Why? Why shouldn’t elements of the Bible be taught in public schools? It has had an unparalleled impact on Western culture, history, music, the arts, politics, morality, law and literature. Are we embarrassed about our country’s foundations or, worse, have we become intellectual cowards?

via Quadrant Online – Why the National Curriculum Must include the Bible.

Would love to see more of these…

Classical education involves understanding the present by learning about the past through history, philosophy, theology, literature, art, Latin, Greek, logic and rhetoric. Students see an integrated big picture of Western Culture from a Christian worldview – which has a strong moral code and traditionally a high benchmark of excellence and appreciation of beauty, as well as a foundational belief in absolutism; there is a right way and a wrong way. Maths and Science, reflecting God’s character, are also strongly integrated into this big picture, distinguishing classical education from a liberal arts education.

via St Augustines.

I find myself surprisingly in agreement with Singer’s appreciation of the humanities. My hunch though is that our current ‘job factory’ culture within university education is a direct fruit of utilitarianism. In contrast, a theistic worldview drives you participate in Adler’s “Great Conversation“.

The idea of a liberal arts education goes back more than 2000 years to Plato’s Academy. It holds that an educated citizen in a free society should have a grounding in philosophy, history, literature, the sciences, maths, foreign languages, politics and fine arts. We might say that it attempts to answer the broad questions that Gauguin put into the title of one of his paintings (a title that he in turn took from a Catholic catechism): Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? This kind of education does not train you in a profession, but it gives you an intellectual foundation to use throughout your life, whether you decide to go into medicine, law, business, engineering, or any other occupation.

via We must nurture the humanities.

Educators once believed in the classical education very strongly. Little more than a generation ago you could not get into Oxford or Cambridge without demonstrating competency in Latin, and practically every Western historical figure and writer until the 1950s was taught the classics from an early age. The line of thinking that we don't need to learn Latin and Greek because they are too hard, irrelevant, not useful or not the languages of the future would have been regarded as the argument of philistines.

via Culturally adrift without classical moorings | The Australian.

The Benefits of a Classical Education – O’Reilly Radar.

Kevin Bauder argues in “Liberal Education” that colleges and seminaries should train pastors to think precisely, namely, to deploy “the skills of grammar, logic, and rhetoric.” Why?

A pastor’s main task is to do the work of the mind. His calling requires him to interpret texts and bring them to bear upon the issues of life. In other words, a pastor is constantly confronting ideas. He stands as a bridge between the ideas in the world of the Bible and the ideas with which his congregation is, or ought to be, wrestling. In short, a pastor’s main work is to think.

via Andy Naselli » Blog Archive » Training Pastors to Think.

Unfortunately for the 21-year-old, former Geelong Grammar schoolboy, his dream spun off the road.

via Hey, Dad, sorry about the Ferrari | theage.com.au.

A teenager graduates from the University of Texas this weekend at 16, an age when most students have yet to receive their high school diplomas.

Teen gets college degree in just 2 years – UPI.com

One of the best things about entering the MS Readathon program is earning cool cool rewards while helping Australians living with MS. It’s our way of saying ‘thank you’ for all your hard work!

Earn Rewards while Reading for the 2008 MS Readathon

The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) was created on 3 December 2007, bringing together elements of the former Departments of Education, Science and Training, Employment and Workplace Relations and the Youth and Early Childhood functions from the Department of Family, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs.

DEEWR – Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations

“Clarify: Egypt – where the Israelites were Pharoah’s unpaid workers for many years”

Do grade 5 + 6 not understand the concept of slavery? Is it offensive?

The Exodus was not a workers union movement. Not to mention we jump into Numbers out of nowhere, then do Nehemiah the next week, and the following week back to Numbers. Why not just do books of the Bible in chronological sequence? I know that “educational experts” have put together this material, but it seems to be missing some common sense.

I love teaching CRE, but this is really frustrating.

I was amazed to discover that most of my students, regardless of year level, did not even come close to knowing their times tables. Having since grown used to the ineptitude of my students, from time to time I catch myself observing with surprise the ability of a shop assistant working out change in their head or a friend mentally dividing a restaurant bill. Skills that were once nearly universal, regardless of intelligence or higher educational status, are uncommon in today’s school-leavers.

…

Conservative commentators are correct, to a degree, to apportion blame to the influence of socialist ideology, which is thoroughly entrenched in the system through an unholy trinity of the Australian Education Union, teacher educators and bureaucrats of the state education departments.

Trinity weighs on schools | The Australian

THE head of one of the nation’s elite private schools has questioned whether English should be compulsory for the senior years, saying the courses being taught are beyond the intellectual ability of most students.

School English too hard: principal | The Australian

Everyone is “learning through play”, parents are encouraged to relate to the kids through play. All the kindergartens we have been involved in downplay any structured teaching they might do at the expensive of learning through play.

Surely it just reflects our entertainment driven society?

Are there any pedagogical play pushers outside Western countries? Before the 20th C?

How long before this creeps further up the educational process?

Exception: Playing Quakeworld does teach you operating systems, networking, command line shell scripting, hand eye coordination etc.

“It isn’t dumbing down the curriculum, it is allowing students to be successful,” he said. Mr Uphill said the memo followed a meeting with an officer from the Senior Secondary Assessment Board during Term 1 this year to review the school’s 2007 results.

Classes dumbed down for students to pass | NEWS.com.au

• The ability of our government to throw good money after bad is incredible. The benchmarked outcome testing is quite variable and what there was shows there has been no improvement at all this decade. This is a failure of the gods of secularism.
• As a Christian I was fascinated to see her comment in passing that the most literate and numerate in some of the most remote communities were the older generation who were part of Christian missionary schools.
• There is certainly no educational neutrality myth propounded in the NT education department. For example, they gave a grant of $159,713 for a project to develop an “algebra pedagogy that reflects the world view of indigenous students” – how is this not patronising? The problem here is not with the indigenous worldview but the idol of secular paternalism.
• The whole study was extremely saddening and depressing. In seeking to protect a culture we are destroying it. Cultures cannot be put on a pedestal. They must be transformed by the Lordship of Christ or deformed by sin. There is no middle ground.

If you are a Christian teacher with a heart for mission, there are many opportunities around Australia right now…

Policy Monograph 83
Indigenous Education in the Northern Territory
Helen Hughes
With the numeracy and literacy skills of five-year-olds, ten thousand indigenous teenagers and young men and women are unemployable because of the educational failures of the last decade. [read more]

The Centre for Independent Studies

Other articles on Hughes report:

Education failures creating a lost generation – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

PM – Education system angered by Indigenous report

‘Education apartheid’ failing kids | The Australian

Glib lines won’t fix indigenous schools | The Australian

Top End training just all ‘pretend’ | The Australian

Three keys to improving our schools – Education News – theage.com.au

(I haven’t actually found a Fairfax press article on the actual Hughes report???)

And just imagine if Julia Gillard, the education revolution minister from the Labor Party’s left faction no less, chose to confront the ideological critics of phonics? If Rudd and Gillard are serious about an education revolution, let it begin in the classrooms of indigenous children. Let it begin by telling it like it is. Learning the sounds that make up words is not a politically driven agenda. It is about literacy. It is the key to social mobility. Until that small step is taken, indigenous children will continue to suffer.

Bring on the reading revolution | The Australian

At a glance, it would seem the driving methodology critiqued in this video is the desire to avoid traditional algorithms that require mastery through hard work and repeated practice, and settling for simpler methods that are less demanding. Is that driven by a worldview that shuns creating hierarchies of ability and protects individual esteem at all costs? I have no idea, just a theory.

She even explicitly quotes from the teachers manuals that say they avoid the superior but hard work requiring techniques precisely because some students will be “doomed to failure” and can simply use a calculator. Mathematics is an objective science, but this science is spoiled if it is taught in such a way to meet the lowest common denominator (pun intended). After all, “doomed” is a meaning-laden term – who is doomed in your worldview?

Math Education: An Inconvenient Truth (Youtube – 15 minutes)