welcoming frenziedness into our souls #1

Yes, you read it correctly. And "frenziedness" isn't even a word yet. Give it a few minutes.

That was the parting shot of Nicholas Carr in his book, "The Shallows: what the internet is doing to our brains" which I read yesterday afternoon. He makes some very powerful points and has offered much food for thought. But culturally we seem to be in junk food mode, preferring to grab hyperlink snacks and bolt them down rather than savor a several course meal and reflect over coffee with friends.

I recommend the book, but I know you probably won't have time to read it. I know I didn't have time. I made the time. In a few blogs, I'd like to briefly touch on some of his key points: linear thinking, reading, interruptions, multi-tasking, and the blurring of man and machine.

First things first. Priorities.

C. S. Lewis said,  "You can't get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first."

What does that have to do with anything? With the internet? 

Quite a bit.

In order to put first things first, we have to know what first things are. But we are in the process of losing the ability to know what first things are. Linear thinking is becoming a lost art. "The Net," Carr warns, "seizes our attention only to scatter it." p 118

In ways we don't understand, the circuits of our brains are being rerouted to accommodate the fast pace of information flow from the Net.  Torrents of information gush across our screens: fountains or  tsunamis? What, if anything, can we do about it?

I believe knowing our values is extremely important in dealing with this new technology. Then comes the "how to implement" question.

We are keeping these short because part of the struggle is we don't have "time" to spend in deep reading. And deep reading is what will help us find some of what we have lost.

Marcia, any thoughts?

--Karen

Dear Karen, when you suggested that I read Carr's book I was dismayed. I have 3 books going now--one fiction, one somewhat inspirational, and one on spiritual disciplines. Yet there are many days in which I don't pick even one of them up.

I checked the website of my local library, and their one copy of the book had been checked out. Rather than reserve it, I checked Amazon and found that I could buy the book on Kindle for only about $8. So I did it.

It took me 15 seconds to buy, and the book was immediately available (through the Cloud) on both my MacBook and my iPhone.

And I giggled. The Internet may be destroying my brain, but I love it to pieces.

My older children were teenagers before the Internet was widely available. I read to them daily. One day I began to read Robinson Crusoe. They needed encouragement with some books. "Just listen. You'll get into it." They begged me to stop. Honestly, after a few chapters, my own droning was putting me to sleep. We never finished it. A classic, I'm sure, but we didn't have the patience to read it.


How much of our complaints about the Internet stem from the fact that, as time marches on, we want it to stand still?

My iPhone tells me that I've only read 16% of The Shallows. Maybe I'll skim a little more and comment on our next post.

--Marcia
 

crooked souls training crooked souls

I have thought a lot about teaching values, morality, and faith. Two of my sons are grown and on their own, and two are still at home. Because we have always done school at home, many, many words have been spoken about many subjects, and almost all of them were steeped in my values and experiences.

What my kids have "caught" from these discussions and our lives together was not so much the words I spoke, but how I lived. That, of course, is how values are translated.

A few weeks ago, I sat with other mothers while we waited for our children, who were involved in different classes. One of the younger moms sat on the floor with two little ones, about 4 and 5 years old. She drilled them on their memory verses and the books of the Bible. One of them sweetly, obediently, lisped as he was directed. The other, a more independent girl, wandered under chairs, stared at people, and was otherwise uncooperative. She was threatened regularly with having to sit and wait in the car by herself, then going straight to her room when she got home. I think a dessert was withheld as well.

This mom could have been me 20 years ago. I don't mean to say that I have matured past that. Mostly, I am tired. I do understand the value of "hiding it in their hearts." But I don't think the behavior of these little ones will necessarily translate into similar adult behavior. My long years of mothering have brought me to the conclusion that there is no formula for success, a formula which will produce happy, productive adults.

What I earnestly hope is that my kids have not caught my pettiness, my selfishness, my fears. I have prayed repeatedly over the years that God would enable me to do my very best as a mother, then fill in the gaps Himself. What my sons can't help but know is that their mother has loved them desperately. And that will have to be enough.

--Marcia

Karen:
Marcia, I think you have caught the essence of "teaching." They should call it osmosis instead of learning, especially where values are passed on. Children learn on a kinetic and tactile level much sooner and more comprehensively than on verbal/literate level. But as mothers, we all find ourselves trying to pound the literal truth into their little brains.


Praise the Lord that as mothers, we have the advantage of a love-link to our little students. They will learn from us because they know who we are and how much they can trust us. Very few teachers can claim that, and hence, have much less impact on the values kids pick up.


I'm sure my own two assimilated not a few of my values and characteristics (pettiness, judgmentalism, insecurities) that I wish they had rebelled against. But as Marcia's title warns: we are crooked souls trying to teach other crooked souls. The Bent Ones have had their way in this world for a very long time. (See Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet.)


But that desperate love Marcia ended with: that is something no Bent Ones can copy or own. It is a gift our children can hold and cherish and even in its imperfection, it reflects the King of Love. It is the mystery that is clear as day.

teaching morality

Jessica brought it up in her Facebook comment. She expresses a concern about the swing to teaching morality. I Googled it, which is what you do nowadays to find out how pervasive it is. It is . . . pervasive. 


It seems to be intertwined with the building blocks, which she was worried about were getting short shrift. And I can see the concern there. If a teacher is more focused on "the moral" of this story in history or literature, will the young people learn the history or literature? I'd like to make one observation on this before I dive straight into "teaching morality." One of the dangers of teaching to the moral is that children soon learn that the moral is the "lesson" and once they can regurgitate it, they have learned the lesson. They are not interested in discovering what lessons can be learned. Even if the teacher tries to draw it out of them, they will pounce on the thing that will win them the grade and their minds will not meditate on it and learn gradually and cumulatively. 


My best example against such "moral" teaching is Jesus. He did not tell the crowd what the parable meant. If He had, they would have "understood" it, filed it and walked away. His parables are for mulling over, learning from, seeing from all angles and allowing the Holy Spirit to have His way in us.


A secondary concern about teachers teaching morality into their lessons is whose morality are they teaching? They are obviously teaching their own, stemming from their own world view. Who determines which teachers and which world views are moral and whose are not?


Now, to the issue of teaching morality. Yes, there are curricula designed to do it, lesson plans and a huge agenda to focus on it. I believe it simply cannot be done.


We cannot teach morality. Morality is part of our belief and value system which spring from our worldview. Teachers do not touch worldview unless they have earned a deep right and built a strong relationship. That does not happen in our culture in the classroom. If we think we can teach morality, we fool ourselves. 


We can try to legislate morality but we cannot make moral people. We can enforce certain behavior. But behavior is only the veneer. The morality runs deep and behavior can be modified without affecting the world view. Janice, in her comment, explains what teaching morality appears to be: anti-bullying, anti-cheating, anti-racism. That clarifies a lot.


Yes, those things come out of a world view. The parents should be the ones teaching their children the cruelty of bullying, the self-defeat of cheating, the darwinian delusion of racism. But they are not. At least the young folk going to school do not all share a world view which eliminates those things. And do they define what is moral?


The educational system sees a huge gap in desired and actual behavior. Perhaps they reason that integrating morality into lessons will change the behavior of their students. But they will never change the world view--and until that changes, kids will bully, cheat and discriminate by color. What the educators are hoping for is a heart change with head knowledge. 


I wonder what their world view is. Since when have people shifted a world view without involving their heart felt values at a deep level? Or is this an attempt based on the assumption that we are evolving and Skinner's behaviorism along with survival of the nicest and a little natural selection will turn the young people of today into nice moral adults?

--Karen
 

Honestly, Karen, I have too much to say about this subject--that is, the teaching of morality. One thing I cannot discuss is the public school system, since I haven't been a part of it since I was in school. 

American society has changed in the last 50 years. Working mothers spend less time with their school-aged children, and school has become another parent. There really is a need for some type of civilization in this Lord of the Flies environment. Unfortunately, as you said, teaching morality doesn't work.

It's kind of like patching a car engine with duct tape; a few miles along, and you're going to smell something bad. 

--Marcia

raising the drop out age?

Last month Governor Quinn (the current governor of Illinois, who has no plans to retire to the penitentiary like so many of his predecessors) announced a plan to raise to 18 the age at which a student may legally stop attending school. That age is currently 17.

I wondered what was going to happen to all that surplus educational funding, and now I know. It will be used to force unwilling young adults to spend the majority of their weekdays killing time at an educational institution.

I am pessimistic, I know. Best case will go something like this:

17-year old: I want to drop out of school.

Government: Not until you're 18. Stay there and graduate.

17-year-old: I guess you're right. I will begin studying right now, and be an example of discipline and respect to authority for all the younger students.

Not.

When my children were pre-schoolers, a casual conversation with my hairdresser gave me pause. She told me that during the summer, she had taught her 6-year-old to tell time.

"I know her teacher will be mad." She cringed at the thought, and a feeling began to rise within me. A rebellion. And I became an educational libertarian.

Tell me, Karen, you of the multiple education degrees--what is the solution here?

--Marcia

Marcia, the more I think about education, the more I believe it is a privilege.

Coercing education is the most effective way to make people under-value it and feel it is a burden. Free things are not appreciated. Mandated things are resisted. Forcing young people to attend school until they are 18 is tantamount to making it a prison sentence.

We value what costs us. Historically, Americans valued education to the point that they offered it freely, then they legislated it and then prescribed its content. That was the death knell. People will not esteem that which costs them nothing.

There was a time I had serious doubts about the wisdom of public education. Now I think free primary education is probably a good idea. It would not be a hardship on any family and would give an opportunity for literacy and numeracy to all. But beyond that, education/ learning/ training needs to come at a price for people to understand its significance. If secondary schools required some labor commensurate to the value of the information being offered, young people could earn the opportunity to learn. The privilege of study would not be an onerous task requiring parental and municipal "enforcers."

Education and knowledge are privileges, not rights. Our own history has ugly stories of what happened to slaves and their owners who dabbled in education. What young slave would have scorned the opportunity to learn to read? 

Too bad the schools no longer require reading Frederick Douglass' autobiography.

--Karen

collaboration

This is it. 


A collaborative collection.


Welcome to our blog. Marcia and I have realized that the combination of my ideas and her opinions and the love we share for our mysterious and playful language would give us an opportunity to blog in tandem.


Take it as an experiment in community. Writing together about things that matter to the heart. Questions that we are asking ourselves and the Body of Christ. Issues that we feel unequal to address singly, we can take on collectively.


The topics will include "all things counter, original, spare, strange." That leaves us pretty much free to dabble or dive deep as we will.


Feel free to comment or counter. Let us be iron sharpening iron.


Let us begin.

---Karen



What a privilege to be part of a conversation with my dear old friend. I am as irreverent as Karen is earnest; as immature as she is selfless; as suburban as she is global. 

This could be the start of something beautiful. If our friendship can stand the strain. 


--Marcia