Stopping to Think

"Students are excited when their teachers model interest and enthusiasm for the subjects they are teaching." Tom Spencer Commonplace Monday is a series of posts wherein, on Monday mornings, I share short quips, sentences -perhaps as much as a paragraph- which I have collected in my various commonplace books and files. If I wrote down or recall where it came from I will certainly give attribution. However, sometimes I write down things and not where they came from. So if you see anything like that here and recognize it, that's what comment sections are for.  

How should we speak to and with our children? Realizing that a) I'm no expert and b) I'm mostly thinking aloud, I think we need to ponder these things. That is the intention of this blog, after all. To think aloud, and to invite you to join my thinking. On Conversing: Some form of this post has been stirring in my mind for many a moon, but what finally kicked me over the edge to put finger to keyboard was this article in The Atlantic . The focus of the piece, if you have not read it, is on early childhood education, preschool specifically, and the fact that though children are being taught  more information than every before, they are in fact learning  less. The author, a professional in the field, discuses various reasons for this, but then points to a number of things that provide a genuinely healthy learning environment for children. Here is a section: As an early-childhood educator, I’ve clocked many hours in many preschool classrooms, and I have found that I c...

There has frequently, throughout my lifetime at least, been a cry for free (or significantly cheaper) college education. While I'm not sold on that being a good idea, here is a thought that popped into my head one day, that may seem ludicrous to you. It may, in fact, be ludicrous. It's certainly just the beginning of an idea. But here goes. What if we were to take the money which the federal government spends on education at all levels (pre-K, elementary, high school, college), and funnel that all toward funding universities. Then take the state money currently heading to education at all levels, and redirect it toward funding and expanding community colleges, perhaps engulfing the final two years of high school (or all of high school?) into that system. Finally, make k-8th or 10th grade the responsibility solely of parents, local counties, municipalities, churches, etc. I realize that most people who see this will wonder what I smoked as I typed. But I believe if education in ...

I wrote a post about a year and a half ago on family devotions . While I have been pretty inconsistent and at times lackadaisical in my application of what I wrote there, I am encouraged as I look back over the last year plus and think of how much Scripture we've been able to read together at the dinner table.  However, as you may know, it's sometimes hard to discuss with your 2 year-old child the complex theological arguments of Paul in his letter to the Ephesians. Not that we shouldn't make that effort, but it just might be difficult. You'll have to do a lot of simplifying in your language, and trying to take abstract ideas and connect them to concrete realities. Some people are pretty good at this...I'm not. I need help. I have to learn how to talk and think like a small child, because that is a completely foreign world to me. And so, if you're in that same boat, I think it's good to martial some allies to your cause. Let me suggest three that I use. ...

Let me begin with a clarification of terms. By Reppin', I mean Repetition. And by Old Schhol, I mean way Old School. Think Calvin. Heidelberg. Westminster. We're talking Catechisms. For those unfamiliar with what a catechism is, here is the basic idea. A set of propositional truths are put forth in a question-and-answer format to teach doctrine, and guard against both error and wrong teaching. If you're like me, in that you grew up either in an evangelical church or unchurched, this concept is likely somewhat foreign to you. While it is still in use in some Catholic and a very few mainline Protestant churches, catechims have gone somewhat the way of the dodo. The reasoning for this is more than I could cover here, but if I might be allowed some over-simplification, here is how I would put it: People don't want to hear propositional truth, they'd rather have their ears scratched in a discussion or lecture format, and have no use for participatory learning of deep,...