Why Oxford Dictionary’s 2016 Word of the Year Matters

Posted on by metroupe

Another great contribution by Ravi Zacharias. What comes through so clearly is the irony of scholars and media personalities who will insist there is no truth and then complain about lies. It shows the emptiness of postmodernism and its self defeating attempt to destroy the truth by denying its existence. I have said it before, but it bears repeating, people who deny the existence of rules only want that privilege for themselves.

Ravi writes:

“We now live in a “post-truth” culture where misremembering is normal. (Not surprisingly, within hours of the American elections, a French television network baptized our culture as “post-logic.”) These two bastions of values, the academy and the media—where relativism flows in their veins—have become the town criers of this new word. Castigating the politicians, they untruthfully predicted the destination of the untruthful. Excoriating an electorate gone amuck, they wondered how people could be duped into a lie. Having themselves swallowed a camel, they strained a gnat. They are the primary carriers of word manipulation, repeating distortions often enough to make them into truths. Caring not for truth but for effect and for the manipulation of all thinking, their victory is pyrrhic.”

Again:

“It used to be said, “If a Cretan tells you all Cretans are liars, can you believe him?” Now we have to ask ourselves if we can believe it when a post-truth culture tells us it is a post-truth culture.”

And this one wins the day:

“And we have so extinguished the light of truth in our halls of learning that it is possible for a Harvard student to say, “I can believe anything I want, so long as I don’t claim it to be true.”

Source: Why Oxford Dictionary’s 2016 Word of the Year Matters

Why Schools Are Failing Our Boys

Posted on by metroupe

why-schools-are-failing

“Statistically speaking, boys now lag behind girls on every single academic measure; they also get in trouble and drop out of school much more frequently than girls. There are fewer boys in college than girls, and far more lost 20-something boys than 20-something girls.”

This article is a helpful intro on how our education system is failing our boys. In many ways normal boy behavior is considered at best an inconvenience, and at worst a disorder to be treated.  This is important stuff, and if you would like to explore this more check out the book “Boys Adrift” by family practice MD and psychologist Leonard Sax.

You need to read this if you have little boys.

Our current system is not helping boys succeed, it is holding them back. And this in spite of the ongoing myth of oppressed girls in the academic environment.

Source: Why schools are failing our boys – The Washington Post

When You Don’t Learn From Your Mistakes

Posted on by metroupe

mistakes

I love good stories.

They help to make the abstract stuff of life concrete. Here is a FANTASTIC story about the importance of learning from your mistakes. It comes from the book “Street Smarts” and was reprinted in Inc magazine. I just finished the book and I would highly recommend it.  The writing flows easily. It is clear, and obviously drawn from lots of experience. I am disappointed that he doesn’t have more books available.

Anyway, the author (Norm Brodsky) says that when there is a mistake in your organization you need to do two things, and both are very important.  First, stop the bleeding.  Second, determine the cause of the problem so it doesn’t happen again. This story is a good example of what happens when you forget to do #2.

‘A few months ago, my wife, Elaine, and I were in Dallas for a conference and we decided to go out to dinner at a fancy seafood restaurant near our hotel. The place was crowded, and we had no reservation, but the maitre d’ said he thought he could seat us in 20 minutes or so. While we waited at the bar, Elaine ordered a shrimp cocktail. Before it was served, the maitre d’ came over to tell us he had a table available in the balcony overlooking the main dining room.

“I just ordered a shrimp cocktail,” Elaine said.”No problem,” said the maitre d’.

“I’ll have someone bring it to your table.”

The shrimp cocktail arrived right after we did. Elaine tasted the sauce and found it too spicy. Intending to dilute it a bit, she reached for a bottle of ketchup on the table. As she turned the cap on the bottle, there was a loud pop, and ketchup came shooting out, covering her sweater, her blouse, her skirt, her whole arm.

Elaine sat there stunned, drowning in ketchup. Our waitress came running over. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said, handing us napkins. “Let me help you.” She worked feverishly to clean up the mess. “If you bring me your clothes tomorrow, I’ll have them cleaned for you,” she said.

The manager showed up a moment later and also offered his apologies. He wiped ketchup off a chair and sat down with us. “I’m terribly sorry about this,” he said and gave me his card. “Just send the cleaning bill to me. I’ll make sure it’s taken care of.”

Both Elaine and I were suitably impressed. Every business, including ours, has its share of accidental, unavoidable, nightmarish customer screwups. If we’re the customers involved, we mainly want people to act as though they’re sincerely sorry and to do what they can to repair the damage. We would have been quite satisfied if the manager had left it at that. But as he stood up to leave, he said, “In a way, you were lucky.”

“What do you mean?” Elaine asked.

“The last time this happened, the person got ketchup all over her hair. We had to send her to the beauty parlor. At least you just have it on your clothes.”

“You mean this has happened before?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah,” the manager said. “It happens fairly often. This part of the restaurant can get extremely hot during the day. We ask the waitresses to loosen the caps of the ketchup bottles, so the pressure doesn’t build up inside, but sometimes they forget, and the bottle explodes when the guest goes to open it.” With that, he excused himself and walked away.

Elaine and I didn’t know whether to be outraged or to burst out laughing. We were dumbfounded. I could think of all kinds of ways to make sure customers don’t have to endure ketchup bombs: Take the ketchup downstairs every evening; buy a small refrigerator for the balcony and keep the bottles there during the day; put the ketchup in vented containers; serve ketchup only when the customer asks for it. Instead the restaurant had come up with a solution that solved nothing. The bottles kept exploding; the ketchup kept flying; the staff kept cleaning up and apologizing; and the victims kept telling everyone they met about their experience, thereby turning what should have been a one-time embarrassment into an ongoing public relations problem. That’s what can happen when you don’t learn from your mistakes.’

Source: Problems, Problems | Street Smarts by Norm Brodsky | Inc.com

Photo used by permission  Topher McCulloch. Some rights reserved

How To Make Yourself and Your Kids Miserable: Helicopter Parenting

Posted on by metroupe

Evidently, helicopter parenting is all the rage. And the results are visible beyond the playground, all the way up to the nation’s most prestigious universities.

Perhaps this shouldn’t be a surprise, we have subtly and perhaps unknowingly shifted the meaning of family. Historically, families have been viewed as the context for teaching character and establishing our most important relationships.  More and more families are seen as a means to establishing financial success.

“Julie Lythcott-Haims noticed a disturbing trend during her decade as a dean of freshmen at Stanford University. Incoming students were brilliant and accomplished and virtually flawless, on paper. But with each year, more of them seemed incapable of taking care of themselves.  (emphasis added)

“At the same time, parents were becoming more and more involved in their children’s lives. They talked to their children multiple times a day and swooped in to personally intervene anytime something difficult happened.

“From her position at one of the world’s most prestigious schools, Lythcott-Haims came to believe that mothers and fathers in affluent communities have been hobbling their children by trying so hard to make sure they succeed, and by working so diligently to protect them from disappointment and failure and hardship.”

Source: Ex-Stanford dean explains why helicopter parenting is ruining a generation | Fresno Bee

Teaching Is Simply Stocking The Shelves

Posted on by metroupe

book shelf

A moment of clarity for me: Teaching is often the slow investment of truth over time to allow for moments of understanding and transformation.

Someone I know recently “saw the light” on an issue, but only after hearing good advice for a couple of years. I was tempted to feel a little hurt.  When they told me about their new perspective,  my absurd pride was a little wounded, as if this person wasn’t giving the proper credit to me.  I felt like saying, “yes of course, I have been telling you that for 2 years.”  But I realized that this is the nature of teaching and learning. It is the way we experience deep learning.

Time, circumstances, and truth are used by the Holy Spirit to help us grow.

As a parent or teacher, don’t get discouraged at the slow process of stocking the shelves. Sometimes we “inform” for the first time. But more commonly we remind, revisit, and explain what is already in the mind so that people can make new connections (2 Peter 1:12-15). Many of the most important realizations we experience are only possible because years of learning.

In teaching, many of the things we impart are like seeds that may lay dormant for years or decades only to sprout later.

How Trigger Warnings Are Hurting Mental Health on Campus – The Atlantic

Posted on by metroupe

This is an important article from the Atlantic on how our attempts at censorship in the name of protecting students from hurt feelings is bad for them in just about every way. It is a longer piece, but worth the time if you can make it all the way through without gouging out your own eyes in disbelief and frustration. The article is full of examples about the insanity of the reigning version of political correctness.

I think it is a significant article because it is polite, but also coming from the more liberal side of the field. The author approaches the topic from the standpoint of counseling (specifically cognitive psychology) and so is in a good position to address the concerns behind all the trigger warnings (e.g. “you are going to make people relive trauma”).

As I waded through the examples in the article,  I kept mumbling to myself in shock.  Are we trapped in a Monty Python sketch?  Yet, the big ideas resonate with me because I have seen some of this personally.  I just didn’t realize this monster was growing so quickly.

“Attempts to shield students from words, ideas, and people that might cause them emotional discomfort are bad for the students. They are bad for the workplace, which will be mired in unending litigation if student expectations of safety are carried forward. And they are bad for American democracy, which is already paralyzed by worsening partisanship. When the ideas, values, and speech of the other side are seen not just as wrong but as willfully aggressive toward innocent victims, it is hard to imagine the kind of mutual respect, negotiation, and compromise that are needed to make politics a positive-sum game.

“Rather than trying to protect students from words and ideas that they will inevitably encounter, colleges should do all they can to equip students to thrive in a world full of words and ideas that they cannot control. One of the great truths taught by Buddhism (and Stoicism, Hinduism, and many other traditions) is that you can never achieve happiness by making the world conform to your desires. But you can master your desires and habits of thought.”

Here is an editorial from the LA Times expressing the opposite perspective. After reading the Atlantic piece, it seems pretty weak.

Source: How Trigger Warnings Are Hurting Mental Health on Campus – The Atlantic