“Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” John 15: 13
Praise be to the Lord my Rock,
who trains my hands for war,
my fingers for battle.
Ps 144: 1
What do you suppose this “battle” is about? I’m sure there are dozens of possible ideas. Allow me to present an option to ponder.
I suggest the battle can be understood in the lifelong struggle we all face against selfishness. Each of us will naturally opt for the larger pile of gold or the bigger cookie. Still, someplace within us, we also possess a desire to help others. These two sides argue or compete with each other continuously, like the old Cherokee tale of the Two Wolves. The side of our nature that is strongest is the one we exercise the most. Our choice.
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the
least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
Matthew 25:40
Most Americans have heard this sentiment at one time or another. We are aware of those among us less fortunate than ourselves, and we are inclined to help any way we are able. For some of us, that means writing a check. For others, it means bagging some canned goods for the Boy Scout Food Drive. For still others, it means serving at a Soup Kitchen once a month or so.
All of these opportunities are performed with our HANDS! They are all actions done in response to a compassionate impulse to help those among us who struggle. Service starts in our hearts but must be acted upon through our hands.
I suggest, “it is God who trains our hands to…” do what our hearts urge us to do. He enables us to give and rewards us when we do. He brings opportunities to our attention and draws us toward activities that will use our individual talents and strengths. “He trains our hands for battle … ” to wage war against our selfish nature. He provides a lifetime of opportunities to use our hands to help our neighbors and ourselves in the process.
Which nature will we feed?
“But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”
James 1: 22
Americans need to apprehend that the current administration seeks to replace our Constitution with one similar to that of South Africa. His hatred for all things traditionally “American” mixed with his burgeoning hunger for power fuel his audacity to speak and move against the Constitution that has stood firm in the United States of America for more than 235 years. Though the Election 2012 gave him a questionable victory (winning suspiciously by only 500,000 votes,) He speaks and legislates as though he won an unprecedented landslide. He fully intends to impose his will, his agenda, and his doctrine of “fairness” upon all Americans, like it or not.
Our Founders’ saw this possibility coming and wrote safety measures into the Constitution, if … IF the people of America will but take a stand. If the people of America will but use their God-given minds to grasp the TRUTH. “Fairness” is NOT fair! In fact, “fairness” is, by virtue of its definition, UN-fair and subjective, depending on the values of the one or the group establishing “fairness.”
EXAMPLE: This year’s Superbowl game, in my opinion, showed a marked UN-fairness in the Officiating. I’d be willing to bet Ravens fans think it was quite fair. Who decides what is “fair?”
In contrast, the Founders, enriched by diverse backgrounds, religions, and visions, wrote into the US Constitution a political foundation dependent on a moral people upon which to build a strong and healthy nation of free people. Interestingly, as we have strayed from these founding principles, so we have experienced a decline in economic and social health.
“[T]he United States for the longest time had the highest degree of economic freedom in the world. In as short a period of time ago as 2000, we ranked number 3 behind Hong Kong and Singapore. Now in 2012 we fell down to number 18. And as our economic freedom declines so does our prosperity – 7.9 percent unemployment. In the last decade we’ve actually seen for the first time in American history, the disposable income per capita actually declined. It’s the first time over a ten year period. We’re losing our economic freedom and with it our prosperity.” – John Mackey, Co-CEO Whole Foods
The Principles listed here are found on several other websites, but there is always room for one more. These are worth reading and pondering. We must allow this to get into us so we truly grasp the depth of understanding our Founders brought together in our Constitution. No,it isn’t the Bible, it’s isn’t Divinely written, but it is divinely inspired … because these men asked for inspiration and direction.
Without further ado, here is a list of the 28 Basic Principles of Liberty, as delineated in the 5000 Year Leap. For more info, check HERE. There is a similar list of 7 Basic PrinciplesHERE.
THE FOUNDERS’ BASIC PRINCIPLES of LIBERTY:
Principle 1 – The only reliable basis for sound government and just human relations is Natural Law.
Natural law is God’s law. There are certain laws which govern the entire universe, and just as Thomas Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence, there are laws which govern in the affairs of men which are “the laws of nature and of nature’s God.”
Principle 2 – A free people cannot survive under a republican constitution unless they remain virtuous and morally strong.
“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.” – Benjamin Franklin
Principle 3 – The most promising method of securing a virtuous people is to elect virtuous leaders.
“Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who … will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man.” – Samuel Adams
Principle 4 – Without religion the government of a free people cannot be maintained.
“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports…. And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.” – George Washington
Principle 5 – All things were created by God, therefore upon him all mankind are equally dependent, and to him they are equally responsible.
The American Founding Fathers considered the existence of the Creator as the most fundamental premise underlying all self-evident truth. They felt a person who boasted he or she was an atheist had just simply failed to apply his or her divine capacity for reason and observation.
Principle 6 – All mankind were created equal.
The Founders knew that in these three ways, all mankind are theoretically treated as:
Equal before God.
Equal before the law.
Equal in their rights.
Principle 7 – The proper role of government is to protect equal rights, not provide equal things.
The Founders recognized that the people cannot delegate to their government any power except that which they have the lawful right to exercise themselves.
Principle 8 – Mankind are endowed by God with certain unalienable rights.
“Those rights, then, which God and nature have established, and are therefore called natural rights, such as are life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the municipal [or state] laws to be inviolable. On the contrary, no human legislation has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner [of the right] shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture.” – William Blackstone
Principle 9 – To protect human rights, God has revealed a code of divine law.
“The doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or divine law, and they are to be found only in the Holy Scriptures. These precepts, when revealed, are found by comparison to be really a part of the original law of nature, as they tend in all their consequences to man’s felicity.” – William Blackstone
Principle 10 – The God-given right to govern is vested in the sovereign authority of the whole people.
“The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of the consent of the people. The streams of national power ought to flow immediately from that pure, original fountain of all legislative authority.” – Alexander Hamilton
Principle 11 – The majority of the people may alter or abolish a government which has become tyrannical.
“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes … but when a long train of abuses and usurpations … evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.” – Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence
Principle 12 – The United States of America shall be a republic.
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America
And to the republic for which it stands….”
Principle 13 – A Constitution should protect the people from the frailties of their rulers.
“If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary…. [But lacking these] you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” – James Madison
Principle 14 – Life and liberty are secure only so long as the rights of property are secure.
John Locke reasoned that God gave the earth and everything in it to the whole human family as a gift. Therefore the land, the sea, the acorns in the forest, the deer feeding in the meadow belong to everyone “in common.” However, the moment someone takes the trouble to change something from its original state of nature, that person has added his ingenuity or labor to make that change. Herein lies the secret to the origin of “property rights.”
Principle 15 – The highest level of prosperity occurs when there is a free-market economy and a minimum of government regulations.
Prosperity depends upon a climate of wholesome stimulation with four basic freedoms in operation:
The Freedom to try.
The Freedom to buy.
The Freedom to sell.
The Freedom to fail.
Principle 16 – The government should be separated into three branches.
“I call you to witness that I was the first member of the Congress who ventured to come out in public, as I did in January 1776, in my Thoughts on Government … in favor of a government with three branches and an independent judiciary. This pamphlet, you know, was very unpopular. No man appeared in public to support it but yourself.” – John Adams
Principle 17 – A system of checks and balances should be adopted to prevent the abuse of power by the different branches of government.
“It will not be denied that power is of an encroaching nature and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it.” – James Madison
Principle 18 – The unalienable rights of the people are most likely to be preserved if the principles of government are set forth in a written Constitution.
The structure of the American system is set forth in the Constitution of the United States and the only weaknesses which have appeared are those which were allowed to creep in despite the Constitution.
Principle 19 – Only limited and carefully defined powers should be delegated to government, all others being retained by the people.
The Tenth Amendment is the most widely violated provision of the bill of rights. If it had been respected and enforced America would be an amazingly different country than it is today. This amendment provides:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Principle 20 – Efficiency and dispatch require that the government operate according to the will of the majority, but constitutional provisions must be made to protect the rights of the minority.
“Every man, by consenting with others to make one body politic under one government, puts himself under an obligation to every one of that society to submit to the determination of the majority, and to be concluded [bound] by it.” – John Locke
Principle 21 – Strong local self-government is the keystone to preserving human freedom.
“The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent [to perform best]. – Thomas Jefferson
Principle 22 – A free people should be governed by law and not by the whims of men.
“The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings, capable of laws, where there is no law there is no freedom. For liberty is to be free from restraint and violence of others, which cannot be where there is no law.” – John Locke
Principle 23 – A free society cannot survive as a republic without a broad program of general education.
“They made an early provision by law that every town consisting of so many families should be always furnished with a grammar school. They made it a crime for such a town to be destitute of a grammar schoolmaster for a few months, and subjected it to a heavy penalty. So that the education of all ranks of people was made the care and expense of the public, in a manner that I believe has been unknown to any other people, ancient or modern. The consequences of these establishments we see and feel every day [written in 1765]. A native of America who cannot read and write is as rare … as a comet or an earthquake.” John Adams
Principle 24 – A free people will not survive unless they stay strong.
“To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” – George Washington
Principle 25 – “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations — entangling alliances with none.”- Thomas Jefferson, given in his first inaugural address.
Principle 26 – The core unit which determines the strength of any society is the family; therefore the government should foster and protect its integrity.
“There is certainly no country in the world where the tie of marriage is more respected than in America, or where conjugal happiness is more highly or worthily appreciated.” Alexis de Tocqueville
Principle 27 – The burden of debt is as destructive to human freedom as subjugation by conquest.
“We are bound to defray expenses [of the war] within our own time, and are unauthorized to burden posterity with them…. We shall all consider ourselves morally bound to pay them ourselves and consequently within the life [expectancy] of the majority.” – Thomas Jefferson
Principle 28 – The United States has a manifest destiny to eventually become a glorious example of God’s law under a restored Constitution that will inspire the entire human race.
The Founders sensed from the very beginning that they were on a divine mission. Their great disappointment was that it didn’t all come to pass in their day, but they knew that someday it would. John Adams wrote:
“I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in Providence for the illumination of the ignorant, and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.”
America … an experiment in Self-government! Will it work? Will it be able to correct itself when the power gets our of balance? Time will tell.
I leave you, dear reader, with this speech that has gone viral! Listen carefully to this brave American. He has a lot to say!
Only a fool has said in his heart there is no God! (Psalm 14:1 & 53:1)
America is in trouble, really big trouble. For decades, the “good” people of this nation slept and trusted our elected officials to take care of business properly. Ooops! We goofed! With increased power and decreased accountability, corrupt human nature took over. Washington DC is now occupied, and it might as well be by a foreign entity. The men and women who are charged with the responsibility to lead our nation have failed and turned us away from our heritage, away from the ideals and practices that made the US the most prosperous, most creative, most inventive, most satisfied people on earth. The way back to the Constitution, the only viable stable ground, is virtually impossible to reach simply because of the extent of the corruption and the depth of our overindulged and pampered population.
So … do we throw in the towel? Give up? HECK NO! As an old rock band used to sing, “It’s time to get on our knees and fight like men!” (and women!)
As our nation’s Founders designed their plan for a more perfect union, they understood that the success of a modern republic would require more than a political document like the Constitution. From their study of history, the Founders had learned of the pitfalls of republics before this one. They concluded that even the Constitution alone could not curb individual selfishness. They believed that virtues were necessary for sustaining the American experiment. Their fervent prayers were an integral part of the birth of our nation.
In fact, during the process, when the men were at an impass in the writing of the Constitution, it was Dr. Benjamin Franklin, (not the most devout Christian in the group!) that suggested they all pray for God’s guidance.
I have lived, Sir, a long time and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth — that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings that “except the Lord build they labor in vain that build it.” I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall be become a reproach and a bye word down to future age. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing Governments by Human Wisdom, and leave it to chance, war, and conquest.
I therefore beg leave to move — that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of this City be requested to officiate in that service.
Pray for President Obama as he prepares to more fully lay out his agenda in next month’s State of the Union address. Pray he will seek to serve the needs of the nation.
Pray For Congressional Leaders
Senator Jay Rockefeller (West Virginia) said the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee will likely hold hearings on the problems plaguing the Boeing 787 “Dreamliner,” after its grounding by the FAA.
Representative Paul Broun (Georgia) is moving rapidly to assume Texas Congressman Ron Paul’s mantle, beginning with pressuring lawmakers to get a tighter grip on the Federal Reserve. He believes support is growing.
Pray for the new Congress as it sets out its legislative agenda for the year, especially on debt ceiling and spending.
Pray For Judicial Needs:
The U.S. Supreme Court dashed a Chicago-area atheist’s final legal bid to challenge the use of state funds to renovate a towering cross in Southern Illinois known as the Bald Knob Cross. The Court did not comment on its decision.
A federal appeals court upheld a controversial Wisconsin law that restricts the power of public sector unions, the passage of which sparked the unsuccessful effort last summer to remove Governor Scott Walker.
Pray for the Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court who will be taking up same-sex marriage issues this spring.
Current Events
WARS AND TERRORISM
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers delivered a newly completed Afghan Uniformed Police District Headquarters in Herat Province to Afghan authorities. The structure was built by Afghan contractors under U.S. supervision.
Afghan officials say a suicide squad launched an eight-hour assault in the capital on traffic police headquarters, killing three police officers. Authorities say all five attackers were killed in the offensive in Kabul.
Pray about the Taliban’s intention destroying facilities such as police headquarters and killing civil officers.
FOREIGN INTERESTS AND CONFLICTS
Several Egyptian members of the squad of militants that lay bloody siege to the Algerian gas complex last week also took part in the deadly attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, Libya, a senior Algerian official reported.
The broader challenges the U.S. and its allies face in confronting terrorist cells that have taken up sanctuary across northern Africa was brought into focus by the bloody hostage crisis in Algeria.
Pray about the increasing levels of Islamist militant attacks in the African continent and level of U.S. response.
THE ECONOMY
Nearly half of eligible ex-service members who served in Iraq or Afghanistan are snubbing free federal healthcare they earned in uniform because many harbor “huge distrust” of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs.
Even though much has changed over the past four years, the un-employment rate is the same today as it was when President Obama first assumed office in 2009. The current reported rate is 7.8 percent; some believe it is higher.
Pray for our ex-service members, many of whom count themselves among America’s unemployed.
ISRAEL AND THE MIDDLE EAST
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies were sharply weakened in election results Tuesday, pushing him to try to form a coalition government with his opponents that stands to be more moderate but less stable.
The Palestinian Authority Wednesday said it would deal with any Israeli government that abides by UN resolutions calling for the establishment of a Palestinian state with the pre-1967 lines and Jerusalem as its capital.
Pray for the strength and resolve of the new government that Prime Minister Netanyahu must now assemble.
HEALTH CARE
Millions of low-income people could be required to pay more for health care under a proposed federal policy that would give states more freedom to impose co-payments and other charges on Medicaid patients.
The next edition of psychiatry’s diagnostic manual will include a listing for Internet-Use Disorder as a condition worth studying. Excessive internet use is a “drug” to the new generation, some claim.
Pray about ever-escalating costs of medical care, and for America’s youth in the Facebook and Twitter culture.
Look among the nations and see; wonder and be astounded.
For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told.
…and why are education reformers/politicians ascribing to fairy tales for policy?
by Gretchen Logue
Should Common Core State Standards (CCSS) be considered an educational version of the story “The Emperor’s New Clothes”? The standards are the promise of new clothes for education but is there basis for believing there are any clothes at all? From Wikipedia:
“The Emperor’s New Clothes” (Danish: Kejserens nye Klæder) is a short tale by Hans Christian Andersen about two weavers who promise an Emperor a new suit of clothes that is invisible to those unfit for their positions, stupid, or incompetent. When the Emperor parades before his subjects in his new clothes, a child cries out, “But he isn’t wearing anything at all!” The tale has been translated into over a hundred languages.[1]
His research may just expose the standards to be unfit and fallacy to those who are critical thinkers asking for data determining their stated validity. This article should be studied by educators, politicians, taxpayers, to understand the colossal farce Common Core standards are in terms of providing promises of educational improvement for American students as they are unproven and untested.
Tienken writes the standards have not been validated empirically and no metric has been set to monitor the intended and unintended consequences they will have on the education system and children (Mathis, 2010). So why would governors and private trade organizations spend millions of taxpayer dollars on theories instead of verifiable researched data? The CCSS proponents have bought into these two arguments:
America’s children are “lagging” behind international peers in terms of academic achievement, and
the economic vibrancy and future of the United States relies upon American students outranking their global peers on international tests of academic achievement because of the mythical relationship between ranks on those tests and a country’s economic competitiveness.
Where’s the data supporting the CCSS proponents’ arguments? There isn’t much put forth by the education reformers. So why are states and school districts implementing unproven and untested theories? He defines the acceptance/lack of data for the unproven and untested CCSS assessments and implementation allegedly designed to enable students to become “globally competitive” with such sentences/phrases as:
An unbelievable suspension of logic and evidence
To believe that economic strength of the United States relies on how students rank on the Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) or the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), rather than reliance on policy (tax, trade, health, labor, finance, monetary, housing, natural resources policy)… “is like believing in the tooth fairy”
The “critical skills necessary to compete in the 21st century” are repackaged 19th century ideas and skills…they are “inert, sterile, socially static”…the CCSS are stuck in a curricular time machine set in 1858
Connecting an individual’s education achievement on a standardized test to a nation’s economic future is not empirically or logically acceptable and using that mythical connection for large-scale policymaking is civically reckless … when school administrators implement programs and policies built on those faulty arguments, they commit education malpractice
More countries with national standards underperformed the US than did countries without national standards
To think that every student in this country should be made to learn the same thing is illogical—it lacks face validity … we should have learned from the Soviet Union that central planning does not work in the long-run
Standardization and testing are so entrenched in Singapore that every attempt to diversity the system has failed, leaving Singapore a country that has high test scores but no creativity
(CCSS) creates a standardizing apparatus…we should respect differences among children, not try to extinguish them…there is a lot more going on here on the societal level than meets the eye … it’s more complex than the creators and vendors of the standards either understand or wish to present
Children have a right to a quality education. School leaders, those who prepare them, and the people who lead our professional organizations have a duty to help provide the quality … if some education leaders choose to drink the snake oil then they should expect to get sick. If some help sell it, they should resign.
He backs up his findings with 48 independent referenced sources. It is worth your time to read his commentary that destroys the CCSS proponents’ arguments with methodical precision based on actual data. Compare/contrast his research/reference with the data CCSSO and the NGA use:
“Many school districts or schools have “data committees” that make school-widedecisions based on some type of data. Surely there must be quality data available publically to support the use of the CCSS to transform, standardize, centralize and essentially delocalize America’s public education system. The official website for the CCSS claims to provide such evidence. The site alleges that the standards are “evidence based” and lists two homegrown documents to “prove” it: Myths vs Facts (NGA, 2010) and the Joint International Benchmarking Report (NGA, 2008).
“The Myths document presents claims that the standards have “made use of a large and growing body of knowledge” (p. 3). Knowledge derives in part from carefully controlled scientific experiments and observations so one would expect to find references to high quality empirical research to support the standards.
“When I reviewed that “large and growing body of knowledge” offered by the NGA, I found that it was not large, and in fact built mostly on one report, Benchmarking for Success, created by the NGA and the CCSSO, the same groups that created these standards; Hardly independent research.
The Benchmarking report has over 135 end notes, some of which are repetitive references. Only four of the cited pieces of evidence could be considered empirical studies related directly to the topic of national standards and student achievement.
The remaining citations were newspaper stories, armchair magazine articles, op-ed pieces, book chapters, notes from telephone interviews, and several tangential studies.
Many of the citations were linked to a small group of standardization advocates and did not represent the larger body of empirical thought on the topic”.
Tienken’s report needs to be sent to school boards, superintendents, state educational agencies, educational reform groups, governors and state legislators for their response to his research and conclusions. These private and/or public entities need to asked why they support common core standards and provide the data to back up their beliefs and use of the standards. If you get shocked faces and declarations from these groups/politicians such as “I do whatever _________ tells me to” (fill in the blank: state agency, federal government, governor, etc), you know the right to direct your school’s educational direction is in dire jeopardy.
Christopher Tienken, Ed.D. is the editor of the AASA Journal of Scholarship and Practice. He is an assistant professor of Education Administration at Seton Hall University. He has public school administration experience as a PK-12 assistant superintendent, middle school principal, and elementary school assistant principal. He began his career in education as an elementary school teacher. Dr Tienken’s research interests include the effect and influence of professional development on teacher practice and student achievement, the construct validity of high-stakes standardized tests as decision-making tools about student achievement and school effectiveness, and curricular interventions used in schools to improve achievement. His research about the effects of professional development on student achievement has been recognized by the Institute of Education Sciences and the National Staff Development Council awarded him the Best Research Award in 2008.”
As a top researcher in academic practice and student achievement, Dr. Tienken looked at the claims of those who support the Common Core Standards and wrote about his findings in the Winter 2011 edition of the Journal of Scholarship & Practice. You can read his full report “Common Core State Standards: An Example of Data-less Decision Making” here. What follows are some key highlights from it.
On the claim that the standards are evidence based and internationally benchmarked.
“The standards have not been validated empirically and no metric has been set to monitor the intended and unintended consequences they will have on the education system and children (Mathis, 2010)”
“The site alleges that the standards are “evidence based” and lists two homegrown documents to “prove” it: Myths vs Facts (NGA, 2010) and the Joint International Benchmarking Report (NGA, 2008).
The Myths document presents claims that the standards have “made use of a large and growing body of knowledge” (p. 3). Knowledge derives in part from carefully controlled scientific experiments and observations so one would expect to find references to high quality empirical research to support the standards.
When I reviewed that “large and growing body of knowledge” offered by the NGA, I found that it was not large, and in fact built mostly on one report, Benchmarking for Success, created by the NGA and the CCSSO, the same groups that created these standards; Hardly independent research.”
The need for the standards has been justified by claiming that, (a) America’s children are “lagging” behind international peers in terms of academic achievement, and (b) the economic vibrancy and future of the United States relies upon American students outranking their global peers on international tests of academic achievement.
Tienken’s response –
“Unfortunately for proponents of this empirically vapid argument it is well established that a rank on an international test of academic skills and knowledge does not have the power to predict future economic competitiveness and is otherwise meaningless for a host of reasons (Baker, 2007; Bracey, 2009; Tienken, 2008).”
He sites these examples to support his statement.
“The fact is China and its continued manipulation of its currency, the Yuan, and iron-fisted control of its labor pool, has a greater effect on our economic strength than if every American child scored at the top of every international test, the SAT, the ACT, the GRE, or the MAT.” (emphasis added)
“Japan‘s stock market, the Nikkei 225 Average, closed at a high of 38,915 points on December 31, 1989 and on October 15, 2010 it closed at 9,500 points, approximately 75% lower, but Japan ranked in the Top 10 on international tests of mathematics since the 1980‘s and has always ranked higher than the U.S. on such tests. Yet Japan‘s stock market and its economy have been in shambles for almost two decades. They have national curriculum standards and testing, and have for over 30 years. Japanese students outrank students from most other nations on math and science tests.”
“Economic strength of the G20 countries relies more on policy, than education achievement.”
“To believe otherwise is like believing in the tooth-fairy.”
Even if the standards were a good idea, they would not lead to the results that their proponents promise. Given their tremendous cost, it seems reasonable to question whether they are really needed. At the very least we should ask, is this a good investment of America’s capital?
BLOGGER’S NOTE: As an educator, it is just plain foolishness to think any kind of collectivity, lumping all students into one giant classroom, dispensing pre-designed curricula and calling it Common Core Standards is simply idiotic! YES, our education system needs some serious help, but this is over-simplifying the problem AND an imagined solution. Nothing short of a radical re-design of what curriculum means and how to TEACH individual students (rather than “groups” of children) is going to improve the learning curve in American schools! Collectivity is NOT the answer in education any more than it is in anything else. As much as Americans want to believe in equality, we must understand that equality does NOT refer to our individual giftings and abilities. In those, we are divinely created unique individuals!
A constitutional battle over Muslim family law has begun. In November 2010, Oklahoma voters approved a state constitutional amendment banning the use of Muslim Shari’ah and other international laws in its state courts. This was a direct rejoinder to other Western nations allowing Muslim citizens to enforce Muslim marriage contracts in state courts and to resolve family law issues before Shari’ah tribunals without state interference. Oklahoma’s citizens wanted none of it, and they voted to ban the use of Shari’ah altogether. Twelve other states are discussing comparable measures.
In January 2012, however, a federal appeals court upheld a lower federal court injunction of Oklahoma’s amendment. Singling out a specific religious law for special prohibition, the court of appeals concluded, violated the First Amendment Establishment Clause and unjustifiably injured Oklahoma’s Muslim citizens. This leaves Oklahoma courts with a stark choice: allow Muslims to use Shari’ah to govern internal religious affairs and the private lives of voluntary members, or equally prohibit all religious groups from exercising comparable authority through organs of internal mediation, ecclesiastical discipline, and canon law.
Oklahoma can likely escape this choice by crafting a more neutrally-phrased constitutional amendment. But deft legal drafting will not end the matter. As American Muslims grow stronger and anti-Muslim sentiment in America goes deeper, constitutional and cultural battles over Muslim laws and tribunals will likely escalate.
Many Shari’ah advocates reject America’s sexual revolution of the past half century, built on cultural and constitutional ideals of sexual privacy, equality, and autonomy. They reject the easy-in/easy-out system of American family law that has brought ruin to so many women and children. They reject America’s legal protections for nonmarital sex, sodomy, abortion, and same-sex marriage. Distrusting the modern liberal state’s capacity to reform its laws of sexuality, marriage, and family life, Shari’ah advocates want out.
They have two main objectives: to give Muslims the right to opt out of the state’s liberal family law into their own religious community’s morally rigorous system; and to give Muslim religious officials the right to operate that system for voluntary members without undue state interference or review.
There is no shortage of bad and ugly news in our sad world, but CHRISTMAS is an exercise in BALANCE! If there is one thing we can learn from Christmas, it is that Christ left heaven – a place of perfection, peace, and love – to enter our corrupt world … made corrupt by us, sinful beings. Yes, God could have made us perfect little puppets that obeyed his every wish, but in his opinion, individual freedom was more important, more valuable. Since he created us each special, different, and unique, he comprehends the value of uniqueness and potential. He birthed into each of us a unique blend of talents and abilities intended for the betterment of humankind. It is our corrupt nature that ruined everything and perverted these gifts and abilities to selfish gain. Individual freedom is God’s idea, and we can only hope to live freely as we seek and serve him.
Christmas reminds us that we really should work to use our own personal freedoms, gifts and abilities to help our neighbors. God understood our predicament and gave his very one Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus gave up his place in heaven and came to this dark earth as a helpless infant to endure the same torments of earth that you and I endure daily. The difference? He endured without sin, without anger, without jealousy, without greed … without petty frustrations, without coveting the neighbor’s Caddy or 55 inch plasma.
So amidst the bad and ugly news, JOY comes. LIGHT comes to our dark world, though many do not perceive it. Darkness tries to cover our nakedness, but Light uncovers and exposes TRUTH. This is our mission always, but we must be careful that the darkness does not overtake us. With the volume of dark deceptions in our nation, in this administration, in our world, we must guard our own perspective, our own hearts, lest the darkness take over our own hearts. We can face the darkness only as we stand in the Light.
Christmas is a time for the LIGHT to shine. Even in our sterilized secular society, the BRIGHTNESS of this season shines. We mourn the babies slain; we mourn our freedoms lost, we mourn the direction of our nation; we mourn the choice America has made … Yet in our time of mourning, LIGHT SHINES.
“In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God and the Word was God.
He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things were made;
without him nothing was made that has been made.
In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
John 1: 1 – 5
In case you’ve been hiding in a back room someplace for the last few decades, the typical public school curricula has changed! No longer are students taught how to learn. Rather, they are taught the politically correct answers. Period. Questions with hard answers are generally skipped, lest a student ask a question the teacher is unequipped to answer. But that is just the surface. Substance has also changed. English is morphed with Spanish and “computereze” until only a tiny percentage of graduating students can actually construct a well-stated sentence. Math and science are taught at surface level without the introduction of applications to make them real. History is being re-written before our eyes to support the modern “progressive” political agenda. George Washington, whose peers rated his integrity far superior to the norm, is now (according to NBC’s upcoming series) portrayed as a womanizing, self-doubting snob because the liberals know how much the Constitution and our Founders mean to the restoration and security of America. Their aim is to cast doubt on the excellence and genius of our Founding documents to allow for “modification.”. Some new text books actually compare our Founders to today’s murderous “terrorists!”
No more King Arthur stories, kids—you’re going to start reading some information-packed government documents instead!
Adding to a number of problems with the Obama Administration-backed Common Core education standards, beginning with the fact that the federal government should not be involved in the business of curriculum standards, is the questionable quality of the standards themselves. As the English language arts standards make their way through classrooms, educators are waving red flags about the Common Core’s literature requirements—or lack thereof.
At issue is the Common Core standards’ shift toward a focus on informational texts rather than literature. “English teachers across the country are trying to figure out which poetry, short stories and novels might have to be sacrificed to make room for nonfiction,” reported The Washington Post earlier this week.
Sandra Stotsky, a professor at the University of Arkansas, has decried the change: “Tackling rich literature is the best way to prepare students for careers and college.… There is no research base for the claim that informational reading will lead to college preparedness better than complex literary study.”
Teachers are voicing their grievances as well. Jamie Highfill, an eighth-grade English teacher in Fayetteville, Arkansas, told the Post that she has had to drop “some short stories and a favorite unit on the legends of King Arthur to make room for essays by Malcolm Gladwell and a chapter from ‘The Tipping Point.’ With informational text, there isn’t that human connection that you get with literature. And the kids are shutting down. They’re getting bored. I’m seeing more behavior problems in my classroom than I’ve ever seen.”
The shift to informational texts also “opens the door to a politicized curriculum,” some argue.
Stanley Kurtz from National Review Online points out that one of Common Core’s suggested texts is Executive Order 13423: Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management. Executive Order 13423 was selected because it “appears to give the imprimatur of the federal government to the political gospel of ‘sustainability’ and the crusade against global warming.” Another recommended text from Common Core, notes Kurtz, is a 2009 New Yorker essay on health care. “The excerpt may not explicitly endorse Obamacare, but it certainly leaves students with the impression that Obamacare is wise policy.”
These, and other, changes reflect nothing more than a politicalization of education to further this administration’s political agenda. It is shameful indoctrination of young minds, not to mention poor preparation for productive adult life. It inhibits the development of critical thinking and creative exploration in our students’ development. All thought contrary to the agenda taught will be “corrected” or penalized by poor assessment marks. No more room for the individual thinker, as President Obama and his backers create a well-trained, but ignorant, collective … a population of sheep!
It’s Christmastime, and life is busy. I find myself unwilling to even think about the sad … disgusting direction our nation has chosen. Our President is on record professing his desire to “improve” the US Constitution that has stood for 236 years. He speaks pleasant sounding words of “fair distribution” and “equality,” but his ideas are far from fair and just as far from equal. Especially in this spiritual season, how empty and pathetic it is to eliminate GOD from every facet of public life and call it … the Constitutional separation of Church and State! HOGWASH!
If only Americans understood the Constitution. If only the TRUTH was taught instead of the radical progressive doctrine of the left or even alongside the left’s interpretation. If only we refused to permit the “sterilization” of American culture and tradition in light of the deterioration of “quality of life” in our culture. Incidents of increased violence, increased drug & alcohol use and abuse, increased promiscuity and unwanted pregnancy fill our tabloids and newspapers, and still GOD is pushed further and further out of the picture.
It is really hard for me to embrace the “new” ideas of this administration when I consider the results:
Unemployment continues to grow as thousands are laid off because of the staggering costs of “The Affordable Care Act,” – Obamacare; and because of continued Union demands that price American-made goods out of the market with unreasonable benefit packages and pensions subsidized with PUBLIC funds.
Look at the storm raging in the Middle East, supported and financially subsidized by American funds. The media would have us believe that “Democracy” is the goal of those rioting to overthrow the brutal governments. DEMOCRACY is nothing more than majority rule, and not necessarily an improvement, and certainly not AMERICA. (American government is structured as a Constitutional Republic, NOT a Democracy!) The Muslim Brotherhood is just the political cover arm of al Qaeda/Hamas that has their own agenda – global jihad to impose Islam, via Shariah law, on an unsuspecting, naive West. Look at London! Look at Dearborn, Michigan, and Detroit, for pete’s sake!
The bottom line, my friends, is that the Obama administration and the liberal leftist agenda offers no hope – NO HOPE – to those MILLIONS of Americans out of work and struggling to make it. No hope of recovery! No hope to help them stand again in the dignity of satisfying work. President Obama only offers more of the same, so it is up to us- neighbors & friends – to reach beyond our own needs & issues to those in need.
Oh fellow Patriots, enjoy your Christmas (or Chanukah,) your family, and faithful friends by helping others as you are able! I encourage you to celebrate the reality of Christ as fully and as thoroughly as you wish. Who knows if by next year, Christmas may be illegal.
Afterwards, as 2013 begins, may we unite in humility & repentance as we muster to develop a plan to bring about the ReBirth of a stronger, moral AMERICA.
NO HOPE … without men and women of FAITH giving of their faith.
Not religion, but FAITH!
Not tradition or dogma, but HOPE!
Not rules and regulations, but genuine no-strings compassion!
LIVE IT!
I spent a decade teaching in a private school in my attempt to negotiate the Union trap doors and administrative bullying, so I know first hand how manipulative our education system can be. It all seems so innocent. Subtle changes here. Rewording there. Omission of certain details in the life of George Washington or skewed emphasis on uncertainties in the life of Abraham Lincoln don’t seem like monumental issues in the overall education of children. Toss in a little “I’m OK; You’re OK” and John Dewey’s perspective on education as part of a young teacher’s training, and we begin to see – way back in the 70’s – the beginnings of what we are reaping today. In their effort to indoctrinate our students in a politically correct manner, relevant disciplines have been compromised, watered (dumbed) down, or completely omitted. There is evidence, the decline in US education has much greater impact on our further than most of us may realize.
To any American who believes whole-heartedly in the virtue of our public school system, please know you are completely … UNAWARE!!!
In thinking about how valuable education is in cultivating the next generation of Americans, my mind took me back nearly twenty years to when I was a graduate student functioning as a substitute teacher at La Puente High School in Southern California. On one assignment, I was to cover a social studies class of some old-timer; he had written down in his instructions that since his classes were on a field trip, my sole duty was to show a movie at 6th period to those who did not attend. What I found that day opened my eyes.
In a dusty corner shelf of the room was a set of thirty-year-old textbooks from the mid-1960s, and although my memory cannot now relinquish their title, their contents burned themselves into my brain. As I flipped through the pages, I was astonished to find what I would now consider an upper-level college textbook under color of what in the high schools used to be termed “civics.” This text contained a very detailed understanding of political theory, constitutional law, macroeconomics, American history, and comparative political systems. I spent the rest of the day in slack-jawed amazement, perusing what a student in a working-class town was expected to know before the mavens of education began tinkering with the curricula of our schools.
When the instructor returned at the end of the day, I revealed my astonishment to him, and he informed me that he had used those texts when he first hired on. Now, however, could not do so, since they would be incomprehensible to nearly every student — especially considering that the nature of history and American government had been changed in the current texts. The teacher related to me that the current texts had been scaled down to what used to be a grammar-school understanding, and they carried within them a jaundiced view of America, preferring to accentuate the warts and blemishes rather than the achievements of our political system.
I then made it my business, when finding an older teacher, to ask if education had been “dumbed down.” To a person, I found that this question unleashed volatile diatribes on how dull children had become since the responders had begun as idealistic young men and women in the field. Algebra teachers informed me that every year they were forced to eliminate problem sets that previous years had mastered. English teachers who once taught Shakespeare and Dante were now reduced to leading seniors through Orwell’s Animal Farm or postmodern novels featuring teens in existential moral dilemmas. Moreover, the analysis of themes in book reports had been deconstructed into not what the author was attempting to portray, but what personal emotions were elicited in the reader.
Teachers, who are part and parcel the products of our New Education, can never be fully aware of what diminution has been wrought subsequent to the Great Divide. From elementary school and into the colleges, disciplines of objective knowledge have been either discounted or leveled, and critical thinking has been pushed aside for the subtle indoctrination of a specific worldview. Students are deemed to be merely clever animals, and the slow, simmering replacement of a spiritual for a biological self-definition is therefore woven into the fabric of how they are taught life and the world.
Campus speech codes and filtered curricula have denuded the classical goal of the acquisition of a free and analytic mind. The capacity to seek and apprehend truth has devolved into the project to fashion pliable minds with correct and proper opinions, in which truth itself is a problematic, wavering, conventional construct. Passion and commitment in service to a politicized cause are indeed more valuable than the veracity of that cause, since the absence of truth renders one construction of the world coequal with another.
The moral equality of lifestyles, as well as the preferred end of an equality of material results, is deemed by those who design curricula to be consistent with “anointed ideologies.” All permutations of sexuality are to be held valid, protected from the scrutiny of blighted paleo-moral judgments. All cultures and religions are also worthy of celebration — with the exceptions of Christianity and the American regime, who are guilty of a plethora of crimes throughout the earth and must therefore be lowered in stature to ensure the final egalitarian assessment of distinction-free understanding. The fiction must be implanted that we are all one worldwide loving and happy family, benevolent and divided only by geographical and artificial political overlays.
For those with children or grandchildren in public schools today, I cannot urge you enough to pay VERY close attention to the assignments, the textbooks, and the classroom discussions so you are both informed and able to rebut in your time with these children. It is a VITAL INTEREST to educate this generation about the workings of our government as the Founders intended, to educate our students on HOW to learn because teachers do NOT! Some teachers actually (I know this, too, first hand) read from a SCRIPT, and they call that “teaching!” We all know our ABC’s, so let’s USE the skills and knowledge we have to educate our children. We cannot count on the government sponsored public school system to uphold our “traditional American values,” if we are not willing to do so ourselves.
The 5000 Year Leap: A Miracle that Changed the World is an excellent place to start. The future of our nation depends on the values and Constitutional knowledge of our children and grandchildren, and who is better equipped to help them understand than US … you and me working together to LIVE and BREATHE LIBERTY as a God-given gift and responsibility! We must turn the tide.