"B" movie, "A" content: Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

G.K. Chesterton was of course right when observed (I think it was in What's Wrong with the World?) that "if it's worth doing, it's worth doing poorly." Some films are not exemplary in terms of production values, acting, and all the other goodies but they did some things well.

Today's example:

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World was surprisingly warm and gentle for a film dealing with the moral catastrophe that precedes the extinction of the human race. It is a bit surreal when amid the debauchery and mayhem, much goes on as usual. For example, when the unlikely yet strangely likable couple, Dodge (Steve Carell) and Penny (Kiera Knightley) get a bite to eat at the local "Friendsies" restaurant, the staff is warmer than ever and intoxicants flow freely, but no one seems all that concerned about the impending crack of doom. Alas, death (thankfully) is not the point of the film. The point is living life. Not living life at the level of an abstraction but with immediacy with what and who is front of you. Yes, it is a bit creepy when the inevitable relationship that grows between Dodge and Penny does flourish, but it also rings true and somehow right. Dodge gives up the quest for finding his high school sweetheart when he realizes he's chasing an illusion. Penny for all her flaws is real. She is present. The film is not a "realistic" end of the world set-piece, nor is it a romantic comedy. It is more appropriately a meditation on living morally and humanely while everything else comes crashing down.

Chesterton noted that what was wrong with the world was himself, thus pointing to the fact of Original Sin. He surely would have appreciated the paradox that what is wrong with the world is also what is so, so right with the world: human beings.

Bad Book, Good Effects

Even a bad book can be useful. Sometimes I read a book and think, "I wish I had written that" or "This author was spot-on." Other books elicit a negative reaction such as "What a waste of paper and ink" or "There goes several nights of reading I'll never get back."

Then there is a third category: books that provoke thought but the book itself is neither admirable nor even readable. Such it is with James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me. The unreadability stems from Loewen's approach which is to mock how one-sided and superficial history textbooks are then wade in with his own one-sided, mean-spirited, and [sigh], superficial approach to the same topic. So, while he does a good show illustrating the failings of hagiography-as-history, he falls prey to demonizing historical figures with a sense of moral superiority complex that self-assuredly suggests, "We know better, are better and will be better in the future... As long as you, Dear Reader, understand that by 'we' I mean 'me.'"  There is no moral drama in Columbus or the Spanairds. They are bad, but then so was everyone else back then. What?! 

Spanish Male, ca. 15-16th Century

A note on what history can and cannot be. This comes from John Lukacs' The Hitler of History but is something that I wish Loewen had considered in his book. Lukacs good. Loewen baaaaad! 

Contrary to the "scientific" illusion, in the research and writing of history there are no final results. And the purpose of history is often not so much the definite accounting of the events of a period as it is the historical description and understanding of problems: description, rather than definition; understanding, rather than completeness -- because while a perfect completion of our knowledge of the past is not possible, a reasonable and proper understanding of it is within our powers (xii).

Grasping the limits of our knowledge and the nature of historical truth would have helped Loewen and his book.

I think I can...

The book that needs to be written. Loewen's book did get me thinking seriously about how history is taught and/or should be taught. That could have been the subject of his book, but it is the textbooks themselves that he focuses on. Here are some thoughts after reading several chapters by Loewen.

1. Textbooks are and aren't the problem. Textbooks are the problem in ways that Loewen points out: they're too massive and aim at comprehensiveness instead of understanding. They over-simplify and create an atmosphere of thinking of history as being about brute facts instead of the human drama. But I would suggest that even if the textbooks were "good," they'd still be bad. The nature of the market for these boat anchors is such that they will be the way they are until teachers stop using them. At one point in the book Loewen mentions that there are slimmer and trimmer textbooks that survey much less history. This combined with a rich use of primary sources could make for an interesting class.

Perhaps Loewen is too polite to say it, but there is probably more things wrong with the teachers of history than anyone would like to admit. Loewen does mention that there do seem to be a disproportionate amount of coaches out there who also "teach history." Can you imagine your brain surgeon being a golfer who also "practices surgery"?! The priority of schools is surely to blame here and the lack of historians who teach history. A good teacher can do without a good textbook but a great textbook will never compensate for an incompetent teacher (except for those self-starting students who learn no matter what).

2. History is the story of persons, not mechanical processes. One of the most interesting things about history is how in any major event (and all kinds of minor ones), things could have been different. I don't think it's necessary to stress contingency with an excess of "what if" scenarios, but just because it did happen the way it did happen, we can sometimes fall into the trap of thinking it had to happen that way. Textbooks would be useless in bringing this out, but take a book like Lukacs' Five Days in London: May 1940 and it is evident that what may be seen as chains of events linked by specific causes may also be viewed as being shaped by persons with all the range of virtues and vices imaginable. This is something worth communicating to students

3. Ideas have consequences especially when we never heard of the ideas (or ideologies, more often). This points directly to the need for philosophy in the high school. Why on earth one can find psychology and sociology on offer but no philosophy course in the dozen high schools I've subbed at is beyond me. Religion? Forget about it. Never mind that religion and philosophy existed for millennia while the other two are recent inventions.

Well, that's enough for now. The book to be written could be titled How to teach history even if you're stuck with a lousy anchor masquerading as a textbook or something similar. 

The Way Back

The Way Back 

Director Peter Weir has taken a controversial book and made a great film. The book is The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz. The Way Back is inspired by the book but does not pretend to be a "based on a true story" kind of film because it cannot be verified that what the Polish author (who was indeed imprisoned by the Soviets) actually made the journey or if someone else did or whether it happened at all. There seems to be evidence that something did happen along the lines of escaped prisoner trekking from Siberia to India during the Second World War.

This is a film that probably can be used in the form of film clips but would not justify viewing the entire film for the purposes of understanding Stalin and his particular form of evil. But it is a great film for understanding that the weakness of kindness can actually be a strength that restores humanity to a person.

Enter Irena 

Derived from the name of a Greek pagan goddess of peace, Irena does bring peace but also an opportunity for the characters to grow more human. Irena tells a tale of being a farm girl who witnesses the murder of her parents at the hands of the Soviets and is then sent for work on a collectivized farm. She escapes. Mr. Smith puts her story to the test by Irena's improbable geography. The truth is, her parents were Polish communists who emigrated to Russia during the salad days of the post-Revolution period but are later arrested by Stalin's regime. Irena is placed in an orphanage.

Irena serves as a bridge between the men, allowing their own crimes and evil to rise to the surface. The admission of the past is not something that destroys them but serves as an opportunity for grace and forgiveness. She exhibits the feminine genius of at once disarming and empowering men to be more themselves.

For how she does it one must watch the film.

Hidden Curriculum, Hidden Anthropology (Phase I)

I. Critical Pedagogy and Hidden Curriculum

Promoters of "critical pedagogy" sometimes speak of the "hidden" curriculum that is present and assumed within the public or overt teaching that happens day-to-day. Joan Wink writes: "The hidden curriculum is the unexpressed perpetuation of dominant culture through institutional processes" (Critical Pedagogy, p. 46). Wink gives a good example of some Native American kids who think Thanksgiving is the celebration of when white guys taught the Indians how to farm! One could argue that what these students expressed is less about what goes at school than what is received as common "wisdom" from a multiplicity of sources (friends, family, media, etc.). But I digress.

Suffice to say that teachers and schools communicate far more than what is said or read in school. Education is always an "incomplete" process, of course, but what happens when entire fields of human knowledge are ignored? What might one call that? Hmm, unexamined subjects. Perhaps Unsub could be the Newspeak word. Or perhaps the omission of certain subjects are the result of the "hidden anthropology" of public education?

An East German soldier seeks an absent good
What's lacking in the American curriculum?

II. Hidden Anthropology - An Initial Sketch 

If one were to examine K-12 state standards (or Common Core) and ask, "What is omitted?" one would discover some interesting things. First, by "what is omitted?" I mean, What is a substantial field of human knowledge that is neglected or disproportionately small in the curriculum? The next step is to ask, "What do these omissions suggest about the nature of the human person that is assumed by the absence of these subject areas in the curriculum?"

A Premise. This may be so obvious as to seem unnecessary to state: Important things ought to be taught. This statement seems platitudinous, after all, who will argue that education ought to consist in the communication of trivia and frivolity? Hopefully no one. However, this premise could have transformative implications for the public school curriculum if it were taken seriously.

Fields of Knowledge versus State Standards. This is where "Phase II" comes into play. To find the missing like and hence the hidden anthropology. Stay tuned for details.

CSET, English, Subtest IV

They say the third time is the charm, and I need big medicine to pass this examination. It seems to contain my deepest fears and resentments in the way I think English ought not to be taught: many technical and superficial details without much meaning or depth.

The breadth of these four mini-essays chokes my mind and pulverizes my spirit; I am bereft on the shores of some obscure analogy. Woe, is me!

Finding Positivity 

Facing my fears about English-as-discipline (versus what it primarily is, as a great mentor, Ted Snow, wistfully pointed out to me years ago: a language!) has been useful. At the very least I'm experiencing for myself the anguish that many students face: How do I continue to love literature, art, drama, the spoken word, and, yea, even technological marvels when I am asked to distill all of this greatness into a muddy canal or trickling stream? It seems to be a horror of sorts: to do the thing you love you must first murder it.

The language alive boiled down to bullet points and pragmatic tips for students. I'm no Shakespeare, but I think he too would be horrified. Dare I say that the Bard himself might never have been credentialed to teach English. And yet he is what is Taught!

Nevertheless 

The struggle of preparing has led me to reflect on my two previous failures and understand what is to be done tomorrow. It's a simple matter and for once the criticism of "You're over-thinking this" rings true (Q. Why don't we hear more talk of under-thinking? Isn't that a greater fault?). On my two previous attempts I took the prompts as springboards to wax eloquent about all things tangential. That was my fault.

This time I will stick close to the question and flesh it out thoroughly. No digressions, no chit-chat. Just the facts, ma'am. I possess the knowledge and the ability to demonstrate it. I need only the humility to do what is asked.

Book of the Month: November #2

John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men 

How is that English was my favorite subject in high school  but I missed so many of these books? Perhaps I was spared them in high school in order that I would truly appreciate them later.

This is the kind of book that can be hijacked to serve a simple politicized goal (from euthanasia to various forms of social justice) or be boiled down to a truism, such as: another case of man's inhumanity to man. But there is something mysterious about it. Having read it only once now, now is not the time to comment on it.

Very rich for a novella but I was left with a kind of sadness. Still, I liked it -- a lot.

Gots to watch one of the movie versions since I've "earned it" by reading the book

Questionable Music: an Alternative to Despair

What happens when students have had three weeks of random substitute teachers?

A flippant response would be, "Nothing good!" That is close to the money, but I had a chance to sub this week for a week's worth of lessons. It's an unfortunate situation when a teacher has an unforeseen situation and it doesn't quite merit a long-term sub. The teacher suffers, the subs suffer, and the students become disoriented and -- some -- become derisive and cynical.

After the second day with these students, it was clear that something beyond worksheets was required. (We had just finished the French Revolution and it seemed to me to be a distinct possibility that if I handed them another worksheet, I might be ascending the steps to the Guillotine!)

The curriculum called for moving into the Industrial Revolution and remember subbing a few weeks before for a psychology teacher in Roseville. I played the video. The video was about memory and how the mind remembers best when there is a context. In the video, one of the shrinks spouted off a set of random numbers and asked us, his audience, to remember them: 1-7-7-6-1-8-1-2-1-8-6-1-1-9-1-4-1-9-4-1, Impossible. But then he said, "American history." Ah, yes, key dates in America history. Easy to remember.

Remembering this, I thought, "How do I give a simple but memorable introduction to the Industrial Revolution?"  I found a catchy (or perhaps irritating if you have taste in music) music video on YouTube and two other songs (one on consumerism, the other on oppressive work).

It was more interesting for me than another worksheet. Based on our discussions in class, same for some of the students.

Industrial Revolution Musical Retrospective

Shared Inquiry: setting the stage

Just over a year ago I was entering my second year teaching middle school Religion at a Catholic school. The previous academic year I had sporadic success with Shared Inquiry and decided Socratic seminars were something I needed for my own sake -- if not "for the children."

Now I'm firmly convinced that Socratic seminars are not worth doing if they are done poorly. How then to introduce all of the students to this method?

Enter Big Hair Days

Thank God for the Internet. The Great Books Foundation put out this as part of their introductory materials some years ago but it is still relevant. It gives an overview of a text under discussion ("The Melian Dialogue"), the rationale for Shared Inquiry, the discussion itself, and comments from students after the discussion.

This video helped everyone get on the same page and have a few laughs at the same time. I sometimes give a copy of the selection; other times, I simply summarize the dialogue itself. To help them follow along, I give them some questions to answer and an opportunity to ask questions.

For each section of 6th, 7th and 8th grade I concluded the activity with a question: Do you think you could have conversations like this? If so, do you want to?

Overwhelmingly, kids wanted to. It was a great success. It made AY 2014-2015 more than bearable.

A Meaningful Education

This was published in the web edition of the Denver Post on 11/27/11 (here the link)

I was recently at our local public library and overheard two high school girls discussing teen pregnancy. Why, they wondered, would a girl do that? I had to bite my lip to not offer my opinion: "They get pregnant because it's more interesting than school."

Motherhood — even teen motherhood — is both an adventure and an opportunity filled with possibility. It promises a new life, the deepest affection thinkable (that of mother and child), and, yes, possibly great peril. Through pregnancy, the teenager enters into a dramatic story.

The story public schools tell girls (and boys) is decidedly less interesting. It is the story of so-called success through studying hard and getting a good job. For those students who — because of habit or incuriousity — are content to study bits of knowledge disconnected from each other, public education "works": they study hard, get good grades, get accepted to college, finish college and (perhaps) get a decent job.

For many other students, this vague success narrative is neither appealing nor credible. It is no wonder that so many are drawn to drugs, alcohol, bad music, video games, and promiscuity. Beyond the anesthesia, these things provide a guide for life which is more compelling than the tale of economic utility and suburban respectability. Since the schools won't provide an interesting or compelling hypothesis of meaning, the kids find one ready-made or invent one.

Some will argue that the role of public schools is not to dabble in questions of meaning or anthropology or, heaven forbid, metaphysics, but it is obvious to any clear eyed observer that they have been doing this for some time. The meaning of life as envisioned by the public school system has already been summarized: you exist to be a productive member of society; whatever else you do is up to you.

The tacit anthropology is that the student is a weird hybrid of snowflake and machine: utterly unique but capable and urged to emit correct responses that the teacher-technician has inputted. Metaphysically-speaking the schools flail about in a case of terminal agnosticism: God may or may not exist, but in a clever reversal of Pascal's Wager, it is best to bet everything on the chance that He does not.

For more than ten years I taught in public schools: one prison and three high schools (in four different cities). One might think I saw a great deal of diversity (I did), but the underlying assumptions of these four institutions was fundamentally the same. Two major assumptions are that the person needs a lot of information but very little else, and that education can be separated from the question of what makes for a good life.

In the midst of my present "sabbatical," I've had the opportunity to teach some homeschooled Catholic high schoolers and the contrast with them and their public school contemporaries is amazing. They are bright, curious and open; they are not sullen and bored. The homeschooling parents aren't rich but they have communicated a rich hypothesis of meaning to the kids and the kids have an opportunity to verify something concrete and definite about life.

Such possibilities ought not to remain the privilege of the rich or those willing to make huge familial sacrifices. It is imbedded in our nature to seek the meaning of our lives.

Some find that meaning in religion while others find it in irreligion. Some find it in the "bad infinity" of pursuing wealth and shopaholicism.

Still others find the present public secular education perfectly acceptable because existential questions are of no interest to them. The point is this: if we take the idea of American pluralism seriously, this pluralism ought to extend into K-12 education. If the State cannot do this (for whatever reason), perhaps the State needs to get out of education.

Or, if not out entirely, then it may be necessary to radically reconfigure how the government funds education so that the idea that parents (not the State) are the first and irreplaceable educators of their children is properly supported. This isn't rocket science; it's simple democracy.

Matt McGuiness is a freelance instructor. He can be reached at mjmcguiness@gmail.com.

Wanted: school with a positive hypothesis

I came across this interesting paragraph in Giussani's The Religious Sense:

The position of doubt makes us incapable of action. I remember reading in a newspaper one time about a certain school established in the United States. Its purpose was to form a special capacity for invention of super-intelligent children. In other words, it was a school for educating geniuses, became coming up with new inventions is an act of genius. The entire school was designed to teach children to approach problems with a positive hypothesis. The worst thing in the world is to place oneself in front of reality with a hypothesis, not necessarily negative, but simply suspended. In such a situation, one no longer advances (p. 127).

Anyone out there in cyberspace know what school Giussani was referring to? Did it ever get up and running? Does it still exist?

The Art of Getting By (Gavin Wiesen, Director)

Half way into this film I was enthralled; by its conclusion I was annoyed and glum. This is a film that -- through the protagonist played at once oddly creepy and attractive by Freddie Highmore -- asks all the right questions but fails to follow the logic of those questions.

George is a high school senior at a fancy pants prep school in NYC who has been led by the following bit of pop existentialist philosophy -- "you are born alone, die alone and everything else is an illusion"* -- to despair of doing anything meaningful. Despite the despair inherent in the slogan, George is quite chipper and expends vast amounts of energy doing what he wants and avoiding doing what The Man would have him do: study hard, takes tests, and prepare to go to a fancy pants college.

Surely there must be more to life?

Indeed, George's intuition that there is more to life is profoundly correct, but he takes the ever-popular romantic shortcut into enlightenment: falling in love. Don't get me wrong: love, beauty -- these and many more can be a path toward the truth about oneself. But in this film I was reminded of the glib "sex as salvation" tonic fobbed off on moviegoers in Titanic. George's relationship with Sally Howe (Emma Roberts) seems like too pat an answer to George's questions. It left me feeling like the film was suggesting that the way to get the girls is to play the moody existentialist. (That may well be true, by the way.)

Perhaps the film should have been entitled Go Along to Get Along, for if the heart can be satisfied by loves that do not exceed what immediately confronts us, then George will be a happy camper by being successful according to someone else's criteria.

*Orson Welles may be the source of this quotation; I didn't pursue it very far online.

One small step...

It's only what I can conceive of in terms of providence: the Denver Post published a guest commentary by me for their online edition. This is my attempt to articulate the logical connection between school funding and a meaningful education in 21st century America. The full article can be found via the above link.

What's so "public" about public education?

It seems to me that what is meant by "public" in public education is something rather diminutive and it certainly is not something that takes into account the values of most parents.

Public is governmental is secular. Another way to put this is that public education as it is currently configured is partial at best. It is not rooted in a particularly strong hypothesis of meaning nor does it generally even admit that it possesses one.

Should education be restricted to a certain, limited view of things or should it be a window that opens to all of the real? The Austrian Jesuit, Joseph Jungmann insisted that "education ought to be an introduction to the whole of reality." I've had secular educationists "agree" with me on this definition of education, but that was because their view of reality is truncated: secular reality is all they see.

The choices of inclusion and exclusion in what is considered "public" in our schools is very interesting:

• anthropology, biology is included but spirit is excluded
• metaphysically, the schools exude a soft agnosticism and fundamental questions such as "Does God exist?" are systematically avoided.
  

The regime of agnosticism makes "practical" sense because if students discovered God existed, where would we put Him [or Her] in the present curriculum?

But let's leave God out this for the moment. After ten years of teaching in the public schools I found it amazing that few teachers recognized that they themselves communicated a hypothesis of meaning to their students. It is as obvious as air and thus can similarly be taken for granted. What I observed in my colleagues was a hypothesis that went something like this:

• if you study hard and go to college, you'll get a good job

Pretty thin gruel, that. I don't blame the teachers per se for promoting this view: they breathe it as we all do. We are all implicated in a culture we did not create. American culture is notoriously superficial and it is difficult to tell if that is because of public education or that our culture drives superficiality into education. Methinks it's a symbiotic relationship.

There are more adequate hypotheses (Neil Postman characterizes these as "gods" or stories or narratives in The End of Education) and not all of them are "faith-based." How so many intelligent and educated people can think that students can be truly and completely educated without having a clue about the meaning of life is something that I am not wise enough to puzzle through.

That the hypothesis of economic utility is ultimately empty and, literally, incredible, is evidenced by the indifference of the denizens of public high schools. Indifference? Life is a wonderful, mysterious adventure but the soft nihilism we preach in school leaves students bored and flaccid.

(This post is based on my response to a blog post by Deborah Meier in "Bridging Differences" in Education Week.)

Grades

We received all of the first trimester grades yesterday. The results are mixed. One of our kids did "poorly" in several subject areas and yet I know he is bright and thoughtful. I also have a suspicion that may be why he did poorly grade-wise.

Poor grades can be a noble act of rebellion. The motive for disengaging can be "I'm not buying this crap." As a kid, what alternatives do you have? Adults can change majors or careers but middle school kids are stuck.

Now the task is discover the root of the lame grades.

A film against Positivism: Adam's Apples

I approached this one with fear and trembling: a Danish film about a priest and a neo-Nazi. Yet within 30 seconds I was hooked and on the edge of my seat. Adam's Apples is a fascinating film about the nature of reality: is it good or bad; for us or against us?

The priest, Ivan, has a brain tumor that the doctor says prevents him from accepting things "as they are" but he may see more than meets the eye. The neo-Nazi, Adam, wants to disabuse the priest of his "rose-colored" view of the world and conspires to show him that "God hates him." He manages to convince the priest that this is the case based upon (the divinely or demonic) Book of Job which Adam encounters on no less than three occasions (all mysterious).

Ivan does lose his faith. He despairs and just doesn't give a damn about anything. And then something terrible and wonderful happens to him. I won't say what here, but this is a film worth seeing -- more than once. It is a film that makes me think of Flannery O'Connor, Life is Beautiful and Fight Club. Perhaps not THE Holy Trinity, but definitely three worth attending to; surely a film worth attending to as well.

Someone has written about the "evidential power of love" and that seems to be precisely what Ivan communicates to Adam. Ivan serves One whom Adam does not know and Adam comes to see that this "unknown lover" is the one he needs - whether Ivan rejects God or not.

The Hubris of Low Expectations

I recall a Catholic retreat I attended in the early '90s while attending Metro State. The theme was "Peace, Peanut Butter and Cooking with Jesus." I'm not even kidding. One can well imagine the content and spirit of such a retreat!

Nevertheless, the retreat was useful in this sense: I met two people who had a benevolent influence on me (Ann Brna and Mike McManus). The latter had this to say: God, we're surrounded by theological midgets! This brief aphorism captured my feelings perfectly. I remember it often when I think of education reform.

Generally one thinks of the hubristic in terms of over-reaching or some form of presumption in the extreme: Hitler waging war on two fronts, Gary Hart daring reporters to follow him around, Bernie Madoff creating his elaborate Ponzi scheme, etc.

But when it comes to public education, we seem to suffer from chronic under-reach: we have no vision but the technical and all of these various techniques (often manipulative of the students) are not related to any other greater meaning. I groan inwardly when I hear teachers emphasizing college for their charges. "Alas," methinks, "Do you think deferring questions of life's meaning is useful for anyone?"

Somewhere Scripture has it: My people die for lack of vision. There's the education crisis in a nutshell: not what and how, but why. Finding the missing why is the key to education reform.

Infinite Jello?

One doesn't generally think of ineffable sadness and longing with punk rock, but Dead Kennedys manage to pull it off with "Moon Over Marin." Told in the first person, the song is a lamentation over a toxified California coast and the protagonist's desire to find meaning through routine and the hope of a stable cosmic order.

In this dystopian future, our narrator is privileged enough to own some beach front property amid a "crowded future" and "still find[s] time to exercise" "on my beach at night." The beach itself seems to be the coast of the Valdez oil spill gone mad and global:

Another tanker's hit the rocks
Abandoned to spill out its guts
The sand is laced with sticky glops

Despite the horror, he concludes, "There will always be a moon over Marin."

Jello Biafra -- longing for the Infinite. Who woulda thunk?

"Honey, I shrunk the kids (and myself)!"

Teachers and parents (not to mention students) often deplore the increased use of standardized tests and assessments. That horse has been pulverized into subatomic particles, so I don't wish to dwell on stadardized tests, per se; rather, I'd like to briefly explore what existential or spiritual factors may lead to inordinate desire for "hard data" or "proof of learning."

In God at the Ritz, Lorenzo Albacete describes two elements of human work.

Human work has an "objective" and a "subjective" meaning. The objective meaning of work measures progress in terms of practical tasks accomplished. The subjective meaning of work measures preogress in terms of the fulfillment of the deepest needs of the human heart (140).

A moment's reflection will reveal that test-taking represents a desire to obtain an objective accounting of what a student knows and can be expected to accomplish in the future.

So far, so good: parents, employers, and indeed the student himself all have legitimate needs for this kind of knowledge. The danger is when the objective eclipses the subjective. In other words, when human desire and its fulfillment are marginalized or ignored, the result is alienation.

The student begins to reduce his conception of himself to what is needed to please others or to do "what's important" according to measure of those who hold power. Good grades are not nothing but they don't answer the question, "What, in the end, makes life worth living?"

The teacher too is put into an awkward position: When promotion and tenure are linked to student performance according to what is measurable (and only to what is measureable), a "reasonable" (if amoral) teacher will focus on teaching those knowledge, skills and abilities that are testable -- to the detriment of the immeasurable.

Each of us knows from real life that the immeasurable, is, well, immeasureable. The most important things in life are non-quantifiable: affection, self-giving, generosity, etc.

Question: Where are those places where human flourishing is encouraged?

"School vouchers on hold" reads the headline

in today's Denver Post.

Mark Silverstein of the ACLU exhibits an audacious amount of metaphysical naivete when he applauds the (for the present) ban on funding for "a child's religious education." Perhaps he has been out of school for so long that he's forgotten that all approaches to education necessarily posit a "point of view" or "hypothesis of meaning." These are fancy terms for religious and philosophical commitments that an individual educator (and education systems) lives by.

After ten years in public education I became convinced that the dominant creed (or religion if you prefer) was Successism. Successism is quite simple: it is the belief that public schools exist to ensure that children succeed. To what end or purpose? Well, that's the question we dare not ask nor answer because it would unveil our nihilism, or sheer utilitarianism at best.

All education, especially public education because of its denial of philosophical moorings, promotes a creed and is thus necessarily "religious."

Education, Institutions and Accountability (Part I)

Earlier this week there was a horrid article by Susan Greene in the Denver Post entitled "Who would Jesus fire?" that lamented the firing of a Director of Religious Education at a Catholic parish because of her sexual immorality - oops, I mean her "preference." Ms. Greene was mortified that a church and pastor would actually expect a staff member to practice what she (allegedly) teaches, namely, such things as the sacrament of marriage and lacking that, sexual continence.

This article did get me thinking about what it is that secular institutions such as public schools and universities do stand for. Is there anything beyond competence in subject matter? I think there is very little that would get one censured or remove from a post unless the activity were illegal. That's a fascinating thing, really: secular has come to mean all is permitted unless it is illegal. Thus, in theory, if bigamy were legalized (and with the push for gay marriage, it is difficult to find grounds to argue against bigamy), the bigamist would have as much job security tenure as anyone else.

Beyond these moral questions, the deeper question is, "What do institutions of learning stand for?" Hmm.