It is Time for Educational Reform: Don’t Privatize It – Parentize It!

Bill 13 passed the Ontario Legislature this week.  The bill requires all schools, even Catholic ones, to set up “Gay-Straight Alliance” clubs to propagandize for the homosexual acts as natural and good purportedly so that children and teens who experience any signs of gender confusion will be encouraged to be proud of their “sexual identity.”  Of course, the real purpose is to silence opposition to the agenda of the pansexualist revolution that seeks to undermine traditional marriage and family as structures of oppression.

Last year the Ontario government implemented JK-12 sex education programs designed to teach that sex is good as long as you use contraception at various points in the curriculum so that parents cannot remove children from specific sex education classes.  The purpose here is to break down natural and normal shame and embarrassment about sex so that sex can become just another bodily function like taking a drink of water.  The point is to talk about it endlessly so as to make it seem coarse, physical and trivial.

The government is so infiltrated by the new neo-pagan religion of secularism that is is no longer even making a pretense of recognizing the natural right of parents to raise their own children as they see fit within their own culture and religion.  It is the totalitarianism of the progressive state with its myth of progress by the rule of experts.  Many Canadians, even Christians, have been brainwashed into accepting the nationalization of education by the government as normal.  But it is not; it is tyranny.

But there is hope

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Dark Times in “la belle province”

The most secular and left-wing province in Canada is Quebec.  This was not always the case.  Before the reforms of the “Quiet Revolution” in the early 1960s, politicians such as conservative Premier Maurice Duplessis enjoyed the support of the Catholic Church, most of the working class (particularly the non-organized), and Anglophone and American business leaders.  State intervention was minimal and Quebec had a strong economy that paralleled Ontario.  But left-wing intellectuals were keen to see change. The secularization process that unfolded was a welcome development to those who characterized the Duplessis era as “the Black Ages” (See Michael D. Behiels, ed., Quebec Since 1945).  Yet, not all is well in Quebec today.

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Stop Encouraging Everyone to Attend University

Graduation season is wrapping up and there are now scores of university graduates heading off into the marketplace. I strongly suspect that a large percentage of these students are not actually better equipped for that marketplace as a result of having gone to university. Some may read this and conclude that it’s evidence that we’re doing things wrong. That we’re no longer connecting to students in the right way and we need to make wholesale changes to our curriculum and teaching methods. I think this is the wrong way to try and solve the problem. Instead, we should simply stop telling so many students that they need to go to university in the first place. Many of these graduates probably should never have gone to university at all.

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Wheaton College Opposes the Obama Administration’s Infringement of Religious Freedom

Wheaton College has come out against the Obama administration healthcare mandate the infringes the freedom of religious institutions.  The Daily Herald reports:

Wheaton College and other distinctively Christian institutions are faced with a near and present threat to religious liberty.

Last August, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a mandate that the insurance plans for religious institutions (except churches) must provide coverage for all government-approved contraceptives. The list of required contraceptives includes abortifacient drugs — “morning after” and “week after” pills that claim the life of a fertilized egg.

During the period for public debate, the HHS received more than 200,000 comments objecting that the contraceptive mandate would violate the First Amendment rights of anyone who believed — for religious reasons — in the sanctity of human life.

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This is What They Mean By “Tolerance”

See, you got to kick people out to be inclusive. . . especially religious types. See?

One of Vanderbilt University’s largest Christian student organizations has announced it will formally break ties with the Tennessee school, becoming the latest victim of the college’s intolerant policy on student club leadership.

Vanderbilt Catholic announced last week that is it unable to comply with the school’s new nondiscrimination policy that prohibits student groups from maintaining belief or faith-based qualifications for leadership positions.

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The Genius of a Southern Fundamentalist

In high school, he had a 98.6 percent average, scored 100 percent in both math and science, placed second at a statewide spelling bee, and edited the high school paper (because he was put ahead one year, he finished high school at age 16). The warnings that Harvard University was inhospitable to southern Christians deterred him from his plan to apply there for college. Close to his 17^th birthday, he entered a local liberal arts school where he made the Dean’s list and scored the highest mark in mathematics (he received the B.F. Goodrich “Mathematics Student of the Year” award). He transferred to Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri where he graduated as the college’s top student with a degree in theology.  His academic accomplishments were impressive, but his true genius was his effective use of the media to champion the fundamentals of traditional Christianity.

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In the Lion’s Den

Before Rev. Jerry Falwell delivered his talk at Harvard Divinity School in 1983, Harvard theologian Harvey Cox explained to the audience: “Please understand that my presence here tonight should in no way be understood as an endorsement of what Jerry Falwell recommends.”  Exceptionally bright and quick on his feet, Falwell took the microphone and countered: “Thank you for your kind introduction, Professor Cox.  Students, please understand that my speaking here tonight should in no way be construed as an endorsement of the Harvard Divinity School.”

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In Praise of the Lecture

The lecture is under attack today in many circles as an outdated, one-way form of communication that does not really facilitate learning.  But, given the massive failures of modern educational theory, it would seem to me to be irresponsible to accept meekly whatever novel pedagogical theories it proposes without question.  Therefore, I wish to offer a few words in praise of the much-maligned and frequently despised lecture.

The paradigmatic act of the university professor in the (originally) Western (but now Global) university in the modern age is the lecture. The disputation was central to the pedagogy of the Medieval university and the tutorial system is fundamental to the Oxbridge system. The graduate seminar is the backbone of the modern, research university. But common to all universities of all times is the lecture.

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The Pursuit of Truth

At the beginning of every academic year I tell my students that their number one priority (after God) while attending university is their studies. While students at all universities will face the temptation to ignore their courses so they can spend more time with their friends, students at Christian universities also face a particularly unique temptation. At schools like Tyndale University College many students find themselves tempted to spend too much time on various ministry opportunities and not enough time on their coursework. These are the students that get upset with me when they realize “number one priority” means that their ministry activities should take a backseat to their academic studies.

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