Bible Study in Public School

A Georgia public school student sits in class listening to a story recited by the teacher. His faith and beliefs are reinforced and strengthened by the story. Each day this student goes to class he feels more connection between his church, school and community. Another student in the same class listens to the teacher. This student knows that her peers have a very different perspective on this story than she. She feels isolated and preached to as the teacher continues. Each day this student goes to class she feels more distance between her faith, school and community. This scenario is likely to be played out in public high schools across Georgia very soon. Last week Gov. Sonny Perdue signed a bill allowing the Bible to be taught in Georgia high schools.
The Bible and its lessons hold a strong influence over the American conscience. The more educated we are as to the contents of the book the more thoughtful and informed our conversations and debates can become. The more we know and understand of the text the more value it can hold for all of us. The difficulty becomes in implementing such courses. What stories should be included and which excluded? The Bible is not a short book by any measure and the time students will have is very limited. Educating the general population on the spiritual source of the majority of this nation’s population is only sensible. However, finding a way to separate informing from indoctrinating is only the beginning of the challenges teachers will face. Can those that take that Bible as spiritual authority be comfortable with the book being taught as simple literature? What of the student that doesn’t share the beliefs of his peers? “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” Can that powerful statement be taught to believers and non-believers alike without creating deeper rifts between us than what already exist? I agree that a knowledge and understanding of the Bible is valuable for everyone, believer and non-believer alike. The question is whether or not public schools are the best forum for such a class. Will believers from different Christian denominations agree on which translation of scripture will become public cannon? Can the bible be taught within a bubble without context, comment or perspective? If the answer is yes than what value would such a lesson really have? If the answer is no, then these lessons can’t function in an inclusive public setting.
There are many important ideas in this world that our young people should be exposed to. Many of the most important things to learn however, go beyond the ability of the public school system to teach. It is up to us as parents and roll models to fill the gap and teach our children well. Faith is a struggle that we all confront in a slightly different way. Separately we are capable of teaching our children faith, the context of understanding and belief. Only then can we come together with different ideas as one community.

Crying wolf and Leaking secrets

This is an abridged version of the “leak” scandal that we have seen so much and understood so little of these past several months. Scooter was told by Dick under the authority of George to leak Valerie’s name and her CIA credentials to Judith who gave the name to Robert. Robert published the information, which got the attention of Patrick who now wants to prosecute someone for making this whole affair such a complicated mess. Part of the problem of this story is that it is complicated. Our lives are complicated enough without spending excess amounts of time studying who said what to whom and when. The American public can handle complicated issues however, when it’s important and it captures our interest. Here lies the second problem with the Valerie Plame story. It’s not very exciting. There’s no sex or violence between the major players. Nothing jumps off the page in this story the same way as a “stained blue dress” or death toll might. The details are still important but without that tabloid hook to catch our interest we really are unlikely to take much time with the stories details or their implications. The Valerie Plame affair has all the complicated plot twists of a great spy novel without any of the heat and excitement. There is another story of politically motivated Whitehouse leaks that is not as much of a scandal but is simpler in detail and far more dramatic.
On July 13, 2004 Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan was arrested in Pakistan. He was a high level Al-Qeada computer expert who was in contact with several terrorist cells, including New York and London. After his arrest Khan agreed to work with investigators. He continued to contact his old terrorist allies and helped set up sting and surveillance operations around the world. We had our fist human resource double agent at a hub of the terrorist communications network. This source could have fed us information about Al-Qeada indefinitely, but then the Justice department leaked his name. Tom Ridge had raised the terror alert for the country 5 days after the Democratic National Convention. The justice department gave Khan’s name as the source of the information that led to the terror alert. They hoped that the added information would quell critics concerns that the warning was politically motivated. On August 2, Khan’s name was in the paper and his cover was blown. The terrorists break contact. British and Pakistani agents scrambled to arrest suspects they had been watching before they could flee into hiding. 12 were caught. At least 5 got away. In September Condoleezza Rice admits the name was leaked then later withdraws the comment made to Wolf Blitzer on CNN. Tom Ridge calls the leak a “regrettable exposure”. July 7, 2005: terrorist bombs hit London buses and the subway system. One of the perpetrators, a terror cell member once monitored by the British government with the help of Khan. Thanks to the leak, the cells activities were unknown until that terrible day in London. These stories are detail heavy and on the surface don’t seem to have an impact on our daily lives. As you look at these cases remember that the Valerie Plame affair helped give justification to the war in Iraq and the Khan leak has left us all the more blind to Al-Qeada’s next move. Within the high stakes of national security nothing could be closer to home.

Don Rumsfeld, it's time to go.

When the President was running for office in 2000 he described this management style in response to criticisms of his lack of experience. He claimed to search out the most qualified people able to solve the problem, then he would step back and let them do their jobs. This is a very wise policy for anyone who doesn’t know very much. It also explains the Presidents legendry loyalty to his staff. A staff member that isn’t doing the job is a direct reflection of the Presidents judgment and contribution to the problem solving process. This dynamic is most obvious in the case of Donald Rumsfeld. After 9/11 the President trusted Rumsfeld to take the war to the terrorist in the most effective way possible. By almost every measure Rumsfeld has failed in this roll. Even as debate raged between Colin Powell and Rumsfeld over the wisdom of an Iraq invasion the President gave the Defense Secretary full support to fight this war his way. The confidence the President had in Rumsfeld is somewhat understandable. After all he had been Defense Secretary before under President Ford. In 1983 Rumsfeld was made special envoy to the Middle East by President Reagan and meet and shook the hand of Saddam himself. Rumsfeld was also the CEO of a pharmaceutical company GD Searle from 1977 to 1981. This experience with chemical manipulation could have helped with the understanding of Iraq’s alleged chemical weapons program. During the 1980’s American companies sold Iraq millions of dollars worth of trucks, helicopters and chemical agents. Rumsfeld’s experience in hiding the negative health effects of the sweetener Aspartame from the FDA might give him insight as to where Saddam would hide his dangerous chemicals.
History has shown that Rumsfeld has not been the wise leader of experience. Instead he has shown a complete lack of interest not only in concrete facts but also in the very rule of law he swore to protect. Not everything that has happened in the past few years has been Rumsfeld’s fault. Much of it however has been his responsibility. From the Iraq invasion and occupation planning to the torture that as accrued under his authority he has been the man in charge. Now we look to the President and wonder when the administration might try something new rather than hold the Rumsfeld course. I believe that if Rumsfeld were to be fired by the President tomorrow a new sense of hope would fill the national consciousness. The President could gain as many as 20 percentage points of approval just through this one act of leadership and responsibility for the direction of the country. By removing the Defense Secretary the President could remove the specter of paralysis that has haunted the White House these past many months since the 2004 election. The President made a mistake with the appointment of Donald Rumsfeld. It was a mistake to loyally support his mismanaged policy ideas and philosophies. I hope the President can see the difference between loyalty and a stubborn refusal to acknowledge a mistake.

"Unfiltered" look at Budget Resolution

I found myself interested this week in the Federal budget. The House of Representatives Budget Committee passed a budget resolution for 2007. Now both the House and Senate are trying to reconcile the details in order to pass a unified piece of legislation to the President for his approval and signing. I read the news stories and saw the statistics and thought I would do some research. I wanted to make some distinctions between what was fact and what was propaganda. After a couple hours of reading and searching I came to the conclusion that I had a very powerful headache. It’s no wonder we all take the over generalized talking points that we see on the news as gospel. Most of us don’t have the time to look over the shoulder of our elected representatives. The feeling is that they can’t be trusted, but we have no time for electoral babysitting. This job of government oversight was once trusted to the journalistic community. However, with the drum of “bias” being endlessly beaten by both sides we have lost confidence in the motivations of those that would inform us. This makes the politician as happy as mice in a house without a cat. They are free to eat all the cheese, or in this case pork, as they want.

I decided to go to the “unfiltered” source www.house.gov/budget/ to see if I could make my own determinations. Was this a good budget or not? A copy of the budget proposal is available here with 159 pages of economic figures and legal jargon that was the beginning of my headache. Next I looked at the 44 pages of Legislative Text that made less sense than the first bit of reading. Thankfully there was a video. The budget presentations of both Republicans and Democrats, unedited and “unfiltered”. First the Republican chairman Jim Nussle spoke at length on the strength and sensibility of this proposed budget. Everything’s great, it turns out. The economy is humming along and thanks to Republican leadership next year will be even better than the last. At least that was his general argument as I heard it. His statement went on like this for an excess of 20 minutes, then it was ranking Democrat John Spratt’s turn to critique the proposed resolution. Turns out everything is terrible and out of control. This budget is pushing us one step closer to national bankruptcy while ignoring the countries real priorities. This was his general argument as I heard it. It went on for another 20 minutes. So much for “unfiltered” answers. We need well-informed journalism to help guide us through the mountains of details that comes with every issue. Our job is to find, search out if we have to, journalist we believe we can trust.. The responsibility is on our shoulders to ensure that there will be consequences when we are lied to. No matter if it is by the journalist or politician. When I was done I turned off my computer, stopped taking notes and turned on the TV. I let Elizabeth Vargas tell me all about Pandas in China and some noble “Person of the Week“. I had no absolute answers but at least my headache was going away.

Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code

On May 19th the movie version of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code will debut in theaters. Because of the early hype and controversy I took the time to read the book. I’m a sucker for reading things when I am told by anyone that I’m not supposed to read them. I had seen and heard a lot of the debunking work done by those that feel the book is heresy. So I was expecting the usual conspiracy book model which is to take some known facts and fill in the gaps with pure speculation in order to arrive at a predetermined conclusion. Kennedy assassination books and explanations of Iraq war strategy are great for this kind of manipulation and quite frankly they bore me. History deserves better than sensationalism feeding what we want or wish to be true. To my surprise however, the Da Vinci Code wasn’t a sensationalist pseudo academic book like I assumed. It was a novel of complete fiction. It has good guys, bad guys and bad dialog. It’s a mystery novel set in the world of Christian history and theology. Being that its primary goal is to entertain, it has no more responsibility to accuracy than Star Trek has to the laws of Physics. Every “fact” or historical reference is used not to educate but to move the reader through the narrative.
That having been said the book owes a great deal to all the controversy that has been created around its premise. Taken as a suspense or mystery novel on it’s own merit, minus the supposed threat to Christianity as we know it, it’s a rather average book. By the time I got to the end and to the “surprise” family revelations of Sophie Neveu, one of the main characters, I was glad to be done with it. Now in close step with the coming release of the movie version we have the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, suing Brown for stealing the ideas of their book. Richard Leigh, Michael Biagent and Henry Lincon together authored a review of Christian history with some far reaching, some would say, over reaching conclusions. The lawsuit has no merit what so ever, except to allow the name of their book to mentioned on TV news shows, news papers and, of course, in this column.
People that believe this book is damaging to their faith should be twice hurt to know that their sensitivity and outrage has been used against them to sell millions of copies of this story. Now, as the Ron Howard movie approaches release, the noise level is bound to only increase if for no other reason than to sell theater tickets. It is my hope that and suggestion that we save our outrage for those things that deserve it. The Da Vinci Code is an example of first rate marketing of a second rate piece of work. This is a growing trend not only in media marketing but in politics as well. The burden is on us to take the time to see past the shell game and not be distracted by the game that so many seem to be playing.

Algebra: is it needed

Why do we still teach algebra to our high school students? Invented in Iran in the 8th century, seemingly for the sole purpose of creating stress filled acne in our nations youth. The time-honored cry of “We never use this in real life!” is not only accurate but a heart felt expression of the anguish experienced when we try to learn this stuff. Our schools are already struggling with teaching kids the basics they need to succeed. In part because the answers kids need seem to be constantly changing today and our textbooks and lesson plans can’t keep up.
What foods we are told are healthy seem to change from month to month. Is bread good for you? Is it bad for you? We could teach a class on the use of technology but by the time they graduate everything that was learned will be outdated and obsolete. I was taught DOS in high school. By the time I graduated, Windows had arrived. It seems harder and harder to supply young people any facts that wont be challenged or changed in the near future. What are we and our young people to do?
Maybe, what we need is a class that teaches a technique for finding answers rather than just giving students answers we might have handy. If there was only a process that would train kids to think systematically about problem solving. We need a class that could teach the fundamentals of fact finding in the same way that a sports coach teaches the mechanics of playing baseball or soccer. After all no one ever simply played catch during a real game of baseball or ran laps around the field during a real game of soccer. However these training techniques are still used by coaches around the country to make students better game players. If only there was an academic equivalent to this. Something that wouldn’t be used in real life but would give young people the skills to succeed in real life. Perhaps it is time to double our efforts in the our teaching of Algebra.