matching tracksuits

Modern Gnosticism

Monday 22 May 2023

I encountered a meme that got me thinking about the relationship between Christianity and conspiracy theories. It was a meme dealing with the supposedly soon-coming apocalypse that will usher in the end of the world and the return of Jesus (if you're a post-trib millennialist, I guess).

This sort of hyperventilating anticipation of being able to say "I told you so!" is fairly typical of the fundamentalist Christian mindset, and it's one of the reasons I'd be nervous having a fundamentalist Evangelical in the White House: he (and it would certainly be a "he") would be tempted to make decisions based on a sense of what might help prophecy along. At any rate, the meme suggests that skeptics will soon be put in their place:

This sort of gnostic conspiracy theory is part and parcel of the Evangelical tradition. They await anxiously the events suggested in the meme, and the suggestion that Christians have been waiting for 2000 years for something like this is wasted breath. Every Christian generation has had a portion of people who are sure that they are the last generation. Indeed, Jesus himself in the earliest gospel seems to think this:

And he said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with[a] power.’
Mark 9:1

I grew up in a heterodox sect that took this gnostic conspiracy theory nonsense to the next level, suggesting that its members (numbering less than 150,000 at its peak) were the only true Christians on the entire planet. That's probably why I'm so skeptical of this nonsense.

Darts and Baptism

Sunday 21 May 2023

May Saturday

Saturday 20 May 2023

State meet -- the Girl won third in high jump, tying with three other girls.

Afterward, we had the Boy's eleventh birthday party -- it was much like the tenth, without the sleepover in the tents.

Eight-Grade Dance

Friday 19 May 2023

One of the real joys of the year is the eighth-grade formal dance. To see these kids out of uniform, being silly, having fun -- without a care in the world. It's a beautiful thing.

A Real Fear

Thursday 18 May 2023

We have a lot of big trees in our backyard -- trees that if they fell the wrong way would cause a lot of damage. I tell myself that the root system for such a tree must be massive and must be deep.

Not like this -- a large area but not much depth.

A house I saw on the way home from work experienced one of my greatest nightmares as a homeowner with children...

Hopefully no one got hurt.

Injured Friend

Wednesday 17 May 2023

We found a little injured friend on the road this evening. He's not much bigger than a bottle cap, and when we first brought him in, placing him in a small basket with a cap of water, he was barely moving, breathing heavily, and keeping his eyes closed.

"It would probably be the merciful thing to just euthanize the poor guy," I said, "rather than let him suffer through the night only to die a painful death."

"No, animals have a way," K assured me.

We will see tomorrow, I suppose.

Where’d this Little Guy Go?

Tuesday 16 May 2023

By the Numbers

Monday 15 May 2023

When students don't hand in work for an assignment, we enter a special code into the grade book to indicate that: NHI. "Not Handed In." Some students have not a single NHI in the whole grade book; others have a few more than zero.

That's how it always is; the breakdown is always according to class. It's always predictable:

The on-level classes are a different story. And the inclusion class, which includes a lot of special education students, is a category all by itself. That class alone, which has 27 students who represent 24% of all my students, has 46.29% of all the NHIs. Their NHI/student ratio is almost double the average for the whole group of 112 students whom I teach. One student alone, I calculated, is responsible for almost 5% of the NHIs herself.

P4 and P5 are honors classes. They have relatively few NHIs. Out of about 1300 grades (assignments times students for a given class), they each have in the 70-80 range. That's about 5% of all assignments not turned in. That's relatively high, I think, but they are middle schoolers. The bulk of the NHIs in those classes are from boys who don't really want to be in the class to begin with.

How many of these students will fail the class? None. Not a single one. Even the student who had 40+ NHIs out of 64 assignments. She will pass the class by about one point.

Why?

Because in the district's wisdom, NHIs don't count as 0; they count as 50. In other words, students do nothing and get 50% of the credit. What do they need to pass? 60%. So students can literally do three or four assignments per quarter and pass by the skin of their cliches.

"That's all fine and good," outside critics might say, "but what about when they get a job? What is that teaching them for a work ethic?" Forget about when they get a job; the 50 floor ends when they enter high school. So we've taught them that it's possible to skip most assignments and still pass, and then they'll get to high school and find their 60 in middle school translates to a 32 or so in high school.

Who thought this was a good idea?

We teachers like to joke that we should stop doing any work and demand 50% of our salary. "If the students can do it, we should be able to as well."

The truth of the matter is, though, that even if we didn't have this floor and gave students the grades they really earned, we wouldn't hold them back. Kids get socially promoted all the time, and they know that it's a district (or is it state?) policy that students can only fail once before eighth grade.

"You can't fail me. I've already been held back. You can't do anything to me," I've heard from students.

What about high school? If you fail a class once, will they be reluctant to fail you again? Do they socially promote students? I really don't know. I tell students they don't, but for all I know, they might.

And this is yet another reason the education system in our state is broken almost beyond repair...