Oxymoronic Government Education

Gullible and Ineffectual

The teacher unions indirectly control the government education system in New Zealand.  Its an inconvenient truth to be sure, but truth it is.

When the present National led Government introduced national standards testing in government primary schools it was full of sound and fury.  However, the Prime Minister (who had claimed that it was the most important initiative of his tenure) was woefully under-prepared for the fight-back.  He naively assumed that because the initiative had widespread parental support the teacher unions would fold.

But the unions have run campaigns for years actively protecting their members’ interests at the expense of pupils.  They are skilled propagandists.  They are very adept at fighting.  They have a broad range of armaments and tactics at their disposal.  They are veterans.  John Key and education ministers Tolley and Parata have been novices.  They have been outflanked, out-thought, and worked around.

Letter From America (About the UK)

Charter Schools Hit 1776

Like Charter Schools, Britain’s Academies Aim High

By Michael Barone  
National Review Online
July 16, 2012

We English-speaking peoples have been lagging behind on education.

London — Seventeen seventy-six is a number with great resonance for Americans, but you wouldn’t expect it to be featured on a British-government website.  But there it is, on the home page of the United Kingdom’s Department of Education: “As of 1 April 2012, there are 1776 academies open in England.”

“Academies,” as you might expect, means something different in Britain than in the United States. They are, approximately, what we would call charter schools. And there are 1,776 of them largely because of the energy and determination of British education secretary Michael Gove.

Mysterious Ways

The Church is Always Maturing

Divine providence is a mysterious, yet wonderful business.  As the hymn writer put it, God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform.  One of the great benefits of a close scrutiny of the history of the church is, in retrospect, to see God’s hand at work.

In the midst of the tumult or the vicissitudes it is usually very hard to discern what is going on.  Three hundred years later its possible to discern what the Lord was building.

Raaaaacism

The Historical Origins of the R-Quotient

In the early 21st Century in the United States a strange phenomenon emerged in public discourse.  Whenever an opponent’s argument could not easily be dismissed, the cry “Raaaaacist” and “Raaaaacism” was heard, without rhyme or reason.

It’s purveyors struck a pose roughly resembling donkeys braying at the moon.  So much so, in fact, political scientists at the University of Southern California subsequently invented the R-quotient which has proven to expose relatively reliably a strong (negative) correlation between the bray and vacuously mindless noise, lacking any any rational argument of any kind.  Sort of animal-like.

An R-quotient of -1 indicates narrative and speech which appears completely unhinged.  An R-quotient of 0 indicates rambling incoherence which make no sense at all.  An R-quotient of 1 indicates speech which never mentions racism and generally resembles an argument which permits rational analysis.

A public commentator of the time, one Victor Davis Hanson, chronicled the phenomenon as it emerged during the presidential electoral race of 2012.

Stasi-esqueTactics at Auckland University

Freedom of Expression Threatened at Auckland University

Recently ProLife Auckland (an affiliated club for students at Auckland University) distributed a leaflet about informed consent.  The Right to Knowleaflet was distributed to students in a non-confrontational and peaceable manner.

Following this, the Auckland University Students Association(AUSA) said they received a complaint from an anonymous source and met, deciding to call a Special General Meetingat which a vote will be held to disaffiliate theProLife Aucklandstudent club.

Godly Divisions

Leaving Egypt

The Blaze recently cross-posted an article on the state of the Episcopal Church in the United States.  It is being crushed under the weight of its own putrescence.  More and more congregations, and now dioceses are breaking away.  They are following in the footsteps of our father, Moses (Hebrews 11: 24–27).  What’s left is a ghoulish spectre of a diabolical aping of the Christian faith.  The works of Modor writ large.  

Tarnished Family Silver

Powering Up

In New Zealand we are to be offered an opportunity to buy up to 49 percent in state owned power generating companies.  The first to go on the block will be Mighty River Power.

Now we have all sorts reservations when it comes to public floats.  Normally the goods-on-offer are so dressed up with twinkling trinkets that that it’s hard to see the shape of the unclothed beast beneath.  Most public floats are overpriced and over-hyped.  There are now rumours about that the Government will attempt to entice investors by offering some of the companies at a discount.  Maybe.  Caveat emptor.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

Jesus and Conservatism 

Theology – N.T. Wrights and Wrongs
Written by Douglas Wilson
Thursday, 12 July 2012

Everyone must stand somewhere in order to say anything. And even if what he wants to say is that the previous sentence is not true, he still has to stand somewhere to say it. We can run, but we can’t hide.
If one of the things I want to say (or confess) is that Jesus is Lord, I have to stand somewhere to say that, and that somewhere is determined by my testimony. Where was I on the road when the Lord called me? And where does He want me to be on the road right now?

When I describe some of where I am, there is no intimation that anybody else has any obligation to be at that same place — a Wilson, an American, a male, a blues aficionado and so forth. To accept differences of this sort is to rejoice in a triune God who did not make us all the same. Trying to “fix” the differences of others like this is to fight for a boring world. Celebrate diversity, man.

But there is a difference between honoring the differences that God placed in His world and trying to honor the differences that sin brought in. The former is Trinitarian, and the latter is rebellion.

Powerful Ancient Traditions

Gaining Traction in a Post-Modern World

In a world falling apart, universal, timeless tradition has traction.  In the 1960’s the opposite applied.  Western culture was basking in the victory over Germany and the Axis powers; there was a distinct sense that the “good” had triumphed over the “bad” in World War II.  History was on a right course.  The fifties were a decade of the universal and conventional.

Beneath popular culture, however, scepticism was bubbling away, about to burst forth into the public square.  Post-modernism had taken deep root in the intellectual institutions.  Along came the Beatles with distinctly unconventional haircuts and strange musical idioms.  Almost overnight being “square” did not cut it; change, change, change was the new normal.

Fifty years later the Western world has been “narrativised” and “perspectivised” to cynical boredom and jaded detachment.  The only “ism” that has traction is the view that nothing has traction.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

Nullification or Nutterfication? 

Culture and Politics – Obama Nation Building
Written by Douglas Wilson
Tuesday, 10 July 2012

If your kayak is going over the falls, then the mainstream is the last place you would want to be. I say this because “mainstream” is not automatically a term of praise. At the same time, nobody wants to be a nutter just for grins, and so allow me to lay down some basic principles of Christian resistance to the kind of soft despotism we are up against.

By “soft” despotism, incidentally, I am talking about style, not results. Brave New World was every bit as hard and coercive as 1984, but soma was more fun for the recipient than having a jackboot in your face. Liberty is just as gone in either case. Sometimes hard seems hard, and sometimes it doesn’t. But it always is hard.

Blessing or Curse?

Patriotism and Ungodliness

Samuel Johnson once famously proclaimed, “patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel”.  He had a point.  For the Christian patriotism ought always be written in lower case.  There is a form of patriotism which honours God.  There is also a patriotism which is a cursed idolatry and angers the Almighty.  How can we distinguish?

Love of one’s country always must be a subset of one’s love for God, for His creation, and for His providential care and provision of His image bearers and other creatures.  We love our parents because it is commanded by God Himself: they have provided for us, protected us, and taken care of us.  Consequently we return love and affection and care for them, even in difficult times, out of love for God.

Love of nation is similar.

Jacobin Fervour

Killing The Goose

France is in a bad way.  The election of a strong Socialist government is going to make it a whole lot worse.

Consider the following snippets (from the Financial Times):

A Shot of Faith to the Head

Evidentialism is Quite Dead

We have just picked up a copy of Mitch Stokes’s A Shot of Faith {To the Head}(Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2012) which is a well written, very approachable piece of work on the intellectual battle against the Christian faith being waged at a neighbourhood near you.

The work makes the philosophical contributions of men like Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff accessible and useful to the wider Christian community.  (For their part, Plantinga and Wolterstorff have, in turn, been making Scottish philosopher, Thomas Reid accessible to modern readers.)

Here is an initial excerpt:

Popular Mistruths About Christ and His People

Cavilling Calumny

As the first Christendom has broken and fallen away, antipathy to Christ and His church has risen in many places in the West. Canadian broadcaster and author, Michael Coren has written a book documenting the ten most oft used attacks against the Lord and His people–all of which are untrue or false. An article in The Blaze summarises the top three.

The French Disease

More Time Please

The problem with socialism is that it eventually runs out of other people’s money.  France has spent profligately over the past twenty years.  It has now run out of other people’s money.  It’s not hard to read the tea-leaves.

Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault has urged the French to rally behind efforts to tackle a “crushing” debt burden after an audit warned of a 43 billion euro ($A53.09 billion) budget hole.

AYRAULT, outlining the new Socialist government’s agenda in parliament, also admitted the crisis was “unprecedented” and said debt servicing charges had become untenable.

The Politics of Envy and Hate

Broken Moral Compass

Want to know what’s wrong with the West?  Bono, speaking of his native Ireland, puts his finger on the problem.

In Ireland people have an interesting attitude to success; they look down on it. In America, you look up at . . . the mansion on the hill and say, “One day . . . that could be me.” In Ireland, they look up at the mansion on the hill and go, “One day I’m gonna get that bastard.”
Bono

Defining Moments

The Peace of Augsburg and Its Aftermath

The Peace of Augsburg (1555) proved to be an archimedean point in the subsequent development of Western Europe.  It institutionalised the principle of state religious establishment.  The Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, tenuous heir to the empire of  Charlemagne (the First Reich), was trying to exert control over the various principalities and powers in his dominion.  A number of religious wars resulted–ending in the Peace of Augsburg which established in imperial law the principle that the “faith of the prince is the faith of the people”.

So it came about that North-West Europe was divided into either Lutheran or Roman Catholic fiefdoms and principalities.  But the Christian faith cannot prosper in a religious establishment where both Church and personal Christian faith is established by the civil state. Christ alone is Head of the Church and Lord of the conscience.

Letter to Hadrian

The Christians

. . . . The Christians, O King, have found the truth by going and seeking for it. . . . They do not do to others what they would not have done to themselves.  They comfort those who wrong them and make friends of them: they labour to do good to their enemies. . . . He that has gives freely to him who has not.  If they see a stranger, they bring him under their roof and rejoice over him as if over their own brother: they call themselves brethren, not after the flesh but after the Spirit and in God . . . .

Aristides, Apology, 15 (to the Emperor Hadrian, c130AD)

The Decline and Fall . . .

Breaking Apart Nebuchadnezzar’s Giant Man

In Daniel 2 we are told the Babylonian emperor, Nebuchadnezzar had a dream in which he saw a giant statue in the image of a man.  A stone (made without hands) hit the statue and crushed it.  The stone then became a great mountain which filled the whole earth.

Daniel gave the divine interpretation of the dream.  The huge image of a man made of gold, silver, bronze, and iron represented four successive kingdoms (Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Greek, and Roman).  In the days of the Roman Empire, we are told, “the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever.”

But the crushing of the Kingdom of Man was not done by force of arms.  It was done by the Gospel transforming lives, and eventually transforming paganism from the inside out.  David Bentley Hart describes the wondrous nature of this work of divine grace–long ago foretold by Daniel.

Letter From Australia

He Deserves It

Gerard Henderson, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, reviews the double standard that many in the media and on the Left have applied in the curious case of one self-absorbed Julian Assange.