Classical Homeschoolers - ahead of their time?

"When the market turns, the crash will be painful, but there will be new opportunities for low-cost schools, including small, Great Books–style schools. Teachers will get back to teaching . . . oh, well, now I’m moving into hopes rather than conviction. But, in summary, prices will not go up forever"

HT: NRO

Writing, Thinking, Living, Transforming

"The point is that we live such a wi-fi-enabled, out-sourced, off-site, backed-up life that we use our brains for little more than remembering where we store our passwords than what it is (stories, ideas, responses, reflections) they protect. Ours has evolved into such a non-oral tradition "tradition," that the thought of memorizing sonnets from a poem or narrative stories from the Bible for meaning and not information seems archaic and unnecessary. If we think we need it, we can find it; we don't need to learn it. And if we don't think we need to learn it, well, who cares?"~Craig Dunham

 "Biblical literacy programs need to do more than produce informed quoters. They need to produce transformed readers."~David Nienhuis

Craig Dunham is a teacher of New Testament and Ethics at one of the local Christian private schools. He has written three posts, so far, to his blog detailing the difficulties his students have in expressing themselves in writing and what he see as the causes of those difficulties. This first link would be hilarious if it weren't simultaneously troubling and sad on a number of levels. His other posts talk about biblical and theological illiteracy , illiteracy problems in general (and this is not limited to "Why Johnny can't read."/phonics/whole language questions), and  the influence an incorrect understanding and use of technology has on this developing problem. All factors combine to create young adults who have no foundation for thinking through an increasing complex world that they, and we,  must live in. More links and thoughts later.

Teaching Redemptively..... and living so.

I think I have found a book to place all the other books I've been reading on teaching and learning... and living into a context. A kingdom of God context to be specific.

A little taste, "...truth and knowledge are not isolated entities; they exist in relationship to God, their author. God's actions are an outworking of His nature. Even though He is separate from His work of creation, it means something only in relationship to Him. Thus, it seems logical to think that knowledge in a biblical sense exists only in a relationship, the dynamic relationship between knower and the known."

and a little more

"The Old Testament Israelites grew in knowledge as they listened to God's proclamations, committed themselves to them, and then lived according to them. The process of doing something with the information they were acquiring actually contributed to the further development of their knowledge. ...In part, they were formed by their concrete acts. ...Doing was not only the obvious result of knowing but a part of the process of coming to know. "

I am also grateful that the author has listed his references; at this rate I should be finished reading about teaching and learning....about the time my grandkids graduate from college.