward as proof that one cannot deal with criminals except by brute force.” (p. 199)

“All we can know is what we who make up mankind ought to do, and not to do, to bring about the coming of the kingdom of God.  And that we all know.  And we need only each begin to do what we ought to do, we need only each live with all the light that is in us, to bring about at once the promised kingdom of God to which every man’s heart is yearning.” (p. 212)

“All these material reforms may be realized, but the position of humanity will not be improved.  But only let each man, according to his powers, at once realize in his life the truth he knows, or at least cease to support the falsehoods he is supporting in the place of the truth, and at once in the year 1893, we should see such reforms as we do not dare to hope for within a century — the emancipation of men and the reign of truth upon earth.” (p. 261)

Tolstoy, The kingdom of God is within you, (1893)

What if we really did what Jesus told us to do instead of wearing little WWJD bracelets to the mall?  Would we still be building prisons faster than schools?  Would we still be trying to eliminate all “evil doers” with drones and hypodermic needles?  He makes me wonder.

peace

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Another false assumption of the current movement in mass education is the basis for standards.  It sounds so good to assure parents and tax payers that all schools know and teach the knowledge that all children need at each grade.  But, the lie is right there on the surface.  There is no magic list of what all children should know at any age!

For example: at one time, it seemed to make sense to teach the social sciences according to the theory of  ‘expanding horizons.’   The youngest children learn about self and families, followed by neighborhoods then their own city and state, next comes one’s own country and finally hemisphere or world.  This was based on the assumption that children had a concrete world of local experience which would make sense to them followed by a growing ability to understand similarities and differences as broader places and social differences were studied.  That child no longer exists in the global information age.  Buckminster Fuller used to love to point out that the world where the mama and children only knew the world of home until daddy came home and shared the news disappeared the day daddy came home and the children by the radio excitedly told him, “Daddy, Daddy, Lindbergh landed in Paris!”  Today’s child has ready access and constant exposure to information from and about the whole world.  Who possesses the magic list that says which place and topic she must know at what age?  Nobody.

To tell the child that is excited about Africa or Japan, whales or polar bears, large numbers, squares or geometric shapes that some all knowing committee of adults declared the topic off limits because it is not on this year’s test is obscene as well as absurd.  But, unless the child pursues education outside of the school environment, that is exactly how the current standards movement works.  Teachers are repeatedly told by trainers and evaluators that anything that will not appear on this year’s test is a waste of time and not to be covered.  So children get only what the teachers are required to teach.  Never mind if you are lucky enough to have a teacher or classmate who just got back or moved to your town from a far off land with stories and pictures.  Never mind if you saw a special on television or the Internet that excited you to the core of your being about some topic.  Never mind if only what you struggle with is on the school list and what you love and excel at is not.  Everything has been decided for you by a political process far from the local classroom, parents or voters.  The whole thing is deadening to natural enthusiasm for knowledge.  The universe of possibilities is traded for a myopic list.

And we have agreed to look only at the nasty emporer, and never turn our eyes to anything of beauty elsewhere, because we have bought the lie that there is a magic list of what children should learn and when.  The entire concept is contrary to the nature of children and how they (or we) learn.  No wonder Gatto’s fans point to us and say what you do is schooling, not education.

peace

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The second major fallacy of the current testing  movement is that all children learn, grow, and are ready for the exact same tests at the same rate and time.  This is just as absurd as claiming that we could standardize the clothing industry and expect all children of the same age to fit into the same size clothes and shoes.  We are different genetically and develop along individual patterns of readiness and ability across wide ranges of skills.  We are also different environmentally with some living in learning rich environs and others trying to survive.  There is no logical reason or published evidence to support the assumption that we should all be learning at the same rate and all in the same material.  Those who use the old nationally normed tests, can fall into the same trap if they are improperly used and interpreted.  Every child is NOT ready for the same topics or levels of abstraction and complexity at the same time.

To put it rudely and way outside of political correctness, some children in each setting are smarter than others.  Critics of IQ tests have very correctly pointed out that the tests themselves have contained racial and cultural biases.  However, no valid research, or even well presented pseudo-science, has ever claimed to disprove IQ theory.  We learn at different rates.  We have different capacities for total learning.  There are tests which measure the growth over time of each student as an individual learner, but the movement rejects those and insists that every child is ready for the same material based on chronological age, or grade level in school.

I do recognize failures in our past which led us to be vulnerable to these charlatans.  Too many schools and teachers in city neighborhoods functioned (and still function) as if their children are identically unable to learn instead of helping them to develop resilience and believing that the same range of natural ability is present in each of those classes.  Too many times we measured IQ and then labeled children, and limited what they could learn by what we offered rather than what they could do if given appropriate opportunities and hard working teachers who believe in them.  And, what effort have we made since LBJ to do anything about the broader social context in which they live?  But, the current obscene educational movement does not fix those, it treats all children that way.  You are bright, too bad, dumb down and be like everybody else.  You have to work harder and take longer to grasp the same content and are not ready for the same assessments as everyone else your age?  Too bad, we don’t believe that, so we will add lazy and unmotivated to your list of problems.

This produces amazing results in materials and instruction.  The reading series we have adopted locally claims to teach all children the same vocabulary and skills by providing easy, on-level, and advanced workbooks for the same content.  Well, if they cannot read the words that normally surround the selected vocabulary, they cannot use it meaningfully.  And the state exam will give no such options.  Many of them cannot even read the directions or questions.  In math my fourth graders are moving rapidly into algebra, a topic many many people are not ready for until adulthood, while many of them are unable to do basic math functions of single digit multiplication or addition and subtraction.  Some in the room are flying through it, love it, and need to be taken even higher.  But they are all to learn the same standards and take the exact same test because if we keep measuring them on the same scale they will eventually weigh the same!?!?

For those unfamiliar with the system, even a non-English speaking student who has been in the US for one year is expected to be able to test at the same level, in English, as all other students on all subjects and is expected to be able to score the same as them on English skills.  If that is possible, there is nothing to learn.  We just all can, because the government says we can.  It is an absurdity that should have educators, parents, and employers screaming.  But, that would put one outside the current realm of correctness and acceptable answers.

Students who do not know the basic facts of science or history are not prepared to do meaningful higher level thinking in those subjects.  Testing their opinions and saying they score well if their answer appears to match the picture or graph used as a question prompt is to deny the very nature of the academic disciplines.  Students who cannot grasp basic math concepts are not ready for algebraic applications and problem solving. We are knowingly engaging daily in meaningless activity and going along because it is career threatening not to do so.

To put it in the terms I use to provoke my grad students; if IQ theory is still true and a school teaches every child to reach their true potential, the gap between the top and bottom will grow larger every year.  The current accountability movement claims just the opposite.  Do an excellent job of teaching and everybody will be at the same level every year.

If what we want is drones to do the garbage jobs we have not shipped over seas and accept whatever level of pay and benefits we choose to give or not give, this movement is perfect.  Time to look again at who brought it to us and how they marketed it.  They are the same people who have made the anti-abortion movement the only social issue that matters, by calling it pro-life while they trash the planet, ignore the lives of children in our cities, refuse to pay living wages or give health benefits to full time workers, and support every war because we are right no matter what.  Pro-life indeed.  Educational excellence indeed.  We have been lied to.

Children are individual and unique.  Their proper nurture and support requires recognizing and honoring their differences and helping each one to become more than they or we imagine.  You cannot do that with a system based on cookie cutters for humans.

peace

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The false supposition at the base of the entire accountability and testing movement is that you can force improvements in teaching and learning by testing.

To get a little too Dr. Phil about it, you cannot increase the weight of a hog by repeatedly weighing it.  You must feed it!  Children learn by engaging in meaningful learning opportunities.  Tests do not teach.  They take time, money, and teacher attention away from helping children experience those opportunities.  Now we are doing constant ongoing (and purchased) assessments in order to track progress in raising the test scores.  Note that repeated emphasis on test scores, may raise test scores.  But, it is a giant leap of faith to assume that those scores represent anything more than focusing on the specifics of the test rather than real learning opportunities.  The current movement requires blind acceptance of the assumption that numbers going up on what the test company produces and sells means children are learning.  Any quick survey of their writing or conversations will show you the opposite.

Of course there is the contention that because the teacher knows the children will be tested, the teacher will be more devoted, harder working, more professional and accountable, and will better prepare the children.  The first problem with this assumption is that no valid research ever established that properly trained and supported teachers were the problem in the first place.  The horror stories of educational failure are overwhelmingly from places where the children come to school from and in environments of poverty and violence.  The teachers do not create those conditions.  They pour heart and soul into helping children rise above them.  And to assume that subjecting the child of that world to a high stakes exam and threats of failure will eliminate the harm from neighborhoods we should never have allowed to exist is comparable to an educational war crime.

What the tests cause teachers to focus on is the tests.  The trainers and bosses come around to make sure you do not miss the message that you are to focus on what is on the test, and only what is on the test.  This is not educational accountability.  It is idolatry at the temple of the testing industry.  To say that the area of knowledge the student discovered on TV, in a book, on the computer, or in their travels is insignificant and must be kept out of the classroom is lunacy.  But, that is exactly what the current movement is saying if the child selected topic is not on their current standard list and frequently translated to questions on the test of them!

I said before that I support the use of nationally normed tests to provide the teacher with valuable information on local strengths and weaknesses.  I also support deciding what you will assess students on and making sure you provide meaningful learning opportunities that will prepare them to do well on those assessments.  That is basic ethics, and it is the core idea of my Masters program’s design model (Understanding by Design).  But, those assumptions should allow freedom to deviate to pursue the interests of a child, to “differentiate” content and approach to match the areas that give energy to the child’s efforts to learn and grow.  I do not want to focus on the minimum children can do, I went into this profession to help them fly.

One example for non educators would be the testing of writing skills.  Indiana’s test uses the six trait writing model for the basis of its grading rubrics.  This makes grammar one sixth of the score.  So, schools under the gun to raise scores on the test found that teaching other traits of writing, even if the children cannot produce grammatically correct sentences, raises scores.  The result is that teachers are directed to stop teaching grammar and focus on the other aspects of writing.  I now have teachers in Master’s classes who have come through that system and cannot write a simple sentence with noun-verb agreement, or maintain parallel tense or person.  They beg for help to edit and correct their work, and to learn how to produce written materials which will not be an embarrassment when sent home to parents taught under the old “un-accountable” system.  But, they could score points on the test by having a beginning, middle, and end; by showing creativity and voice, etc.  Problem that is they and the students they now teach are and will be illiterate in the basic conventions of our language.

Keep weighing those hogs, train better hog weighers, insist on nothing but better hog weighing, and the hogs will starve when it was their basic nature to eat all along.

peace

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The current emperor of American education goes by the aliases of Standards, High Stakes Testing, and Accountability.  He struts across the nation proclaiming how he is saving all the children while locking all educators from pre-K through grad school into lock step content, procedures, and tests.  Widely promoted by the same president who took us to Iraq to get rid of non-existent weapons of mass destruction while continuing Reagan’s trickle-down economics right into the current financial abyss, this movement enriches test companies and consultants and is destroying the last expressions of anything resembling education in America’s schools.

This week’s faculty meeting was to inform us that we will now “map our curriculum” and do our lesson plans online courtesy of a “wonderful” company that not only gives us unlimited web storage but allows all users worldwide to view the lessons of all other users.  This way the state can hold us accountable for meeting its “standards.”  If anything is not in the standards, we were reminded again, then it is not worth teaching and must be put aside and no longer taught.  So, one more company gets rich, teachers lesson plans become more homogenized, and teachers spend more time focusing on tasks and lists instead of children.

I have so many objections sputtering through my head that this may become several posts.  So, let me start with what I agree with!  Teachers should have standards and work to help all children achieve.  Standardized tests are valuable tools for making sure what is done locally is keeping pace with what other children are achieving nationally.  Test data should be disaggregated to ensure that all sub-groups present in the classroom are being served successfully.  I have been doing all of those things since long before the current movement began.  But, my standards, testing, and research have always been focused on the real children sharing my room for the year, and my methods and behavior have always been expressions of living out the Gospel.

What I disagree with:  This movement has nothing to do with any of that.  We have stopped using nationally normed tests.  We have stopped focusing on children as the center of what we do (or adult learners in grad ed, or of Jesus in Christian ed).  We focus on the accrediting agency’s latest pronouncements of what every classroom must look like, and the latest list of what standards and methods will raise the number of kids who score high on the minimum competency exams based on the narrow standards lists in use until the next revision.  We do not aspire to inspire children to excellence in either academic pursuits, expressions of humanity, or lives of grace.  Those are not on the test even if they are given lip service in the standards.

I have watched the real ability of students, from elementary school through practicing teachers pursuing graduate degrees decrease as each year of this movement goes by.  But the test companies are doing great!  The bureaucrats who have left the classroom to pursue careers of personal ego and influence have incredible power. The consultants are rolling in money.  The accountability industry is funneling obscene amounts of education dollars into the pockets of people who never spend a single moment with children in a classroom.  And the students’ reading ability is lower, their writing ability is becoming non-existent, and their sense that learning matters for anything beyond the test is almost gone.

American education has been sold invisible clothes.  Our leaders know it, but dance down the street singing the tailors’ praises anyway because that is the current path to successful careers.  Veteran child-centered teachers are leaving the profession in ever increasing numbers.  Rich people are getting richer.  Schools are doing a worse job, not better.  And what the children are exposed to is as obscene as an emperor exposing himself in full knowledge of his sin.

peace

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Just watched a supposedly “non-partisan” video on my church’s web page about voting the issues tomorrow. OK, that was a dumb move to start with because I knew what it would be and knew I would be offended.  I did write a note about it directly to the church leadership before doing this rant which will be read by folks who have no control, or will never even darken the door of the place.

It implied that the the rights of the unborn and the definition of marriage for us and our children hinges on Christians choosing the right person tomorrow.  It was pure Republican in every way but having an RNC endorsement attached.

And yet the President of the United States decides neither of these.  After decades of pro-life and pro-family Bushes and a Reagan, we still have abortion rights and my daughter lost all government assistance for either her or her daughter the second she got married.  Supposedly, I can control the court to do the “right” thing by always voting for Republicans for President.  So, I looked up the Supreme Court record.

Reagan and the two Bushes have successfully placed eight justices on the Supreme Court and the situation remains unchanged.

How long can this party keep claiming people’s votes on this single issue when they have not and cannot change it when they are in power?

As long as we let them would be my answer to my own question.

As for me, don’t tell me you are pro-family and remove all government help the second a single mother chooses to marry the baby’s father.  Do not tell me you are pro-life when you are also pro-war, anti health care for the poor, anti-education which would help to prevent unwanted pregnancies, indifferent to the plight of all people and life that is not “us,” and anti-policies that would provide a living wage to workers. Don’t even imply that there is a holy choice when the nominee of the party which claims to support your issues is a man who first cheated on and then divorced his wife after she was injured and had become less attractive to him.  Please don’t tell me Jesus wants me to vote for the party that openly states their preference for improving the future by favoring the rich.  I do not believe He ever said anything of the sort.

I do not believe that the Democrats have any magic answers either.  I do not begrudge you your preference if you vote Republican.  I just wish church people would quit using the Bible to beat up anyone who disagrees with their choice!

Jesus did not tell his followers to form or support political parties, in fact he rejected all offers to make his mission a political one in any traditional sense.  He told us to love God and our neighbor as our self.  He told us to forgive as He forgives, and to love as He loves.  He told us to carry the message of His saving work to all people.  Those are what the church is supposed to be about.  Meanwhile the western church spends its resources on itself and brags if we send more than 5% of our money to the 90% of the world which is unchurched.  We have too much wrong inside our own house to be throwing stones at anybody.

OK, I feel a little better now.

peace

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