Daily Links 4-8-13

Your daily dose of fun links. In today's edition: questions of Christian education, love and baseball, lessons in good listening, and more.

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Four questions that will help parents understand whether Christian education at either private schools or universities is successful. For anyone concerned about the education of their children these are questions you will want your child to be able to answer. (Hat tip: Aaron Armstrong) 

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Debunking myths about millenials and the church.

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More research about millenials and the news is not good.

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A children's bookstore designed to look like a long winding rainbow.

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Love and baseball: a pair of Red Sox fans who met on Twitter got married at Fenway Park.

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50 wonderful ideas for sprucing up your home library (Hat tip: Book Riot)

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It's difficult to be a good listener but applying these lessons will go a long way towards improving our ability to listen.

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15 grammatical errors that will make you look silly:
Like this infographic? Get more content marketing tips from Copyblogger.

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Daily Links 3-28-14

Returning just in time to provide you with some interesting reading for your weekend: where is the next James Madison, choice rather than more spending will fix education, an anniversary surprise, and more.

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Where is the next James Madison? An article well worth reading and thinking about from Erich Bridges.

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Making the case for school choice:

The alternatives to traditional public schools differ in many ways, but they all discard the idea of government dictating where students go to school, how money is spent and what's being taught. 

Instead, students and their parents pick the schools. Money goes with the student. Schools survive and prosper by doing a better job of educating. If they don't deliver, the students will find another school, taking the money with them. 

Students will be better served in private schools run like businesses. There's no reason to shy away from what this means: operating for profit, replacing principals with CEOs, paying good teachers more, firing bad teachers, giving schools freedom to innovate in instruction methods and curriculum, letting new schools enter the market, allowing bad schools to fail, encouraging successful schools to take over unsuccessful ones, getting rid of unions that protect bad teachers and stifle change. 

 Hat tip: Glenn Reynolds, who also wrote a terrific book on this subject.

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Not that there is any doubt in my mind but here's 4 reasons why real books are better than e-books. (via Aaron Armstrong)

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Anyone who is a fan of Sherlock Holmes knows all about his arch enemy Professor James Moriarty. But was he a real person?

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Give the Tampa Bay Rays credit: they know how to help a couple celebrate an anniversary.

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And while we're on the subject of baseball, this book is at the top of my reading list:

Here's an early review of the book. Thanks to the author for the tip.

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Want to become a better writer? Try copying the work of others.

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Some very odd and specific rules from libraries.

Daily Links 1-31-14

In today's edition: Common Core and reading, faithful thinking, Sherlock and male friendship, ditching social media, and more.

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Lost in the debate over Common Core standards is that they inhibit teachers' ability to instill a love for reading in students:

How did you develop a love for reading?

Ask George Saunders, Barry Hannah, or Andrea Barrett. For each of these writers, their love for reading was realized in a K-12 classroom. For Maya Angelou, it’s thanks in part to Miss Kirwin, a “brilliant teacher” at the George Washington High School in San Francisco. For John McPhee, it’s thanks in part to Olive McKee, an English teacher he had for three years. Of course, you don’t have to look to lauded authors. Most readers, writers, and book-lovers can point you to a moment in their educational journeys where a love for reading was inspired in them by a passionate K-12 teacher. 

However, the ability of schools and teachers to foster a love for reading in students is under assault in today’s educational climate. We live in a time of high-stakes accountability, where quantifiable metrics, namely standardized test scores, are used to judge students, teachers, and schools. Now, we are faced with the Common Core, new standards in Math and English Language Arts that are sweeping the nation. Incentivized by billions in federal grant dollars, 45 states are adopting the Common Core, with some states rolling out their implementations over the last two school years and other states waiting until next school year. 

With these new standards come new tests, namely the Smarter Balanced assessment and PARCC, which are expected to take up to 10 hours for students to complete every year, starting in third grade. These tests will dominate students and teachers’ lives and turn many engaging classrooms into test prep zones. This myopic focus on testing places an extraordinary burden on students and teachers — such an extreme focus detracts from students’ educational experiences and greatly impedes schools and teachers’ ability to foster a love for reading in all students.

This should matter not only to students, parents, and teachers, but to publishers, writers, readers, and booksellers across America. If we want reading to flourish as a pastime and a serious pursuit, schools must be able to devote the necessary time and resources toward reading for pleasure.

Hat tip: Book Riot

The problem with putting so much emphasis on standardized tests as a measure of educational progress is that curriculum then is tailored towards teaching to the test rather than actually educating the child.

The other major flaw in such programs is the inherent desire to treat students as a homogeneous group. As we have discussed here before every student is different and so it should not be unreasonable to think that their education should be tailored to the needs and the learning style of the student.

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Seven observations on church discipline from Thom Rainer. These are some good thoughts on an important topic.

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Sherlock as an example of male friendship. The author is probably overstating it a bit that it's the best example ever but it is certainly a very good example of what male friendship should look like.

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A collection of unique town slogans you are unlikely to see anywhere else.

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Dr. Albert Mohler on developing a Christian worldview:

A robust and rich model of Christian thinking—the quality of thinking that culminates in a God-centered worldview—requires that we see all truth as interconnected. Ultimately, the systematic wholeness of truth can be traced to the fact that God is himself the author of all truth. Christianity is not a set of doctrines in the sense that a mechanic operates with a set of tools. Instead, Christianity is a comprehensive worldview and way of life that grows out of Christian reflection on the Bible and the unfolding plan of God revealed in the unity of the Scriptures. 

A God-centered worldview brings every issue, question, and cultural concern into submission to all that the Bible reveals, and it frames all understanding within the ultimate purpose of bringing greater glory to God. This task of bringing every thought captive to Christ requires more than episodic Christian thinking and is to be understood as the task of the church, and not merely the concern of individual believers. The recovery of the Christian mind and the development of a comprehensive Christian worldview will require the deepest theological reflection, the most consecrated application of scholarship, the most sensitive commitment to compassion, and the courage to face all questions without fear. 

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Secrets of creative success: an interview with Cheers writer Rob Long.

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Food for thought: quitting social media. These are all valid points to consider. Like anything else, you need to be wise in how you use it (if at all). 

Daily Links 1-24-14

Happy Friday! Here are few links to start off your weekend right: the story behind Pixar, Winnie the Pooh, Alice in Wonderland, and more.

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This is a fascinating history of the Pixar Animation Studios. One of the interesting things is that the company didn't entirely start out as an animation studio. However, it's safe to say it's currently the best one in the business.

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If it seems like your Top 40 radio station is playing the same songs all the time it's because they are. What amazed me is the frequency with which they repeat songs. When I worked in Top 40 radio many years ago the rule was a song that was ranked in the Top 10 was repeated every 2 hours and 15 minutes. I'm sure that it's much more frequent now.

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The origin of Winnie-the-Pooh and writings by A. A. Milne on happiness. Believe it or not, the famous bear actually appeared in a book of poems a full two years before the first Pooh book was published.

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Glenn Harlan Reynolds discusses education and his new book with The Atlantic.

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Did you know that you can view the original manuscript for Alice In Wonderland (including illustrations from Lewis Carroll) online?

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How to make perfect bacon. I'm normally in too much of a hurry to try a procedure like this but it looks like it could be good. Lately, I've been using a bacon tray I found at Wal-Mart for around five bucks that allows me to cook it in the microwave. Plus it pulls the grease away from the bacon and allows me to reuse it for another application.

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Ever wonder why we put money in piggy banks? Here's your answer.

Daily Links 1-9-14

Good morning! In today's roundup: celebrating the great year of film that was 1939, don't feed the trolls, considering alternative education, why you can't believe everything you hear, and more.

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This marks the 75th anniversary of what is arguably the best year for movies in the history of Hollywood: 1939. Breakpoint is marking the occasion by highlighting a different film from that year each month. The first installment deals with the classic western Stagecoach.

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Revealed:: the reason why you can't believe everything you hear.

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At Acculturated, Mark Tapson encourages us to not feed the trolls:

Recently an anonymous commenter responded to an Acculturated article I had written back in February entitled “Why Have Kids? They Make Life Meaningful.” The commenter stated, among other mean-spirited things, that “I hate kids. Always have. See humanity as a disease.” He (or she, but statistically speaking, it was most likely “he”) finished by saying that “women who birth children are dumb farm animals without exception.” 

I always try to respond to Acculturated comments, which are almost invariably well-considered and -intended, but I didn’t waste time on this one. It was the very definition of trolling: irrational, hateful, and designed only to provoke and/or bully, not to contribute to a meaningful online conversation. Trolls don’t respond to reason; they seek to agitate, not debate. Responding would have served no purpose except to feed the troll’s perverse need to suck me into a time-wasting, enervating black hole from which even the light of reason cannot escape. 

Such a comment may be rare on Acculturated, but the internet at large is hip-deep in trolls waging such (usually) anonymous, virtual guerrilla warfare. Political websites are particularly infested with them. I spend a great deal of time – too much – reading articles online, and have resolved recently not only to be more discriminating about that, but also to liberate myself from the negativity of reading article comments too, partly due to the high concentration of trolls spreading hate and ugliness for the pathetic satisfaction it gives them.

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Glenn Reynolds has some advice for parents: consider alternative schooling. After all, why should parents settle for the one-size-fits-all public school? As a parent of two homeschooled girls, I can attest that choosing to educate our children at home was the best decision we ever made.

No one is more in tune with the deterioration of our public schools than Professor Reynolds. His new book just hit the shelves this week.

Related links: A review of the book. Also an interview with Professor Reynolds.

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Decoding the byzantine system of Netflix's 76,000+ microgenres. Fascinating stuff. (Hat tip: Mental Floss)

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In praise of breakfast. To me, it's still the best meal of the day. Unfortunately, technology has done little to improve it. In fact, the author has it right that breakfast is not what it used to be.

Daily Links 1-8-14

In today's links: making college pay off, a caution to Christians about alcohol, a word from a young woman to young men, and more.

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If you don't click through any other link in today's post, take time to read this heartfelt letter from a 19 year old young woman to young men. It is an amazing post.

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Baseball's Hall of Fame will announce their 2014 class of inductees later today. Before the announcement, take time to read this column from Jonah Keri on what's wrong with the current voting process, how to fix it, and what his ballot would look like if he could vote.

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Glenn Harlan Reynolds (a.k.a. Instapundit) on how to make college pay off:

In the field of higher education, reality is outrunning parody. A recent feature on the satire website the Onion proclaimed, "30-Year-Old Has Earned $11 More Than He Would Have Without College Education." Allowing for tuition, interest on student loans, and four years of foregone income while in school, the fictional student "Patrick Moorhouse" wasn't much better off. His years of stress and study, the article japed, "have been more or less a financial wash."

"Patrick" shouldn't feel too bad. Many college graduates would be happy to be $11 ahead instead of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, behind. The credit-driven higher education bubble of the past several decades has left legions of students deep in debt without improving their job prospects. To make college a good value again, today's parents and students need to be skeptical, frugal and demanding. There is no single solution to what ails higher education in the U.S., but changes are beginning to emerge, from outsourcing to online education, and they could transform the system.

His upcoming book, The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself, looks like it will be an important one to read this year.

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Eric Metaxas interviews Malcolm Gladwell at Socrates in the City:



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31 College Campuses that are the perfect wedding venue:

Duke Chapel, Duke University, Durham, NC

Hat tip: Neatorama

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Somehow I missed this when it was first published: The Distinct, Positive Impact of a Good Dad.

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A caution to Christians who drink alcohol. I don't have any objections to occasional drink. This article makes some very solid points.

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Daily Links 1-2-14

In today's roundup: zero tolerance and public schools, an update in the war on boys, PEDs in baseball, and more.

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Glenn Reynolds weighs in on new research showing the ability of preschoolers to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Too bad the same can't be said for public school administrators.

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The Washington Examiner weighs in on the war on boys with this editorial:

Lost in all the noise about helping girls achieve their potential is a growing body of evidence that boys are in trouble. It's the real "gender gap." Consider this: A recent study by two MIT economists found that men, not women, are less likely to graduate from high school and finish college. As a result, the study said, "over the last three decades, the labor market trajectory of males in the U.S. has turned downward along four dimensions: skills acquisition, employment rates, occupational stature and real wage levels." 

The authors say the declining economic value of men and the rise in women's achievement contributes to the breakdown of the American family by making marriage less valuable. Then, with more out-of-wedlock births and single-parent households headed by women, the lack of a male role model hurts boys in particular, both economically and academically. 

This isn't a new finding: Multiple studies over the past 40 years have shown that boys suffer more than girls from divorce because they tend to externalize their reactions and act in ways that make them more likely to cause trouble at school or get arrested. Simply put: Boys need fathers to learn how to become men. And too many of them don't have one. 

Read the whole thing.

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Making the argument for voting for players from the Steroid Era for Baseball's Hall of Fame. Their opinion? It's the numbers, stupid. The hard part for me about the steroid debate has always been what distinctive advantage, if any, does use of PEDs give to a player? Baseball is hard game to play and even harder to master. Though I'm opposed to use of PEDs I still remain unconvinced that they give a player a significant edge.

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The polka-dot bomber from World War II:

The full story on why it's painted that way is here. (Hat tip: Neatorama)

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Prince William made the day of a 12 year old girl who was visiting Sandringham on Christmas Day:

In another era, it would have been seen as undignified. But in the newly populist royal family, everyone seems to be getting in on the act. 

After Prince Charles and the Queen set the trend by agreeing to pose for mobile phone photos with members of the public, Prince William has joined in.

And this time it was the royal who actually took the picture. 

William, 31, photographed himself with Madison Lambe, 12, on her phone – because she was too nervous to press the button. The Duke of Cambridge took the snap after she visited the Sandringham Estate on Christmas Day to watch the Royal family walk from their house to church.

Priceless.

Daily Links 11-28-13

How music affects the brain, using Monk Mode to increase productivity, a Jane Austen trivia game, and more in today's roundup of links.

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This is interesting: 8 ways that music affects the brain. Personally, I find I am more productive when I have music on in the background while working.

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A half-hour wedding proposal went viral on YouTube. And that's not a good thing.

The problem with trying to turn a marriage proposal into a wannabe Oscar performance is twofold: first, it turns a monumental moment into essentially a creativity competition, the root of which is vanity. (Did anyone notice how the video focuses almost exclusively on the guy making it? It’s not about her, or even them – it’s about him.) 

But more importantly, it turns the focus away from the purpose of the proposal – marriage. Because guess what? The way a man proposes has nothing to do at all with love, commitment, loyalty, or longevity. I hate to bring up America’s 50% divorce rate, but in light of videos like this, I feel somewhat compelled. We can dream up brilliant, creative, unique ways to propose, but all the flash mobs and music videos in the world can’t save a marriage when it’s past this butterflies, pie-in-the-sky phase. If anything, all the hype and hoopla of an over-the-top proposal can distract from the serious, down-to-earth business of making sure that you are marrying the right person.

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Total Film has a roundup of 50 movies that should have won an Oscar but didn't. My personal favorite is Rear Window. (Hat tip: Shrink Blog)

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Monk mode as the key to insane productivity. I don't know if that would be the name that I put to it but I like the idea. There are times I have had to completely shut off everything in order to stay focused on a major project. It's not an everyday thing but it is a strategy that makes sense if you have a big task to focus on. (Hat tip Challies)

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A Kickstarter for a Jane Austen Trivia Game. I have a feeling the women in my household could get behind that.



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Could single-sex public schools be making a comeback? One group in the Bronx is trying to bring all-male public schools back to help young men in New York. The results appear to be promising.

Daily Links 11-7-13

How the Internet affects your brain, an update in the war on boys, calling vs. career, and more in this morning's roundup of links.

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How the internet is rewiring your brain. This is both fascinating and scary at the same time. (Hat tip: Stephen Mansfield)

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The latest story in the continuing war on boys via Christina Hoff Somners:

Being a boy can be a serious liability in today’s classroom. As a group, boys are noisy, rowdy and hard to manage. Many are messy, disorganized and won’t sit still. Young male rambunctiousness, according to a recent study, leads teachers to underestimate their intellectual and academic abilities. “Girl behavior is the gold standard in schools says psychologist Michael Thompson. “Boys are treated like defective girls.”

These “defective girls” are not faring well academically. Compared with girls, boys earn lower grades, win fewer honors and are less likely to go to college. One education expert has quipped that if current trends continue, the last male will graduate from college in 2068. In today’s knowledge-based economy, success in the classroom has never been more crucial to a young person’s life prospects. Women are adapting; men are not.

Hat tip: Nancy Pearcey

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John Ortberg on calling versus career:

American society does not talk much about calling anymore. It is more likely to think in terms of career. Yet, for many people a career becomes the altar on which they sacrifice their lives. Benjamin Honeycutt, a historian who specializes in the history of work at the University of Iowa, notes that work has become our new religion, where we worship and give our time. As people’s commitment to family, community and faith are shrinking, they begin to look to their careers to provide them with meaning, connectedness, identity and self-esteem.

A calling, which is something I do for God, is replaced by a career, which threatens to become my god. A career is something I choose for myself; a calling is something I receive. A career is something I do for myself; a calling is something I do for God. A career promises status, money or power; a calling generally promises difficulty and even some suffering – and the opportunity to be used by God. A career is about upward mobility; a calling generally leads to downward mobility.

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A cool collection of Scrabble themed gifts.

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A fascinating list of 10 celebrities who also were spies.

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It's not our job to "police" other Christians:

In my experience as a Christian and Preacher, you would think that any disagreements, arguments, or debates I'd have would be with the non-Christian, the atheist, or those from other religions, but not true. It seems anytime I've had a disagreement with someone over Christianity it is always a fundamental or legalistic Christian who feels it's their mission and life's work to be God's police to the world. 

These types of people make it their personal mission in life to prove others wrong, be right, argue, debate, belittle, name-call, and look down on those who do not line up with them whether doctrinally, theologically, denominationally, or other church or faith issues.  It's a mind-set of either you are for me or against me.  You either agree with me or you are a liberal, heretic, sodomite, watered-down, ignorant, stupid, (add you own description here), I've been called a lot.  The sad thing is I don't like to argue(really!), but some folks can't seem to understand that, their whole faith system is made up of proving others wrong, being right, and making a point to "police" Christians.

Daily Links 11-5-13

A fresh roundup of links for your morning reading. In today's edition, a call to parents to require obedience from their children, defining fecundophobia, and more.

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John Piper has a few things to say about children and obedience:

I am writing this to plead with Christian parents to require obedience of their children. I am moved to write this by watching young children pay no attention to their parents’ requests, with no consequences. Parents tell a child two or three times to sit or stop and come or go, and after the third disobedience, they laughingly bribe the child. This may or may not get the behavior desired. 

Last week, I saw two things that prompted this article. One was the killing of 13-year-old Andy Lopez in Santa Rosa, California, by police who thought he was about to shoot them with an assault rifle. It was a toy gun. What made this relevant was that the police said they told the boy two times to drop the gun. Instead he turned it on them. They fired. 

I do not know the details of that situation or if Andy even heard the commands. So I can’t say for sure he was insubordinate. So my point here is not about young Lopez himself. It’s about a “what if.” What if he heard the police, and simply defied what they said? If that is true, it cost him his life. Such would be the price of disobeying proper authority.

I witnessed such a scenario in the making on a plane last week. I watched a mother preparing her son to be shot. I was sitting behind her and her son, who may have been seven years old. He was playing on his digital tablet. The flight attendant announced that all electronic devices should be turned off for take off. He didn’t turn it off. The mother didn’t require it. As the flight attendant walked by, she said he needed to turn it off and kept moving. He didn’t do it. The mother didn’t require it. 

One last time, the flight attendant stood over them and said that the boy would need to give the device to his mother. He turned it off. When the flight attendant took her seat, the boy turned his device back on, and kept it on through the take off. The mother did nothing. I thought to myself, she is training him to be shot by police.

Hat tip: Challies

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Dispelling the myth "I'm bad at math" is genetic. The bottom line is that you have to work harder but you can get better at it.

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Mollie Hemingway has an insightful piece on fecundophobia - the irrational fear of families with large numbers of children:

There is much more than a whiff of the misogyny in denigrating mothers of multiple children as brainless, in stating that mothers who are homemakers are inferior to those who “earn” their living, or in attacking women for prioritizing fertility above independence. It’s not just that nobody on planet earth could be truly independent — which is to say completely self-reliant or free of any other human support. It’s not just that we each depended on others from the moment of our conception to birth, but all of society is comprised of individuals who work with each other and depend on each other throughout their lives. Or healthy societies are, at least. It may be impolitic to suggest that men and women are in any way different, science be damned, but many women have a particular specialty in cultivating relationships and family. To denigrate women who acknowledge and accept this as a good thing rather than fight against it is not exactly life-affirming.

Hat tip: John Stonestreet

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How to read a lot more than you are now.

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A defense lawyer's reply to the government's motion to not be referred to as "the government". (Hat tip: Glenn Reynolds)

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Revealed: a once-lost art collection valued at approximately $1.5 billion that was thought to have been destroyed in air raids during World War II was discovered behind rotting food in a Munich apartment.

Daily Links 10-10-13

Build your own beverage station, whether testing measures educational accomplishment, Amazon destroying literature, and more in today's roundup of links.

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This is a cool idea:

The best part? The materials all came from Target.

Hat tip: Food Riot

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Is Amazon destroying serious literature? One novelist thinks so. I'm not so sure about that.

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10 Old English words you should be using. Personally, I'm fond of mugwump.

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What if Disney characters had Instagram accounts?

One common critique I hear of education reform is its heavy reliance on standardized tests to measure outcomes. But does testing really accomplish anything? I don't think so.

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Making the case for engaging the culture:

We, you and me and everyone else alive, do theological thinking every day. It’s just that some people do it more consciously than others. That doesn’t mean they do it better, but they are at least more intentional and aware of it.

We’re also all affected by culture, and unless you’re Amish and therefore I’m not entirely sure how or why you’re reading this right now, you interact with pop culture every single day of your life. Thus, it makes great sense for us to take these two everyday realties and acknowledge their deep and important connection. Notice I didn’t say bring them together. That’s important here. These are not two realities that need to be brought together. They already are overlapping, interacting, and informing each other all the time. Theology, spirituality, culture….they mingle as one. 

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An interesting list of 10 things you should know about goals.

Should Christians Send Their Children to Public School?

Dr. Albert Mohler poses an interesting question in this artice at Answers in Genesis:

Should Christian parents send their children to the public schools? That question has emerged as one of the most controversial debates of our times. And yet, every family must come to terms with the issues involved in the public school debate—and fast.

Most parents already know that a great deal is at stake in this question. We start with the affirmation that it is parents who bear responsibility for the education of their children. God will hold every parent accountable for the decisions we make about our children and the context, as well as the content, of their education (Deuteronomy 6:1–26; Ephesians 6:1–4). In the truest sense, Christians understand that every home is a church, a government, and a school—the first church, the first government, and the first school that a child will come to know. The duty of Christian parents to raise their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord cannot be delegated to anyone else—not to the state, not to the schools, and not even to the church.

Dr. Mohler goes on to trace the history of public education and helps us understand why it is increasingly difficult for Christian parents to send their children to public schools. His conclusion is compelling:

Many fine teachers and administrators serve in the public schools, and many Christians serve among them. In some parts of the country, the public schools still operate in some sense as community schools under local control. And yet, this is already not the case for the vast majority of schools and communities, and the handwriting is on the wall for the rest.

Is public school an option? For Christians who take the Christian worldview seriously and who understand the issues at stake, the answer is increasingly no. The number of Christian parents coming to this conclusion increases each year. We can understand the nostalgia that many Christians hold about the public schools. I spent every minute of my school life from the first grade to high school graduation in a public school. And yet, I saw the ideological transformation of the schools before my own eyes. Long ago, the public schools entered a Brave New World from which no retreat now seems possible.

Be sure to read the entire article.

Random Thoughts

A few stories of interest from the past week....

Earlier this week came the not totally unsurprising news that Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees was tied to a clinic that allegedly provided him with performance enhancing drugs (PEDs). If confirmed this would be the second known instance where he had taken PEDs. He previously admitted to taking the drugs from 2001 to 2003 but when he made the admission in 2009 he proclaimed himself to be clean. Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports suggested that A-Rod is finished. I tend to agree. Even if the PED story isn't true it's hard to see how A-Rod will be able to rehabilitate his image. Age and injuries have caught up with the slugging third baseman and his career has nowhere to go but on a continued downward spiral. This might be a good time to consider retiring rather than trying to slog through these allegations any further.

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This week marked the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Few novels or novelists have  developed such a strong following as Austen or her most famous novel. The BBC has an interesting look at why Americans are drawn to the British author.

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Speaking of British entertainments, Downton Abbey has been causing quite the stir on the American side of the Atlantic. The Wall Street Journal has an interesting interview with series creator Julian Fellowes that provides some surprising insights into the hit series.

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Having a daughter about to graduate high school has caused me to think (and read a lot) about the changing face of higher education. Arthur C. Brooks offers some interest insights into the college dynamic in a New York Times column entitled My Valuable, Cheap College Degree. Peter Berkowitz offers 10 Ways Liberal Education Fails Students - and Society. Finally, Mark Cuban boldly declares that Colleges are Going to Start Going Out of Business (language warning).

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Robert Epstein, author of The Case Against Adolescence, has a thought-provoking interview with Psychology Today about the problems facing modern teenagers. Among his more interesting assertions is that teenagers spend too much time with other teenagers. He makes several good points in the interview and while I don't necessarily agree with everything he says it's worth a read. (Hat tip: Joe Carter)

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Twitter surprise of the week: I am constantly surprised by the people I find on Twitter. This week's great discovery is that Dick Van Dyke is tweeting. He's @iammrvandy and definitely worth a follow.

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Finally, the oddest story of the week: A group of men have been playing a game of tag for 23 years.

Why Federal Education Programs Fail

The answer lies in the concluding paragraphs of this column by Joel Belz on recent proposals to extend federal education oversight into preschool and daycare programs from the current issue of World Magazine (subscription required):

I've said before in this space, and it needs to be said during just about every presidential campaign, that there is something much more potentially terrifying than to watch the government continue to fail in its efforts to prop up education in this country. Much worse than such a continuing failure would be to watch the government succeed.

Shaping the minds and the value system of our children is simply not the proper function of government—almost certainly not at any level, but especially at the distant federal level. (Emphasis added)

If your child's school chooses never to mention what Jesus calls "the first and great commandment of life"—to love the Lord our God with all we have—all the rest of that school's education will be as hollow as it is shallow. And even worse will be the effort, so often attempted (and sincerely so), to address some expression of the second great commandment—"loving your neighbor as yourself"—without having dealt seriously with the first one. The first provides both skeleton and heart for the second; the second is impossible without the first.

Society needs to understand, and so do evangelical Christians, that the real problem with state education today (and even with much private education) has nothing to do with teachers' salaries or funding levels or phonics or curriculum or how many months of the year or hours of the day children go to school. All those things have their significance and are worth discussing at the right time.

But the right time for that is always after settling what education is really about. Until educators get that straight, they're not going to get anywhere with "education reform." And they have no business talking about stretching the federal government's reach into preschool and daycare—where the best they will ever do is to compound their present clumsiness.

Well said.