For the weekend crowd, this is a sampling of what we’ve been reading this week.
“Though Robinson has written that she is “extremely reluctant” to talk about her faith, “chiefly because my belief does not readily reduce itself to simple statements,” her work is suffused with her religious sensibility: distrustful of over-precise dogma, emphasizing spiritual wonder and acts of love.”
“I mention this because nothing like this has happened to me before: cinematic art as an aid to prayer and contemplation. To The Wonder is a difficult film, and very much not to everyone’s taste. It is a profoundly religious movie, but hard to penetrate. As I watched the film, I couldn’t wait for it to end, but it has remained with me in a deep way, as I discovered this morning praying in the darkness and silence.”
“Meanwhile, everything about my pedagogy—from the way I plan to the tools I use—has changed over the past 11 years, except this: Relationships matter. They drive the rigor and expectations behind the reading and writing-workshop practices in my classroom. And looping supports that.”
“Gates’ vision seems to be that he wants as many people as possible educated enough to be technologically literate but not so educated that they intelligently question Big Government’s advance. Or so it seems; a big part of the Gates Foundation formula is to encourage increasing government “investment” to produce more college graduates.”
“Officials implementing these policies should be challenged in public at every opportunity. Elected representatives should speak up and raise the concerns of their constituents, and we should make sure to hold them accountable. Students should protest when Common Core tests label them as failures. Teachers should reject bogus evaluations based on these tests. Parents should send the tests back.Parents should opt their children out of future tests. Our unions should re-appraise their willingness to defend these standards, given the facts that are emerging.”
“The true conservatism I would steer you toward begins with a foundational truth that is revealed to us in the Bible but which has always struck me as the height of common sense: namely, that we were made in God’s image but are now fallen. The first part is the ground of all human dignity and intrinsic worth. Apart from it, we are nothing more than great apes with no ultimate claim to specialness. The second part is the reality check, the reason why we need laws and limits, checks and balances.”
