My favorite composer of all time, George Friedrich Handel was born on this day in 1685. Ever since the world has been blessed with his music which includes: Music for the Royal Fireworks, Water Music, The Messiah oratoria, and much more.
He is buried in Westminster Abbey where there is a sculpture of him holding a piece of music which reads, "I know my redeemer liveth..."
Take a few moments to close your eyes and listen to the first half of this concerto grosso, performed by the Slovak Chamber Orchestra, Op 6, No. 5.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
Happy Birthday, W!
George Washington was born on this day in 1732. He was one of few magnanimous men to hold a federal office in our history and certainly one of the few who actually served the country instead of robbing it.
"Let the reins of government then be braced and held with a steady hand, and every violation of the constitution be reprehended. If defective, let it be amended, but not suffered to be trampled upon whilst it has an existence." - Letter to Henry Lee, October 31, 1786
"Let the reins of government then be braced and held with a steady hand, and every violation of the constitution be reprehended. If defective, let it be amended, but not suffered to be trampled upon whilst it has an existence." - Letter to Henry Lee, October 31, 1786
Sunday, February 21, 2010
What makes a great teacher?
K-12 education is definitely not my field but I do have an interest in it, mainly in that if I wasn't doing what I do now I would probably be interested in teaching at that level, I volunteer teach in local high schools, and I am fascinated by really great teachers - how do they do it?
(well, incidentally, it's not licensing, a degree, or years in school, much as the union or the government would want you to think so. And heaven forbid an unlicensed teacher educate your children! Just imagine the horrors the children would learn that the government schools' licensed teachers judiciously withhold from them.)
I just read this article in the Atlantic which focuses research on Teach for America to figure out not only what single factor helps students excel (or do poorly) - it happens to be the teacher - and what exactly makes a great teacher great.
Some of their findings:
-Great teachers tended to set big goals for their students.
-Great teachers constantly reevaluate what they are doing.
-They avidly recruited students and their families into the process.
-They maintained focus, ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning;
-They planned exhaustively and purposefully—for the next day or the year ahead—by working backward from the desired outcome; and they worked relentlessly, refusing to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and budgetary shortfalls.
Interestingly, these are exactly the same traits that make for a good manager or leader of any organization, not just schools. I recently read a book on how the Marines manage and develop talent (Corps Business) and each these are one of their 30 management principles. Here are some excerpts:
How can this be reality for all schools?
Free market commentary: I wish people would realize that if they just let civil society, private individuals take care of educating our children the situation would be so much better! The government can try for decades and even centuries with so called market-based solutions and it will never hit the nail on the head. To me this looks eerily similar to how the communist countries of the 20th century would spy on what kinds of products were being made in the free world, how they were being made, and how much. They knew deep down that their government couldn't plan the economy and so they would "spy" on the West in order to imitate it. If we want real reform in education in this country and children to be set free from government schools we need government involvement in education abolished. The next best thing in the short term is universal education tax credits. No halfway measure will do, such as vouchers, a terrible option that looks good on its face but sour in reality.
(well, incidentally, it's not licensing, a degree, or years in school, much as the union or the government would want you to think so. And heaven forbid an unlicensed teacher educate your children! Just imagine the horrors the children would learn that the government schools' licensed teachers judiciously withhold from them.)
I just read this article in the Atlantic which focuses research on Teach for America to figure out not only what single factor helps students excel (or do poorly) - it happens to be the teacher - and what exactly makes a great teacher great.
Some of their findings:
-Great teachers tended to set big goals for their students.
-Great teachers constantly reevaluate what they are doing.
-They avidly recruited students and their families into the process.
-They maintained focus, ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning;
-They planned exhaustively and purposefully—for the next day or the year ahead—by working backward from the desired outcome; and they worked relentlessly, refusing to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and budgetary shortfalls.
Interestingly, these are exactly the same traits that make for a good manager or leader of any organization, not just schools. I recently read a book on how the Marines manage and develop talent (Corps Business) and each these are one of their 30 management principles. Here are some excerpts:
Teachers who scored high in “life satisfaction”—reporting that they were very content with their lives—were 43 percent more likely to perform well in the classroom than their less satisfied colleagues. These teachers “may be more adept at engaging their pupils, and their zest and enthusiasm may spread to their students,” the study suggested.
Teach for America’s staffers have discovered that past performance—especially the kind you can measure—is the best predictor of future performance. Recruits who have achieved big, measurable goals in college tend to do so as teachers. And the two best metrics of previous success tend to be grade-point average and “leadership achievement”—a record of running something and showing tangible results. If you not only led a tutoring program but doubled its size, that’s promising.
How can this be reality for all schools?
...if school systems hired, trained, and rewarded teachers according to the principles Teach for America has identified, then teachers would not need to work so hard. They would be operating in a system designed in a radically different way—designed, that is, for success.
This year, D.C. public schools have begun using a new evaluation system for all faculty and staff, from teachers to custodians. Each will receive a score, just like the students, at the end of the year. For teachers whose students take standardized tests, like Mr. Taylor, half their score will be based on how much their students improved. The rest will be based largely on five observation sessions conducted throughout the year by their principal, assistant principal, and a group of master educators. Throughout the year, teachers will receive customized training. At year’s end, teachers who score below a certain threshold could be fired.
The handbook for the new system looks eerily similar to the Teach for America model, which is not a coincidence. The man who designed it, Jason Kamras, is a former Teach for America teacher who taught in a low-income D.C. school for eight years before being chosen by D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee to help fix the schools.
Free market commentary: I wish people would realize that if they just let civil society, private individuals take care of educating our children the situation would be so much better! The government can try for decades and even centuries with so called market-based solutions and it will never hit the nail on the head. To me this looks eerily similar to how the communist countries of the 20th century would spy on what kinds of products were being made in the free world, how they were being made, and how much. They knew deep down that their government couldn't plan the economy and so they would "spy" on the West in order to imitate it. If we want real reform in education in this country and children to be set free from government schools we need government involvement in education abolished. The next best thing in the short term is universal education tax credits. No halfway measure will do, such as vouchers, a terrible option that looks good on its face but sour in reality.
A Global Flood?
I’ve been studying Genesis with the help of commentator Derek Kidner (whose work I highly recommend to you all. He writes pastorally and his commentaries make for great devotional studies.)
He had some interesting comments regarding the location (global or local) of the flood.
1. We shouldn’t necessarily take phrases such as: “the earth”, “all the high mountains under the whole heaven”, and “all flesh” at face value. After all, we read similar phrases in the NT which clearly don’t have a literal meaning: “all the face of the earth…all countries… all the earth” Gen 41:56, 57; The gospel…has been preached to every creature under heaven Col 1:23; Cf also Acts 2:5 (‘every nation under heaven’) in relation to the lists in Acts 2:9-11.
Basically, Kidner is not so much saying that we shouldn’t take these words in Genesis literally so much as he is saying use caution.
2. “The various geological data that have been thought to favour a strictly universal flood have been successively found wanting, in the opinion of most experts, and little reasonable doubt remains that the events of Gen 6 – 8 must have taken place within a limited though indeed a vast area, covering not the entire globe but the scene of the human story of the previous chapters.” This could be Mesopotamia, or a still larger area. Kidner says we certainly need further investigate before jumping to a conclusion. He also refers readers to some minority dissenters from this view: J. C. Whitcomb and H. M. Morris (The Genesis Flood; Presbyterian and Reformed publishing company. 1961)
3. “But it also appears, from the distribution and generally accepted dating of human remains, that certain branches of mankind had been settled in countries far beyond the specific Old Testament horizon since the Paleolithic age, and unless this world population was drawn back into the vicinity of Mesopotamia before the flood, or unless the palaeontological data need drastic reinterpretation, it seems to follow that the destruction of life was, like the inundation of the earth, complete in the relative and not the absolute sense. By ‘relative’ we man related to the area of direct OT interest.”
He concludes by bringing the reader back to the point that matters – whether this is the right analysis of the evidence or not, we should be careful to read the account whole-heartedly in its own terms, which depict a total judgment on the ungodly world already set before us in Genesis – not an event of debatable dimensions in a world may try to reconstruct.
He has little to say of the Hebrew words, which is significant because of there was something to be noted of their use Kidner would have said so. On Gen 7:19-24 - “in themselves, these verses are not decisive for or against a localized flood: even ‘the whole heaven’ is likely, on the analogy of these chapters to be the language of appearance. The concern of the story is to record the judgment which man brought on his whole world, not to dilate on geography. The very fact that a single word in Hebrew normally servers for either country or earth reflects a practical rather than theoretical interest.”
Regarding Ps 104:6-9 - I checked his commentaries and he has no comments related to our question. I’m not sure myself either…I think I’m more comfortable siding again with Kidner there: emphasizing the role of our Maker in creation, over against a more mechanistic view of the world. The world is of reassuring solidity, purposeful and God reigns supreme over it.
He had some interesting comments regarding the location (global or local) of the flood.
1. We shouldn’t necessarily take phrases such as: “the earth”, “all the high mountains under the whole heaven”, and “all flesh” at face value. After all, we read similar phrases in the NT which clearly don’t have a literal meaning: “all the face of the earth…all countries… all the earth” Gen 41:56, 57; The gospel…has been preached to every creature under heaven Col 1:23; Cf also Acts 2:5 (‘every nation under heaven’) in relation to the lists in Acts 2:9-11.
Basically, Kidner is not so much saying that we shouldn’t take these words in Genesis literally so much as he is saying use caution.
2. “The various geological data that have been thought to favour a strictly universal flood have been successively found wanting, in the opinion of most experts, and little reasonable doubt remains that the events of Gen 6 – 8 must have taken place within a limited though indeed a vast area, covering not the entire globe but the scene of the human story of the previous chapters.” This could be Mesopotamia, or a still larger area. Kidner says we certainly need further investigate before jumping to a conclusion. He also refers readers to some minority dissenters from this view: J. C. Whitcomb and H. M. Morris (The Genesis Flood; Presbyterian and Reformed publishing company. 1961)
3. “But it also appears, from the distribution and generally accepted dating of human remains, that certain branches of mankind had been settled in countries far beyond the specific Old Testament horizon since the Paleolithic age, and unless this world population was drawn back into the vicinity of Mesopotamia before the flood, or unless the palaeontological data need drastic reinterpretation, it seems to follow that the destruction of life was, like the inundation of the earth, complete in the relative and not the absolute sense. By ‘relative’ we man related to the area of direct OT interest.”
He concludes by bringing the reader back to the point that matters – whether this is the right analysis of the evidence or not, we should be careful to read the account whole-heartedly in its own terms, which depict a total judgment on the ungodly world already set before us in Genesis – not an event of debatable dimensions in a world may try to reconstruct.
He has little to say of the Hebrew words, which is significant because of there was something to be noted of their use Kidner would have said so. On Gen 7:19-24 - “in themselves, these verses are not decisive for or against a localized flood: even ‘the whole heaven’ is likely, on the analogy of these chapters to be the language of appearance. The concern of the story is to record the judgment which man brought on his whole world, not to dilate on geography. The very fact that a single word in Hebrew normally servers for either country or earth reflects a practical rather than theoretical interest.”
Regarding Ps 104:6-9 - I checked his commentaries and he has no comments related to our question. I’m not sure myself either…I think I’m more comfortable siding again with Kidner there: emphasizing the role of our Maker in creation, over against a more mechanistic view of the world. The world is of reassuring solidity, purposeful and God reigns supreme over it.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Happy Birthday, Luigi!
Today is Luigi Boccherini's birthday (1743). Why don't you take time to listen to some of his music?
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Why does the budget keep growing?
As surely as we keep voting for morally bankrupt politicians they will keep enacting morally bankrupt policies...
(Remember, it's the whole system that's bankrupt, not one party or the other)
(Remember, it's the whole system that's bankrupt, not one party or the other)
The Detroit News
To the Editor:
In a recent editorial you state, “Even in this time of fiscal crisis, Washington cannot will itself to cut spending” (Obama's budget continues huge deficit spending, 2/2).
Why on earth would we expect it to? After all, they own the printing presses, and as long as politicians can come through on enough promises to their home state or districts they get reelected. Drs. Gordon Tullock and Nobel Laureate James Buchanan have shown that politician’s actions aren’t determined by “willpower” but rather by the incentive system they work under.
In our case the incentive system has unfortunately evolved into an ugly one: their behavior is no different than what you would expect of a complete stranger to whom you gave unlimited use and access to your wallet, with no enforced restrictions. Of course, your occasional anger over what that person did with money that was indeed not his (but yours), would be cooled by the occasional “gift” from the stranger to you.
Sir, no matter how bad the crisis or bright the outlook, nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own, and nobody mischievously wastes money as remarkably as our federal government.
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