African American Homeschoolers
Joanne Jacobs points us to a story in The Village Voice about the growing number of African American homeschoolers. If you can get past the first paragraph which is as bad a display of provincial ignorance as one is likely to ever encounter, it’s an interesting, in depth story. Given the abysmal job the public school system is doing of educating African American boys in … Continue reading African American Homeschoolers
The Orioles Are Coming
We have a small deck off of our kitchen where I hang our bird feeders. This allows us to draw them in close enough to actually see them when they come to eat. Visitors to our house in late spring and summer are often startled at the appearance of this fellow: The Baltimore Oriole. Because of their extremely bright colors, these are some of the … Continue reading The Orioles Are Coming
Someone should notify the authorities!
My 3 year old daughter has been advocating for everyone in the house to play something she is calling “kissing tag”. I guess she wants us to chase each other around and try to kiss each other. I have no idea where she is getting this from, but obviously, as the person charged with ensuring that we have a safe learning environment I should implement … Continue reading Someone should notify the authorities!
Black-White Conversations We’re Afraid To Have
Northwestern University just put out a study which found that white people avoid dealing with black people or discussions of race out of fear of doing something which will cause them to be accused of bigotry. This is probably one of those “We need researchers to tell us this?” things.
As many of my readers know, I am married to an African American man, so we’ve had many of those conversations which most white people avoid like the plague. I’ll just say that it’s been interesting.
Over time, I’ve come to see the relationship between white Americans and black Americans as being like a bad marriage. Neither side trusts the other, each attributes the worst possible motivations to anything the other side does, neither is willing to listen to the other but continually demands that their concerns be taken seriously, etc., etc. The solution to a bad marriage generally requires the two parties to stop being so self defensive, listen to each other, avoid responding negatively at all costs, be willing to do the right things for the relationship irregardless of what the other person may or may not do, etc. I believe that it will take the same sorts of actions between white and black Americans to actually move past the distrust and hostility which we generally deal with each other with.
I think that one of the biggest problems with the black-white relationship is that we fail to understand or appreciate how things look from the other’s perspective and then insist on assigning the worst possible motivations to what the other group does (or does not do). I believe that if we are willing to start making a real effort to understand the other group’s perspective (not necessarily agree with – just understand that POV as sincere and real), it would allow us to stop being so defensive and hostile with each other.
I bring this and this study up because my husband recently shared an idea he has about just the sort of “white persons inadvertently messes up, black people go ballistic” interaction which seems to have made white people so nervous that they avoid race at all costs. Continue reading “Black-White Conversations We’re Afraid To Have”
The Mind, New Ideas and the Living Word
I have been noticing a phenomenon lately which has probably always been present in humanity: a seeming inability to hear new ideas. I’m not speaking even of being unable to understand new ideas, which is pretty understandable. What I am observing is an inability to even recognize when a new idea is being put forth. There seems to be an unconscious assumption that there are a set group of possible ideas about a variety of issues and therefore everything you will read, see or hear fits into one of those known sets.
It seems that when exposed to a new take on one of these old issues, people make a mental evaluation of which known idea sets this information most closely resembles and then respond to that rather than anything which is actually being said. It’s an odd phenomenon. I’m not sure if it comes from the lack of original thought which unlies almost everything we read or hear these days or if it’s just a natural result of our human tendency to categorize things.
Not only is this happening in the world at large, but I think it has taken over our religion as well. In her book Wondrous Depth: Preaching The Old Testament, Hebrew scholar Ellen F. Davis gives what I think is a good explanation of the problem with regard to our habits of reading scripture and why it just decimates the life of the church:
[It is] the gravest scandal of the North American church in our time – namely the shallow reading of scripture. Such reading results from the assumption that we already know just what the bible says; therefore our reading is a simple rehearsal of what (we think) we know rather than an attempt to probe deeper. Continue reading “The Mind, New Ideas and the Living Word”
Republicans could do a lot worse
There’s a touching story up over at Slate about John McCain. It was actually written back in 1997. It’s about John McCain’s relationship with liberal Democratic U.S. Congressman Mo Udall who was also from Arizona. Shortly after McCain was elected to the Senate, Udall reached out to McCain and helped him to get his footing in the Washington political scene. In 1997 Congressman Udall lay … Continue reading Republicans could do a lot worse
Is college worth it?
I have written before about my skepticism over the need for everyone to get a college education (here and here) as well as my extreme opposition to student loans and our current system of funding higher education (here, here and here). Today, via Joanne Jacobs, we find out that Charles Miller who led the Commission on the Future of Higher Education is now arguing that the earnings benefit for having a college degree is probably much less than has been previously stated.
Rather than being 1 million over a career, the number according to Charles Miller is more like $280K. Given that a private college education now routinely runs about $100K over 4 years with room and board and adding in the cost of interest on student loans, as well as the missed opportunity costs of having money which could otherwise be used to invest in a 401K or other investment vehicle going towards paying off student loans, this number really calls into question whether it makes sense to insist on a college diploma as a requirement for most decent jobs.
I have long thought that the credential inflation we have seen over the last couple of decades (requiring ever higher credentials for professional positions) is the result the failure of our high schools to adequately prepare students to enter into the workforce. Continue reading “Is college worth it?”
The Proverbs 31 Woman
I recently told my husband that Proverbs 31 was like Cosmo for Christian women; it presents a completely unrealistic image of what a woman should be. Some women get together with their girlfriends to study it earnestly and try to follow its tips and guides to be more like what is presented. Some women look at it and just feel awful about themselves because they know they can never live up to the perfection they see in it. And then there are women who grab a pint of hagen daz to eat while looking for all the tell-tale signs of the copious amounts of airbrushing it takes to make a woman look like that. I mean, the Proverbs 31 woman gets the flax, spins it into yarns, weaves the fabric, sews the garments and keeps them sparkling clean at all times? Not to mention running a vineyard, playing the real estate market, making meals, blah, blah blah. What about the servants? When do they get time to weave their own fabric? What about the nanny who can’t keep her clothes clean because the kids keep wiping hummus on it? Does she lose her virtuous woman status? (Obviously I fall into the “looking for signs of airbrushing while eating ice cream” camp of women 🙂 )
However, the fact of the matter is that this is in the bible, so it must be there for a reason, so simply writing it off as unrealistic and ignoring it isn’t really a good option for us. Yet it’s a totally impossible vision of womanhood. So what are we to make of it? As I mentioned yesterday, one of my rules for studying scripture is that when the bible appears to be contradicting itself or real life, that is usually a “red marker” which indicates a place where we need to dig deeper. Usually there’s more going on in these spots than we realize. The Proverbs 31 woman seemed like a perfect example of scriptures being in conflict with real life, so I decided to dig a little deeper. I came across these text notes at Next Bible on Proverbs 31: Continue reading “The Proverbs 31 Woman”
Homeschooling Blahs
I don’t know what’s going on lately, but I’ve had the hardest time getting motivated to do school work with the kids. Instead of them complaining, I’m the one going, “But I don’t want to do algebra! Do we really have to do biology? Can’t I wait to do the times tables with you?” Sigh. Of course, for some reason, this time of year tends … Continue reading Homeschooling Blahs
Women’s Roles in the Bible
I have two rules which guide me in my study of scriptures:
1. If the bible is unchanging, then it can not have been intended to communicate one thing to the people to whom it was originally given and something entirely different today. If our modern common sense reading of scripture is in conflict with how the ancients would have understood the same verses, then our modern understanding is wrong, no matter how obvious, universally held or apparent it is.
2. Where the bible appears to be in conflict with its self or with the real world around us, this should be seen as a red marker pointing to something which needs to be explored further. Too often we try to explain away these contradictions or make the unacceptable seem more reasonable when what we really need to do is pray, study and dig deeper. In my experience I have frequently found that these “red markers” point to areas where there is a problem with translation or our modern assumptions are interfering with our understanding and on occassion, I have even come to see that some aspect of our understanding about God or life is entirely off base and needs to be adjusted.
These two rules have served me well, although what I learn from applying them frequently leaves me well outside of mainstream Christian opinion on some issues. I haven’t quite decided yet if that is a good thing or bad thing and what I’m supposed to do with all that, but time will tell.
At any rate, one of the most vexing problems of scriptures for us moderns is the bible and women. My first revelation that there might be something wrong with our modern approach to what the bible says about women came years ago when my husband and I were newly married. We were having a really hard time and I went into a Christian bookstore looking for some sort of answer which would rid us our misery. While browsing through books, I came across one which claimed to explain the biblical injunction for wives to submit to their husbands in such a way that a woman could be at peace with her role. The key, this author claimed, was that women had the easier part; while women were called to submit, men actually had to LOVE their wives. You see, the oft quoted verses first tell women to submit to their husbands and for husbands to love their lives. Since only husbands are instructed to love their wives, this author reasoned, women were free to despise, hate or just be indifferent to their husbands so long as they were submissive towards them. Continue reading “Women’s Roles in the Bible”
The Upside Down World 