Our nation’s public schoolchildren deserve better.
education
Talking to white kids about what whiteness means
Three children’s books to help start the conversation
Why are rural white Americans willing to prioritize cultural whiteness above all else?
Jonathan Metzl offers useful data and analysis, if not much empathy.
The problem with specialization
Chess players and golfers might benefit from an early, singular focus. Most people don’t.
It’s not our problem. Education can fix it. Only extremists are racist.
As Père Diegue surveyed the unfinished classroom, he remarked: “I’m beginning to understand why I am here.”
“White privilege is your history being taught as a core class and mine being taught as an elective,” wrote a tumblr user in February of 2014. This claim illustrates how education sins in its ignorance. Latin American liberation theologians taught that sin consists not only of personal misdeeds—it is also embedded in social structures that promote harm and inequity.
Faith, learning, and scandal
Baylor transformed itself from a regional Baptist teaching institution into an internationally recognized Protestant research university—but not without scandal.
I used to lead activities like the "Privilege Walk" and "Cross the Line." I couldn't shake the feeling that they were not taking us very far.
The Hungry Mind, by Susan Engel
Wonder is an essential disposition for Christian discipleship. According to Susan Engel, children learn to wonder by asking questions and receiving answers.
This has been the spring of discontent over standardized testing. Unfortunately, this has been closely tied to resistance to the Common Core standards.
Curious, by Ian Leslie
In Ian Leslie’s telling, curiosity is far from a valued quality. Augustine, he notes, equated curiosity with temptation.
You’re asking small churches to give money to seminaries, some of which have massive endowments. Do you know how many secretaries some of these seminaries have? Their secretaries have secretaries. And they keep adding vice presidents. The weirdest thing about the addition of all the management? The student body keeps dwindling. Many of these seminaries have residential student bodies that are the same size of our small church.
Allison Benedikt’s anti-private-school manifesto is pretty entertaining: You are a bad person if you send your children to private school. Not bad like murderer bad—but bad like ruining-one-of-our-nation’s-most-essential-institutions-in-order-to-get-what’s-best-for-your-kid bad. So, pretty bad. I am not an education policy wonk: I’m just judgmental. But it seems to me that if every single parent sent every single child to public school, public schools would improve. This would not happen immediately. It could take generations. Your children and grandchildren might get mediocre educations in the meantime, but it will be worth it, for the eventual common good. Yes, this is a hyperbolic provocation. I agree with a lot of what Benedikt says, but I don’t think that private-school parents—or, for that matter, the many private-school teachers I know—are bad people.