Mar 11 2009
Clicking Can Be A Bad Idea
(forget caps) as i discovered just now reading joanne jacobs, where she links to this NYT article on catholic schools becoming charter schools. she didnt quote the beginning of the article, or i would have known that reading it would send my blood pressure through the stratosphere.
On his first day of eighth grade at the former Holy Name Roman Catholic school last fall, Jeffrey Stone bowed his head, clasped his hands and began to recite the Lord’s Prayer. Within seconds, his teacher chided him: “We don’t do that anymore.”
stop. this teacher should be sent back to high school to take civics. its none of her business whether he prays or not, and had i been the principal, i would at least have given her a chewing out she would never forget, if not told her that we dont need such obviously stupid teachers and fired her on the spot.
Over the summer Holy Name, along with six other financially troubled Catholic schools here, had converted into a charter school, packing up crucifixes, redesigning uniforms and expunging religion from its curriculum. But virtually the entire staff and much of the student body stayed the same through the transition, and they had come to expect lessons in faith and values alongside algebra and literature.
“I was shocked,” recalled Jeffrey, 13, who played on the Catholic youth basketball team and relied on his school’s pastor-in-residence for advice. “I was like, how am I going to survive?”
so we have a 13 year-old student with morals, and this idiot teacher thinks that is a problem. but it gets worse. they think, as all liberals do, that they can substitute “values” for morals.
“values” are like “spirituality.” take morals, strip them of God, and make them relative so they arent binding and dont mean anything, and you get “values.” “values” are, if anything, usually immoral, as they often translate into “social justice,” which means stealing money from people who worked for it so you can give it to people who did not and do not deserve it, and all just to make you feel better about yourself.
“we dont do that anymore.” i am disgusted, and just bit queasy, and i think i will get back to my Lenten project of reading the Bible all the way through when i am sufficiently awake, just to purge this from my mind.
5 responses so far
[…] here we go. oh. the code for this instacarnival thing is just godawful, so let me here (cause at least i can see on this line) offer a re-print of my own (typing is just too painful to write a new article). cannon fodder. Uh, okay, i saw this and had to comment: clicking can be a bad idea. […]
[…] March, 2009 by rwp Just read, then pray for the […]
Reading the whole Bible: take it from one who has tried it, don’t attempt to read all the books in order. You will never make it through the Pentateuch. Leave Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Leviticus for last; they are deadly for modern readers.
My favorite book is Jonah. If you have a Bible with the Apocrypha in it, Bel and the Dragon is an extremely good read.
“Values” can be relatively effective if founded on strong metarules: the “zero aggression principle” of libertarianism, or “An it harm none. do what though wilt/Everything you do comes back on you 3 times” of Wicca, for example. The problem is that man is no longer a rational animal, but a rationalizing one, and ultimately non-absolute prohibitions devolve into “whatever I want”. And in religion without absolutes, anything with real power (e.g., the Eucharist) gets minimized or abandoned. We need the Law as a mirror, and the Church as a guide. You can’t do it all yourself.
This just fries my keister! I’ve taught in public schools my whole career, and I know that students are allowed brief prayers at the beginning of class (most save them for just before tests). That prayer can’t interfere with the classroom decorum (not loud prayers, shouted out), nor interfere with the lesson.
In SC, they still have a moment of silent prayer and the Pledge at the beginning of class, by state law. Most of the kids take it seriously.