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Religion, Education, and the End Times

Monday 25 February 2008

A client at the day treatment program I used to work at asked me an odd question one day.

“Is it true that people are going to have computer chips implanted in them at some time?” the boy asked, “Because my foster mom said that that was going to happen.”

“Ah,” I thought, “you just told me an awful lot about your foster mom.”

What I actually said was somewhat more toned down: “Nah, John, that’s not necessarily going to happen, and even if it does, it probably won’t mean what your foster mom seems to think it will mean.”

And immediately I thought that perhaps I’d said more than I should have, for it seems to be a theological/religious statement I made. I did qualify it: “not necessarily” and “probably.” Still, I’m sensitive about discussing anything having to do with religion with students.

When student teaching, I had an interesting exchange with a student about this. He was concerned that I had crossed some line by explaining the Christianization of Britain. I differentiated teaching and proselytizing. “If we’d been discussing the Turkish empire, I would have discussed Islam. If we’d been talking about the partition of India, I would have discussed Hinduism and Islam.”

After all, who am I to make judgments about whether or not the Beast is rising? Who am I to say that chip implants will not necessarily be a sign that the Beast?

I wonder if I didn’t overstep some boundary with that…

The Bard on the Wane

Monday 4 February 2008

In a study entitled “Vanishing Shakespeare,” the American Council of Trustees and Alumni found that 55 out of 70 “English departments at the U.S. News & World Report‘s top 25 national universities and top liberal arts colleges, as well as the Big Ten schools and select public universities in New York and California” don’t require English majors to take a course in Shakespeare. Instead, we’re replacing the Bard with Madonna:

Increasingly, colleges and universities envision a major in English not as a body of important writers, genres, and works that all should know, but as a hodgepodge of courses reflecting diverse interests and approaches. See Appendix B.) After redesigning the English major at the University of Pennsylvania, for example, the department’s undergraduate hairman told The Daily Pennsylvanian student newspaper that We might not agree on what we think English is, but we could all agree that our curriculum should reflect the makeup of our faculty. Such a philosophy results in course offerings being driven not by the intellectual needs of students, but often by the varied interests and agendas of the faculty. As a consequence, it is possible for students to graduate with a degree in English without thoughtful or extended study of central works and figures who have shaped our literary and cultural heritage.

It’s difficult for me to imagine not studying Shakespeare as an English major. Shortly after I graduated, the professor who taught the Shakespeare course at my small liberal arts college introduced a second Shakespeare course in which students spent a whole semester studying a single play, with the ultimate aim of performing it. It was offered every other year, with a more traditional, 12-play Shakespeare course offered on off years. I wish I’d had the opportunity to take both.

But not to study his work at all? “A degree in English without Shakespeare is like an M.D. without a course in anatomy. It is tantamount to fraud.”

“Vanishing Shakespeare“

Shopping

Saturday 22 December 2007

We went out shopping yesterday. So did most of the rest of the city, which was foreseeable. Dziadek had never seen a mall; I think after seeing one, he’ll be content never to see one again. More importantly, we needed gifts, gifts, gifts — none of which we bought at the mall, because there’s only clothes and jewelry in the mall. And people, but they’re not for sale.

In these cyber days, a hunter such as I am (I don’t shop; I hunt) has a tough time justifying spending time fighting crowds for things that could just as easily be bought with a click of the mouse and a sip of coffee. Of course, you can’t really have your picture taken with Santa when you’re shopping online. On second thought, I’m sure there’s a site out there that makes montages with existing pictures.

Deconstructionist Commentary

Friday 31 August 2007

Our education system is broken because so many families in America don’t have maps, and that’s why our education system is not helping South Africa as it should.

Since we now live in SC, I’m particularly proud of this video…

Open Comments

Friday 3 August 2007

One of the dangers of having a controversial website that is also open to viewer comments is the threat of visitors’ words being attributed to the site owner.

As an aside, Dennis Prager rehearses the now-common (but still pretty good) observations about the difference in reaction in insulting Islam and insulting other religions. He points out the absurdity of the Federal Koran-in-the-toilet suit versus the crucifix-in-urine modern art piece. Putting a Koran in a toilet and putting a crucifix in urine are essentially the same thing, but the reaction is entirely different.

In this video, Ibrahim Hooper, of CAIR, makes just such a claim against Robert Spencer and his site Jihad Watch. “[Hooper] quoted a genocidal comment that was made on this website yesterday, and made it appear as if I had written it,” Spencer writes.

His response: “In reality, someone kindly alerted me to the existence of the comment shortly after it was posted, and I removed it and banned the poster.”

So it was on the site for a short period of time, but then disappeared. How then would Hooper have known it was there? Someone emailed him? Someone at CAIR monitors Jihad Watch continuously?

Spencer continues,

The comment itself seemed to me and to others who posted on the same thread to have been written by a provocateur — someone who wanted to discredit Jihad Watch and me by planting a comment here. Such people come through here fairly often. And now, after Hooper’s use of this comment despite its being deleted, I suspect even more strongly that it was written by a provocateur. (Jihad Watch)

Could it be that someone who is critical of the site posted such a comment to make the site look bad? It seems entirely possible.

The Confederate Flag

Thursday 2 August 2007

While wandering around Gatlinburg some weeks ago, I noticed several “Dixie-sympathetic” shirts. Confederate flags, Confederate war heroes — the works.

A few of the shirts I saw:

  • I don’t wear this shirt to piss you off, but if it does, that makes my day.
    (Why would that make your day? Are you just trying to be provocative? If so, to what end?)
  • It’s a Southern thang. Yanks’ll never understand.
    (What is the “it”? The Confederate flag? Racial pride? Pride in one’s heritage? A drawl?)
  • It’s not a Redneck thang, it’s the RIGHT thang.
    (Does that mean that slavery was the right thing “RIGHT thang”?)
  • Heritage, not hate.
    (Yes, but that heritage included a war for the right to keep people enslaved.)
  • Dixie defenders (with a portrait of Lee)
    (I just picture Dixie cups on this one…)

My personal favorite:

History Lesson

I only saw it in shop windows, never on someone. Which is a shame, because I would have loved to walk up to someone wearing it and request the history lesson.

Tour de Steroids

Wednesday 25 July 2007

Last year: Landis, Ulrich, Basso.

This year: Vinokourov, Moreni, and Rassmussen.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to watch the Tour again. What’s the point? It’s no longer a contest of who has the most endurance, who trained the most, who has the most — dare I use THE sports cliche? — heart.

It’s who can best hide his doping.

Anyone who wins a stage, a title, the Tour itself will now be immediately suspect.

Curious Curiosity

Sunday 22 July 2007

Standing in line at the local supermarket the other night, I noticed on the cover of Cosmopolitan…

Cosmo

iDontCare

Tuesday 3 July 2007

For the last several months, I’ve been hearing more about the iPhone on NPR while driving to work than I really cared to.

The phenomenon is a fascinatingly, achingly-perfect example of our consumer culture. All of the reporting I heard on NPR was about the wonderous technology and gotta-get-it, gotta-get-it, gotta-get-it.

Or sometimes about people who feel they’ve gotta-get-it, gotta-get-it, gotta-get-it.

People standing in line; people paying people to stand in line. Lines, everywhere — if reports are to be believed. People waiting to buy; people waiting to try: to the former, “Do you have nothing better to do with your money?” and to the latter, “Do you have nothing better to do with your time?”

I really just don’t get it. It’s a phone that plays music, and accomplishes it without a keypad. Nothing revolutionary. Nothing that turns our conception of the universe on its head. Bohr, Plank, and Einstein would have all been impressed, I’m sure.

Perhaps I’m just one of those “old fashioned” types that thinks a phone that is just a phone is sufficient. My phone is two years old, and if I don’t have to get a new one to renew my contract, I probably won’t, because I just don’t care. It rings; I talk — end of story.

If I want to listen to music, I’ll use my iPod…

Maps

Friday 22 June 2007

Via Kerim at Keywords, who found it at Strange Maps.

GDP Map

It is a bit misleading, though, as Strange Maps explains:

The creator of this map has had the interesting idea to break down that gigantic US GDP into the GDPs of individual states, and compare those to other countries� GDP. What follows, is this slightly misleading map � misleading, because the economies both of the US states and of the countries they are compared with are not weighted for their respective populations.

Pakistan, for example, has a GDP that�s slightly higher than Israel�s � but Pakistan has a population of about 170 million, while Israel is only 7 million people strong. The US states those economies are compared with (Arkansas and Oregon, respectively) are much closer to each other in population: 2,7 million and 3,4 million.

All the same, fascinating.

I went to Strange Maps myself (obviously) and found a map much more interesting, in my view: the Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map of the World.

Cultural Map

How to read the map?

On this map, East and West Germany are next to each other, as one would expect. But Romania�s closest neighbour is Armenia? And Poland and India are side by side? Well, this is not a straightforward geographical map, but a cultural one. It plots out how countries relate to each other on a double axis of values (ranging from �traditional� to �secular-rational� on the vertical and from �survival� to �self-expression� on the horizontal scale). This makes for some strange bedfellows � for example: South Africa, Peru and the Philippines occupy almost the same position, although they�re on three different continents.

If I were a social studies teacher…