Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 05, 2023

Semi-Random Musings (32)

Jonathan Noyes’ latest post at the Stand to Reason blog asks “Do You Know What Your Child Is Being Taught about Sex?” It’s a decent primer for Christian parents with children in the public school system, at least with respect to the issue of what is actually being taught. I don’t think Noyes has missed much in describing the variety of poisons to which our children are being exposed.

Where Noyes missed the boat completely is in failing to address how the school system is disseminating its propaganda. In the end, the delivery method matters more than any particular offensive and ungodly bit of misinformation.

Friday, November 24, 2023

Too Hot to Handle: The Emperor’s New Clothes

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Christopher Dummitt is an Associate Professor of History at Trent University, and he has a confession to make: “I basically just made it up.”

Tom: He’s not the first, and he’s probably not the worst, but Dummitt is keen on taking either credit or blame (it’s not always clear which) for successfully swaying Canadian public opinion about sex and gender. He used to tell his students and readers that gender is entirely a social construct, not a biological reality. Today, the vast majority of Canadians believe him.

Problem is he was misusing his authority to deceive the public. The Emperor would go out tonight, but he doesn’t have a stitch to wear. Likewise, Dummitt had no substantive evidence of any sort to offer for his ideology-based position. As he now admits, his so-called “proofs” may legitimately be interpreted any number of ways. He used rhetoric and the “appeal to authority” fallacy to patch the gaping holes in his argument.

But we knew that, didn’t we, IC?

Thursday, September 07, 2023

College / University Survival Guide [Part 3]

My father always said he would prefer I never had a motorcycle. He had ridden when he was young, and he said it was very dangerous. He certainly was not going to buy me one. But I was fascinated with them, and by the time I was nineteen I owned one — a dirt bike.

I crashed it on my first day out; no real damage, just a good mud bath. After that, I got the hang of it, and was off. I never really crashed again. Sure, I came close a few times, but that was half the fun. Being young is about taking on those risks and seeing how far you can push your limits. That’s how you grow up and find out what you’re capable of.

Thursday, August 31, 2023

College / University Survival Guide [Part 2]

What can a Christian do to maintain his or her faith on campus in the presence of a fairly discouraging atmosphere of indifference?

There’s actually quite a lot. Let me suggest that just as learning requires habits of study, staying strong in your faith requires a sort of ongoing maintenance program that counteracts the corrosive effects of secular indifference.

What’s in the survival program? Okay, let’s look at that. I’m going to put things in four categories: “preparing” (i.e. what to do right now, in order to get ready), “arriving” (i.e. what to do immediately upon getting to the campus), “surviving” (i.e. basic priorities to get you through the first year and beyond), and “thriving” (i.e. how to employ your faith to enrich your academics and actually give you a strategic advantage). How’s that?

Thursday, August 24, 2023

College / University Survival Guide [Part 1]

It won’t be very long now until universities and colleges in North America begin gearing up for the year. And with this, a whole new cohort of Christian young people will enter post-secondary life for the first time.

Are they ready?

Parents often worry about that. Everybody knows that university can be a challenging place in which to hold to your faith. It’s full of new ideas — most of them secular, and not a few genuinely anti-Christian — and new experiences — not all of them perfectly healthy and safe. But it’s also a tremendously exciting time for many young people; and when we consider it part of a natural process of moving from parental control to full independence, then there’s every reason to be positive about it. (And parents, when you consider the alternative, what’s better?)

Wednesday, August 23, 2023

The False God of Education

My neighbor to the left is an attractive forty-something single mother with a small child and a big fence around her property, which abuts on an ‘L’-shaped swath of grass that is technically the property of the city. From time to time, in the dead of night, the occasional nefarious individual with a large item he wishes to dispose of quietly unloads his castoff between the fence and the street. It’s a whole lot easier and cheaper than driving it to the dump.

My neighbor’s frustration with this practice is obvious.

Thursday, May 25, 2023

Sailing the High Seas

An old friend sent me an email a while ago. He was concerned:

“My daughter is going off to university next year, and she wants to take English Literature as her major! I’m worried about her: could you talk to her?”

I had to smile. Sure, I could talk to her. After all, I had been through all that, and I had survived just fine, thank you.

But why the panic?

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

An Impossibly Fine Line

Briercrest College and Seminary is an evangelical Bible college in Caronport, Saskatchewan where, since 2013, you could get a university degree without going to university. It also continued to run sports programs over the last three years when many other post-secondary institutions had shut theirs down. These two features have made Briercrest attractive to a broader range of students than previously.

Naturally, there is a cost to that.

Friday, July 15, 2022

Too Hot to Handle: Collision Impending

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Germans in Stuttgart staged a protest rally last weekend over “family values”. At least 4,500 people took to the streets to protest new school curriculum that puts special emphasis on “sexual diversity and sexual minorities”.

What’s interesting about the German situation is that against the wishes of many Germans the Merkel government is importing unprecedented numbers of Muslims into its school system while simultaneously pushing an increasingly liberal social agenda, also against the wishes of a not-insignificant number of its citizens.

Tom: I bring this up, Immanuel Can, because our own Canadian government is on precisely the same trajectory and the U.S. is not far behind. It seems to me spectacularly ill-conceived social policy to pit one set of values against another. The cultural collision, when it comes, promises to be loud and destructive.

What are they thinking, IC?

Friday, May 27, 2022

Too Hot to Handle: Locating the Thought Police

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Immanuel Can: This is super interesting.

Tom: Do tell …

IC: It’s a chart measuring what proportion of two-sided debate and its opposite, so‑called “social justice” indoctrination, is being practiced at the various university campuses in Ontario, Canada.

Tuesday, April 19, 2022

Inbox: Something to Think About

A few days ago I watched a couple of men argue on social media about the so-called “slippery slope fallacy”. One said it isn’t really considered a formal fallacy and may be a legitimate concern in many instances; the other claimed it’s entirely specious.

That’s wrong. The slippery slope is very much a real thing, especially when you are dealing with the radical Left. Give an inch, and they will take a mile. Give them a Pride parade, they want same-sex marriage. Give them same-sex marriage and they want to adopt and raise kids in their own likeness.

After that they are coming for yours.

Monday, February 21, 2022

Anonymous Asks (185)

“What are the pros and cons of getting a formal Christian education?”

In one sense I’m the wrong guy to ask. I never felt the need to go out and get one. Blame my parents for a Christian upbringing that went heavy on familiarity with the Bible. My father also spent a short time in a U.S. Bible school but did not finish his program. The lack of accreditation had no measurable impact on his ability to serve the Lord. I never heard him express a single regret about the decision.

My own feeling is that there is nothing you can learn in a classroom that you can’t learn from reading the same material for yourself, but then I felt the same way about university and still do.

Friday, June 19, 2020

Too Hot to Handle: Empty-Somethings

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

The Telegraph reports an Italian court has ordered a divorced father to pay child support for his 28-year-old son, who has already meandered through one degree in literature and has now enrolled in a post-graduate course in experimental cinema.

Tom: I bring this up, Immanuel Can, because this is not an isolated case. Most parents have not been nailed for child support, but many all over the world have their adult sons and daughters living in their homes well into their thirties and beyond.

The phenomenon has a name in Italy. They call it bamboccioni, which essentially means “chubby children”. You had what I thought was a better idea, IC. How about “empty-somethings”?

Thursday, April 23, 2020

Ten Commandments That Failed

It seems morbid, perhaps, to be raising the topic of 9/11 going on two decades later. It was a sad, bitter moment, one that we might all wish to forget.

But wisdom does not always come quickly, and events of this magnitude take a very long time to understand. There are some things which are best left unsaid in the heat of the moment, but are better brought slowly to the surface when due time has passed. Such is the case with what I am writing today.

Even now, the fall of the World Trade Towers is not an easy subject.

Tuesday, October 01, 2019

Semi-Random Musings (16)

If you don’t believe anything you see on CNN or MSNBC anymore, if The New York Times prints more fiction than fact, and if The Drudge Report has too many tabloid-style shock items for your taste, you may like Disrn, a new website created by Adam Ford of The Christian Daily Reporter and the Adam Ford Newsletter in partnership with Seth Dillon of The Babylon Bee.

Friday, September 27, 2019

Too Hot to Handle: The Emperor’s New Clothes

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Thursday, September 05, 2019

College / University Survival Guide [Part 3]

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Thursday, August 29, 2019

College / University Survival Guide [Part 2]

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Thursday, August 22, 2019

College / University Survival Guide [Part 1]

 The most recent version of this post is available here.

Thursday, August 08, 2019

Sailing the High Seas

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Friday, May 10, 2019

Too Hot to Handle: Sexuality and Public Education

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

[Editor’s note: This post is almost four years old, and the Ontario government that implemented these curriculum changes is long gone, thank the Lord. But don’t think they (or others like them) won’t be back in short order. Sadly, these issues will be part of our lives until the Lord returns.]

In the news this week: the sex education curriculum for the Ontario public school system will now be implemented starting in Grade 4. That’s correct: if you live in Ontario, your eight-year-old will be discussing sex in class come September.

And not just the usual stuff we were embarrassed to listen to in high school.

Thursday, May 02, 2019

Anonymous Asks Again

“For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”

You asked, “Why does school suck?”

Yep, It Does

When I was young, there was a pop song called Kodachrome that began with the words, “When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school / It’s a wonder I can think at all.” I think a lot of people feel like that: when they think about what their teachers forced them to learn, they can’t imagine what the real purpose of it all was. I was like that. In fact, I eventually dropped out, though I did go back later.

So I get your point.

Monday, April 29, 2019

Anonymous Asks (37)

“Why does school suck?”

For a Christian teen, there could be all kinds of reasons.

If you’re in a public school in 2019, you are being non-stop propagandized with — in no particular order — naturalism, secularism, materialism, existentialism, neo-Marxism, multiculturalism, diversity-worship, post-modernism, neo-Darwinism, progressivism, globalism, extreme environmentalism, feminism, militant sexual deviancy and licentiousness, pro-abortionism, hatred of the so-called “patriarchy”, generalized political correctness and a poorly-concealed loathing of everything that built Western civilization or that you read in your Bible.

I may have missed a couple there. Small wonder a Christian may wish to be elsewhere.

Friday, February 01, 2019

Too Hot to Handle: Locating the Thought Police

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Ten Commandments That Failed

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Saturday, October 22, 2016

Sailing the High Seas

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Friday, May 06, 2016

Too Hot to Handle: Empty-Somethings

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Friday, March 04, 2016

Too Hot to Handle: Collision Impending

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Wednesday, September 02, 2015

College / University Survival Guide [Part 2]

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Tuesday, September 01, 2015

College / University Survival Guide [Part 1]

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Friday, March 06, 2015

Saturday, March 01, 2014

The Deafening Silence of 9/11

The most current version of this post is available here.