Technology in the Home

The latest issue of the online review Humanum published by the Center for Cultural and Pastoral Research (the research facility of the John Paul II Institute in Washington, DC), which I edit, is now online and has big implications for education. It is all about the impact of Technology in the Home. Not so much washing machines and vacuum cleaners (who could object?) but to TV, the new information technology, and the social media. Is this stuff rewiring our brains? Is technology really morally neutral? Is it just a tool we use, or can it be said to be using us for its own built-in purposes? What are the implications for home life, for family time, for reading, for the atmosphere in which we live, for the disparity between rich and poor?

Most of the articles are book reviews, perceptively written to review the available literature, but the issue as always starts with a number of articles setting the scene and discussing the main questions. There is also a Witness piece by an English father struggling to make the best use of modern technology in bringing up his children.

Please explore the site, and subscribe by putting your name down for an email alert each time a new issue of Humanum comes online, so you don't miss anything. There is no charge – it is a free service of the Institute.

(The cover image, shown here, is a painting of St Clare, patron saint of TV.)

The Amplituhedron

Quanta magazine reports that "physicists have discovered a jewel-like geometric object, the Amplituhedron, that dramatically simplifies calculations of particle interactions and challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental components of reality. The revelation that particle interactions, the most basic events in nature, may be consequences of geometry significantly advances a decades-long effort to reformulate quantum field theory, the body of laws describing elementary particles and their interactions. The new geometric version of quantum field theory could also facilitate the search for a theory of quantum gravity that would seamlessly connect the large- and small-scale pictures of the universe. Attempts thus far to incorporate gravity into the laws of physics at the quantum scale have run up against nonsensical infinities and deep paradoxes. The amplituhedron, or a similar geometric object, could help by removing two deeply rooted principles of physics: locality and unitarity." (Abridged from the Quanta report by Natalie Walchover. With thanks to Ben Olsen. For mention of a previous attempt to locate the underlying structures of physics in geometry by Dr Garrett Lisi go here.)

Model school

Sometimes things go right. "Starting last spring, St Jerome’s began transforming itself from a debt-ridden, pre-K-8 institution into a showcase for one of the more intriguing trends in modern education. It is one of a handful of archdiocesan Roman Catholic schools in the country to have a classical curriculum. 'Classical' education aims to include instruction on the virtues and a love of truth, goodness and beauty in ordinary lesson plans. Students learn the arts, sciences and literature starting with classical Greek and Roman sources. Wisdom and input from ancient church fathers, Renaissance theologians and even Mozart — whose music is sometimes piped into the classrooms to help students concentrate better — is worked in." The article from The Washington Post from which this extract is taken is one of  several that have recognized the success of the St Jerome Academy after last year's makeover. To read more, follow the link, and look too at the Educational Plan listed in the column on the left.

Virginia's School Grading Plan Gets an N/A

In my most recent posts, I talked about the Tony Bennett (Indiana) school grading fiasco. I talked about how unbridled "disruption" in education reform can cause more harm than good. I posted a letter asking for more Virginia education stakeholder participation and input into our state government's education reform process. Finally, I wrote about how TFA was not right for Virginia (speaking of stakeholder input, you'll notice that stakeholder groups opposed placing TFA corps members in teaching positions in our schools.)

This post is going to bring together all of those prior posts. What do all the posts above have in common: the school grading bill.


The Virginia General assembly passed a school grading bill this past legislative session. As with the TFA legislation, this legislation was not supported by any education stakeholder groups that I know of. The VEA, VSBA, VASS and the VA PTA are all opposed to it. But, um, Jeb Bush is in favor of it. I am increasingly concerned  by the level of influence people from out-of-state are having on our education legislation. Does Jeb Bush pay taxes here? Is he registered to vote in Virginia? Does he represent any Virginia education stakeholders? No. School grading, like TFA and elimination of citizen and democratic oversight of charter schools (more about this in a later post) are also ALEC-favored legislation. If you've never heard of ALEC, here's a primer.



So, why do people who support public education in Virginia oppose the school grading legislation? Because it's not a comprehensive or accurate way of providing information about schools. In fact, if other states' school grading systems are any indication, school grades are highly misleading. When partnered with other education reforms, such as state and charter chain takeovers of struggling schools and loosening of charter laws, such laws are ripe for exercises in crony capitalism.



Matt DiCarlo has done several analyses of the Florida school grading program and has found it lacking. He also explained that Indiana's school grading mechanism tells us a lot about the students who are taking Indians's standardized test but not much about the quality of the schools themselves. See:

• A Dark Day for Educational Measurement in the Sunshine State
• What Florida’s School Grades Measure, And What They Don’t
• Making Sense Of Florida’s School And Teacher Performance Ratings
• The Structural Curve In Indiana’s New School Grading System

The wide-spread opposition to adopting such a policy in Virginia is shared by Virginia superintendents. They've shown, as Matt DiCarlo did, that such a metric would only prove that schools with poorer students would get lower grades:

[The Bristol Schools' Superintendent, Mark] Lineburg, with help from some university researchers, analyzed an initial formula that lawmakers considered, which was based largely on how well students perform on state tests. They found that 85 percent of the schools that would score a C or below had poverty ratings over 50 percent.

This group produced a lengthy, evidence-based report  which showed why such a grading system would not accurately convey the quality of the schools rated. For example:

. . . Governor McDonnell’s A-F scale accounts only for overall achievement examination scores and creates a nearly insurmountable obstacle for school divisions that serve high percentages of economically-disadvantaged students. Educating students in poverty is one of the nation’s greatest challenges; and this challenge increases with every percent point increase in free and reduced price lunches. Yet, in affluent school divisions where it should be easier to differentiate instruction specifically for fewer numbers of poor children, most achieve no better or even worse for economically-disadvantaged children than high poverty school divisions. Yet the more affluent school divisions will consistently receive A’s and B’s on the new rating scale.

The data displayed in Tables 1 and 2, are found on each school division’s state report card and clearly demonstrate that overall achievement disparities among school divisions are almost solely based on the percent of economically-disadvantaged students served by the school division. It is discouraging that our elected officials, including our Governor supported legislation that so glaringly fails to recognize the inherent challenges faced by high poverty schools. To be more succinct, Governor McDonnell’s signature education legislation will punish high poverty schools and divisions even where significant gains toward increasing achievement for economically-disadvantaged students have been attained. More discouraging, assigning a low grade to a high poverty school division will decrease  its ability to attract and retain top teaching candidates who could have a significantly positive impact on the students, school, and the entire school community. 

The educators in high poverty schools are equally competent and are not bashful to ask for assistance. What our high poverty school divisions need is additional assistance and support, not punishment in the form of awarding a simplistic singular grade and the threat of school takeover. We need more preschool programs, lower pupil-teacher ratios, mathematics specialists, financial support for physical education and wellness programs, and we need the ability to extend learning opportunities during summers, holiday vacations, and after school hours. The scores in this document clearly demonstrate that the achievement gap between high poverty school divisions and those that are more affluent is not always as great as it appears. In fact, data gleaned from the Virginia DOE school report cards prove that many high-poverty divisions are tightening achievement gaps with greater success than their more affluent neighbors. 

Roger Jones a , the chairman of Leadership Studies at Lynchburg College and director of the Virginia Association of Secondary Schools Principals Center for Education Leadership wrote an impassioned essay echoing his skepticism of the efficacy of the Virginia A-F grading plan.

The grades won't go into effect until 2014 and the Virginia Board of Education has been charged with coming up with the formula by October. So far, the school grading formula they're considering is almost totally based on test scores. There aren't multiple measures, just multiple test scores and different ways of looking at them.

Why would Virginia want to adopt such a system when the ones in Florida and Indiana are so flawed? Furthermore, why would the General Assembly pass such legislation without any understanding of how such a metric would work? Isn't it better policy-making practice in such cases to come up with and pilot the metric first, to see, how it works, and then make it law or not? This returns to the reformy propensity to act first and think later, if at all. How irresponsible.

But it also returns to a more cynical possibility. The schools likely to get Fs in Virginia would then be forced under state takeover and put under the newly formed bureaucracy, the Opportunity Education Institution. The communities where these schools are located are stripped of democratic governance of their own schools, though they'd still have to provide the money for the schools. As I said when I wrote about the OEI:

According to this post, the OEI would take over schools that were denied accreditation, which is done in accordance with "federal accountability data," also known as standardized test scores. The Institution will be run by a board of gubernatorial appointees, which includes the executive director. There is no guarantee that the board would include any people who know anything about education. The board would contract with non-profits, corporations, or education organizations to operate the schools. Funding for the new bureaucracy would be provided by federal, state, and local taxpayers. The "failing" schools' local governing bodies would be represented on the board in some way, but they would lose decision-making power and would not be able to vote or, from what I can tell, have much meaningful input, besides providing the same share of local funding and being responsible for maintenance of the school building. As for staffing, current faculty at the schools being taken over could apply for a position as a new employee with the OEI or apply for a transfer.

First of all, elimination of democratic oversight and disenfranchisement is never a good solution to poverty or dysfunction, not to mention the OEI bill appears to be unconstitutional. Second, what happened in Indiana also smells of politics and crony capitalism. Though one may have nothing to do with the other, it looks bad that the grade was changed for the charter school owned by a prominent GOP donor who gave to Bennett's campaign. Second of all, when schools get forced into a state takeover after receiving too many Fs, they are then open by the state to takeover by charter school companies. Again, maybe one thing has nothing to do with another but Bennett's wife works for a for-profit Florida-based charter school company (Florida is where Bennett was most recently Education Commissioner) that Bennett chose to takeover Indianapolis Public Schools (Bennett was formerly education commissioner in Indiana).

Governor McDonnell and his allies are seeking similar changes for Virginia--school grading and charter expansion and charter via state takeover of high-poverty schools with low test scores. What happens when Imagine gets to takeover some of these "F" schools? Dennis Bakke, the CEO of Imagine Schools, the largest commercial manager of charter schools in the Unites States, gave $10,000 to McDonnell's campaign when he ran for governor. What happens when the likes of Johnnie Williams opens his own health and nutrition charter school and it doesn't do as well as expected? Would McDonnell give the school the grade it earned under Virginia's A-F metric system?

A-F school grading systems are bad metrics, they're unfair, they'll encourage poor practice and corruption, and they're bad for public education in Virginia.

Reforminess: 120, Content-rich Curriculum: 45

I saw this article in the Washington Post about DCPS's cutting the minimum recess for elementary students to 20 minutes day. It goes without saying that twenty minutes per day of recess for younger students is ridiculously inadequate. But here's what really caught my eye (emphasis mine):

Recess time varies in the District. Some schools saw a reduction this year as Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson implemented new requirements meant to ensure that all elementary students get a minimum amount of time in each subject each day: two hours of literacy, 90 minutes of math, and 45 minutes of science or social studies. An additional 45 minutes is required for an elective, such as art, music or physical education.

What? Isn't DC a Common Core adopter? Isn't the Common Core supposed the second coming of curricular education reform?

If you're spending two hours a day on "literacy" and forty-five minutes a day on non-math content (social studies or science) and if you consider art, music, physical education, or foreign language to be an "elective" rather than crucial content, then the Common Core will not help your students because you're not getting the Common Core's supposed intent. In this case, the assumption is that literacy is a skill that must be mastered before children learn content. "Literacy" is primary and content is an after thought.

So what do Common Core advocates, especially those who also support current education reforms, think of this? Just as I find their silence on expansion of central bureaucracy and spending thereon baffling, I find their silence on this topic baffling, and troubling, as well.

Bibliography

Why do we write books? In my case, it helps me to think. I would hardly know what I thought about something unless I had struggled to construct an argument and written it down. As I brought my seventh book to completion, a friend, Mark Alder, encouraged me to compile a list that gives some sense of what they are about and why I wrote them. (Incidentally, the bookplate on the left is by my grandmother, Florence Zerffi.) – Stratford Caldecott

The Power of the Ring: The Spiritual Vision Behind The Lord of the Rings (Crossroad, 2005, 2011) 

Originally called Secret Fire when first published by DLT, the book was translated into several foreign language editions including Spanish, Italian, and Russian, and re-issued by Crossroad in an expanded edition in 2012. The Power of the Ring, unlike most other books published on Tolkien’s writing, explores the spiritual, theological, and philosophical meaning of the work – Tolkien’s faith, which was influenced by the Oratory of St Philip, his attempt to recover the spirit of England that had been almost lost in the two
World Wars, his theology of creation and the importance of the human imagination as a means of apprehending truth, as well as the spiritual aesthetics of virtue. In The Lord of the Rings and his other works Tolkien was creating a vehicle in which to transmit to future generations the “light” of a poetic knowledge that is fast dying out and in many places has been entirely forgotten, depriving us of a vital dimension of our humanity. This theme of “spiritual light” was taken up again in the book The Radiance of Being in 2013 (see below).

The Seven Sacraments: Entering the Mysteries of God (Crossroad, 2006) 

The first of two books on mystagogy (the sacramental mysteries of the Church), The Seven Sacraments looks at a range of important sevenfold structures in Scripture and Tradition (such as the seven virtues, the seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, the seven days of creation, and the seven Last Words from the Cross), exploring significant correlations between them, and arguing that greater attention should be paid by biblical scholars to numerical symbolism in the inspired text as a whole. The book was intended to open up an approach to the Catholic faith based on a deeper appreciation of its organic unity.

Beauty for Truth’s Sake: On the Re-enchantment of Education (Brazos, 2009) 

The first of two on the Seven Liberal Arts, Beauty for Truth’s Sake concentrates on the Quadrivium; that is, the four cosmological subjects on which classical learning once depended, both as preparation for the study of philosophy and theology, and as the basis of an education for intellectual and spiritual freedom. After looking at the classical and medieval tradition, the book traces the way our secular society developed, and the problems this has created in present-day higher education and the culture at large. It suggests ways in which the arts and sciences, faith and reason, religion and mathematics, could be put back together again, after a long period of estrangement that has created a civilization both deeply flawed and profoundly dangerous.

All Things Made New: The Mysteries of the World in Christ (Angelico Press/Sophia Perennis, 2011) 

A second book on mystagogy explores the mysteries of the Rosary and the Book of Revelation. While The Seven Sacraments had concentrated on examining patterns of 7, All Things Made New examines the use made of the numbers 12 and 4 by biblical and patristic writers – demonstrating once again the merits of reading Scripture and Tradition in the light of faith, with an eye to the underlying structure. The book includes reflections on cosmology and liturgy and a meditation on the Way of the Cross, while the appendices include a brief introduction to Jewish and Greek number symbolism (Gematria), a survey of different methods of biblical exegesis, and an article about the ideas of Dr Margaret Barker.

Beauty in the Word: Rethinking the Foundations of Education (Angelico Press, 2012) 

The second of two on the Seven Liberal Arts, Beauty in the Word is about Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric, re-interpreted in a way that enables them to be used as the framework for a renewal of the education system, especially at primary level. “Remembering”, “Thinking”, and “Communicating” become the foundations of a curriculum in which all school subjects can be taught in a more integrated manner. These basic human skills develop naturally out of an understanding of our nature as created in the image of God – created for self-gift in the image of the Trinity. The book also examines questions related to authority and ethos within the school. Like Beauty for Truth’s Sake, this book is being used as a text and for curriculum design by teachers and parents in Britain and the United States.

The Radiance of Being: Dimensions of Cosmic Christianity (Angelico Press, 2013)
Radiance of Being explores the meaning and implications of the divine Trinity as a basis for understanding the cosmos. In other words it starts where Beauty for Truth's Sake finishes. Beginning with the concept of “light” in modern science and cosmology, the book goes on to explore the relation of science to faith, and then the questions that arise from the differences between religions and the tensions between religious communities. The uniqueness of Christianity is shown to lie in the Incarnation and Trinity, but this does not justify aggressive polemics or religious violence. The book culminates in an appreciation of the Russian idea of “godmanhood” and divine Wisdom or Sophia.

Not As the World Gives: The Way of Creative Justice (Angelico Press, forthcoming) 

With a focus on the nuptial mystery at the heart of the universe, Not As the World Gives integrates the social teaching of the Church with the spirituality of the Sermon on the Mount. Beginning with Plato’s insights into the nature of Justice, the book explores the history of Christian charity and the meaning of mercy and the virtues, the threats posed to civilization by modern technology, the true nature of human freedom and of “good work”, the challenge of New Evangelization, the foundations of the Way of Beauty, and how to renew a Christian culture. The aim of the book is to show how the “radiance of being” can shine through, not just the natural, but also the social and cultural worlds.

Book Review: First Class: The Legacy of Dunbar, America's First Black Public High School

The following guest post is written by Jeff Tignor. Jeff has undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard and Duke University, respectively. He lives in Washington, DC, where he is a telecommunications lawyer and fellow at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy, researching how local communities can use the internet and wireless technologies to foster civic engagement. 



In the excellent new book First Class: The Legacy of Dunbar, America’s First Black Public High School, Alison Stewart tells the story of one of the best and most important American high schools of the 20th century. The stories that Ms. Stewart shares of the tight-knit African-American community in Washington, DC with high school teachers with master’s degrees and PhDs sending students from a segregated high school to the best colleges and universities in the country amplify stories I’ve heard throughout my life. My father, paternal grandparents, two uncles, a great aunt and a cousin all attended Dunbar. After receiving his master’s degree from Columbia, my grandfather returned to Dunbar to teach English. My father and one of my uncles both left Dunbar for Yale and went on, respectively, to become a professor at Yale’s School of Epidemiology and Public Health and a surgeon in Kokomo, Indiana and part-time professor at Indiana University. My Dunbar family tree is filled with educators. The legacy of Dunbar has deeply influenced and affected me, even though I did not grow up in Washington, DC. For example, a few years after I moved to DC as an adult, I decided to run for Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner for my neighborhood. On election day, as I stood in the rain handing out flyers, a woman said, as my opponent attempted to reach out to her, “Sorry, but I’m voting for Mr. Tignor’s Grandson.” I won.

Dunbar was a groundbreaking educational institution born in Washington, DC, as a result of a unique set of circumstances and later hobbled by home rule politics, social class conflicts, and racial desegregation without integration. In the first half of the 20th century  this public school produced numerous leaders in medicine, science, education, law, politics, and the military. With the end of segregation, the conditions that resulted in Dunbar’s creation ceased to exist. Ms. Stewart, an award-winning journalist who has worked as an anchor and reporter for several major commercial TV networks, as well as NPR and PBS, and whose parents graduated from Dunbar in the 1940s, uses Dunbar as a lens for examining the history of education in Washington, DC. The book covers three distinct eras:  First, from 1807-1954, a detailed history of African-American education in Washington, DC, and of how Dunbar became America’s first African-American public high school; second, beginning with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education and Bolling v. Sharpe decisions, a transitional period in the years surrounding school integration; and third, Dunbar’s post-1960 full transformation to the neighborhood school it is today, struggling with the challenges of urban education. As someone whose family history in Washington, DC, dates to the post-civil war 1800s, I learned new facts about DC’s history and was struck by the irony of Dunbar alums arguing for desegregation at the Supreme Court and then seeing their prestigious and beloved alma mater fray as the unconstitutional system of segregation was dismantled. I was moved by the heartbreaking stories of students and educators trying to honor Dunbar’s past and simultaneously create a present and future that will allow the school to once again become a launching pad for great careers.

Dunbar came to be because unlike in much of the South, there were no laws restricting the education of free blacks in Washington, DC.  Small schools such as the Bell School and the Normal School for Colored Girls begat the Preparatory High School for Colored Youth, M Street High School, and ultimately in 1916, Dunbar High School. As the only academic high school for African-Americans in Washington, DC, Dunbar effectively became a magnet school. Students from DC had to pass an 8 to enroll and students transferring into Dunbar as part of the Great Migration had to take an entrance exam. Dunbar’s curriculum focused on English, math, the sciences, ancient history, music, Latin, French and German. Many of Dunbar’s teachers and administrators, like my grandfather, had advanced degrees and included doctors, lawyers, and two of the first three African-American women to receive PhDs. Dunbar sent students to prestigious colleges such as Harvard, Yale, Brown, Amherst, Williams, Dartmouth, Wellesley, and the University of Michigan. Notable alums include Edward Brooke, the first black US Senator elected by popular vote; Charles Drew, the creator of the blood bank; William Hastie, the first African-American Federal judge; and, Wesley Brown, the first African-American graduate of the Naval Academy.

In 1954, Charles Hamilton Houston and two of his fellow alums from the M Street School, Dunbar’s forerunner, were key members of the team that successfully argued for outlawing legally segregated schools in the states in Brown v. Board of Education and in the District of Columbia in Bolling v. Sharpe. From 1955 onward, Dunbar became a neighborhood school, with attendance solely based on the boundaries within which a child resided. One educator commented at the time that First & O, NW, was infamous as a gathering place for young men who were unemployed, out of school and “indecent in their public conduct.” Ms. Stewart writes: “It is bitterly ironic that three of the key players in dismantling legal segregation…learned their lessons at a school that became an unintended casualty of necessary civil rights action.” In a July NPR interview, Ms. Stewart described Dunbar's benefitting from the glass ceiling segregation placed on Dunbar’s highly educated teachers as a “perversity.”

By the mid-1960s, Dunbar and several of its alumni and former teachers, who had moved on to other leadership positions in education in the city, found students not nearly as interested in the tradition-bound lessons that began in 1807. My grandfather, Madison Tignor, found himself having to answer tough questions from students such as: Why doesn’t Eastern High School have an Afrocentric curriculum? Architect of school desegregation, now Howard University President James Nabrit was asked: Why is Howard Law School no longer serving the needs of African-Americans seeking equality? Marion Barry came to prominence. Dunbar never did integrate. From the 1970s forward, “the economic and social woes of DC were Dunbar’s woes.”

Over the years, there have been periodic signs of hope; a pre-engineering magnet program focused heavily on the sciences and partially financed by corporate sponsors, a Dunbar graduate becoming a Stanford graduate, and most recently, the track coach who will pick up girls at home as early as 3:30 am to get them to practice and who can point to every girl in a team photo and name where she is in college. Ms. Stewart ends on a positive note suggesting that given the demographic changes in the neighborhood maybe Dunbar will make history again, as its founders would have wished, “as the first truly, organically integrated school in Washington, DC.” Here's to hoping she's right.

How we know

This is a golden age of scientific discovery. Nevertheless, the most basic things about ourselves remain a mystery. What is consciousness, for example? It is clearly correlated with processes happening in the brain, but that’s not what I mean. What is it, in the sense of what is it made of? It obviously isn’t made of matter or energy. Matter and energy are things we think about, things we are conscious of, but they are not what we are conscious with.

And how do we know what is true or false? Not because one neuron has triggered another. The reasons we give for our beliefs depend on logic and the laws of thought, not on what happens to be going on in our head. If another neuron had fired, it wouldn’t have changed the truth or falsity of the statement I have just made.

Catholic philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas have a theory of knowledge. In one way, it is quite close to modern empiricism. It says we base our knowledge on what the senses reveal to us. (Nihil in intellectu quod non fuit prius in sensu.) But it is what we do with what the senses give us that make it interesting. The Thomistic theory says that we subject it to a process of
“abstraction”. This means that we extract from it universal archetypes or “forms” – so, for example, in a certain red and fragrant confusion we discern the form of a rose. It is this form, combined with matter, that makes the rose a thing. The form is real, and without it neither our knowledge of the rose nor the rose itself would exist.

Like a house illuminated by natural light from the five windows of the senses, our soul receives information from outside. But how do we “process” this information? How do we arrive at the forms that enable us to identify what we see, the constants and universals that enable us to recognize a flower or a tree, a cat or a dog? The Thomistic philosophers, basing themselves on a controversial passage by Aristotle, are not much help. They say we abstract the form by the light of the active intellect, which is then received by the passive intellect. Knowledge happens in us when the passive intellect thus becomes identified or united with the thing known.

But there is no explanation of this “light” of the active intellect or how it works. The description I have given, based on what St Thomas says, is a series of metaphors. (He is obviously not speaking of natural “light.’) Why could the active intellect not be understood in more Platonic terms, as the forms themselves present in the memory of the soul? Then in order to recognize a rose or a tree all we would have to do is match what we have received through the senses to the imprint of the forms within ourselves.

The difficulty now lies in understanding the nature of this “memory of the soul,” which is not the same as our memory of what the senses perceive. But this is no more difficult than understanding the “light” of the active intellect. Nor does it mean that we perceive the forms directly – let alone God directly – in this life. In fact, our knowledge of these forms is obscure and confused, but that is enough to enable us to see an ordered world of distinct and distinctive creatures.

It may even be exactly the same thing that the scholastics are talking about—the light of the agent intellect. In the primordial contact with our Creator, when he breathes into us the breath of life, we acquire this source of light within ourselves. It is an image of the Son of God himself, who is the locus and synthesis and source of all forms, the archetype of archetypes. Thus to “know” anything in this world is to recognize in it some facet or glimmer of that primordial light, that supreme form, which one day we shall see face to face.

Being itself is radiant, is a kind of light. This light is love, the act of self-giving. It is the spark at the beginning of our existence, the point where our existence continually flows out of God in his creative act. We are from the beginning a form individuated by matter, preserving within our depths the luminosity of the idea in which God sees us and we shall see him. Writers in the Augustinian tradition sometimes call this spark the “eye of the soul” or of the heart, the apex mentis, the “cutting edge” of the soul, but it is simply the highest part of the intellect, and it is implicit in everything we know.

Photo by Rose-Marie Caldecott.

Tolkien and Hopkins

You might like to compare Tolkien's "Ainulindale" (the Elvish account of the creation of the world through music, in The Silmarillion), with the following meditation on the Exercises of St Ignatius by Gerard Manley Hopkins, taken from The Notebooks and Papers of Gerard Manley Hopkins (OUP, 1937), pp. 348-51.

"The angels, like Adam, were created in sanctifying grace, which is a thing that affects the individual, and were then asked to enter into a covenant or contract with God which, as with Adam, should give them an original justice or status and rights before God. The duties of this commonwealth were, for them, to contribute each in his rank, hierarchy, and own species, towards the Incarnation and the great sacrifice. Sister Emmerich saw this under the figure of the building of a tower: it might perhaps also be called a temple and a church. It was in fact the Church and the heavenly Jerusalem. It is also compared to a concert of music, the ranks of the angelic hierarchies being like notes of a scale and a
harmonic series: the working of the commonwealth and the building of the tower or temple would be like the playing on these notes, like the tune, the music. They are also compared to the heavenly spheres, planetary distances, and so on; and indeed these things, music and astronomy, are compared among themselves (in the Music of the Spheres and the morning stars singing for joy).... And lastly they are compared to a pedigree, to generations; and through such a pedigree or tree of generations in some sort it is likely that Christ passed, taking the stead but not the true nature of a race or series of angels."

Hopkins then describes how Christ calls on the angels to worship God. But the song offered by Lucifer, like that of Melkor in Tolkien,

"was a dwelling on his own beauty, an instressing of his own inscape, and like a performance on the organ and instrument of his own being; it was a sounding, as they say, of his own trumpet and a hymn in his own praise. Moreover it became an incantation: others were drawn in; it became a concert of voices, a concerting of selfpraise, an enchantment, a magic, by which they were dizzied, dazzled, and bewitched. They would not listen to the note which summoned each to his own place (Jude 6) and distributed them  here and there in the liturgy of the sacrifice; they gathered rather closer and closer home under Lucifer's lead and drowned it, raising a countermusic and countertemple and altar, a counterpoint of dissonance and not of harmony. I suppose they introduced a pathos as of the nobler nature put aside for the higher and even persuaded themselves that God was only trying them; that to disobey and substitute themselves, Lucifer above all, as the angelic victim of the world sacrifice was secretly pleasing to him, that selfdevotion of it, the suicide, the semblance of sin was a loveliness of heroism which could only arise in the angelic mind; that it was divine and a meriting and at last a grasp of godhead."

He concludes that this rebellion of the angelic host marked the lower world, the world of matter, "with the confusion, clashing, and wreck which took place in the higher one and was there repaired at once but not here all at once." Thus the Devil's first sin was not the temptation of Eve, but preceded the creation of the Garden. He "tried to destroy by violence before he succeeded in ruining by fraud."

I should explain what Hopkins means by the "great sacrifice" to which the angels were supposed to contribute. He was speaking of a cosmic redemption, the descent of the second Person of the Trinity into human form in the midst of creation, in order to raise, first his Mother, and then the rest, to union with God: "for redeem may be said not only of the recovering from sin to grace or perdition to salvation but also of the raising from worthlessness before God (and all creation is unworthy of God) to worthiness of him, the meriting of God himself, or, so to say, godworthiness. In this sense the Blessed Virgin was beyond all others redeemed, because it was her more than all other creatures that Christ meant to win from nothingness and it was her that he meant to raise the highest" (p. 345).

Illustration: William Blake, the Woman and the Great Dragon.

Shortages or not, TFA is not the way for VA

Just a quick TFA post.

Today as I was watching & tweeting Governor McDonnell's K-12 Education Reform Summit, I got into some conversations with a TFA advocate (update: I have confirmed with Aaron that he is a TFA employee), W. Aaron French and Eva Colen who is the Managing Director, Community Engagement at Teach for America--she is based in Richmond.

I'm not going to repeat what I've already written, so if you want to see my previous thoughts on TFA, please read here and here. As TFA pertains to Virginia and the legislation that just passed, I wrote about that here:

You probably already know what I think. I have written about TFA before. It's my most popular piece. 

The only thing new I have to say is: Why does Virginia need TFA? There are budget and teaching positions being cut across the state and I hear it's hard for our college graduates to get teaching positions. Where is the evidence that there's a teacher shortage anywhere in Virginia? And if there is one, why don't we have a Teach for Virginia instead? Teachers who are being laid off could be given incentives to go and teach in hard to staff areas. Top students at Virginia colleges and universities, especially ones seeking a teacher's license, could also be granted incentives to start their careers in these supposedly "hard to staff" places. 

Otherwise, it doesn't seem like anyone's fighting it, so meh.

Aaron and Eva both claimed that in fact there was a shortage and cited this page from a VADOE website. Now, I don't know if that means these will likely filled with subs or worse-qualified candidates than TFA corps members. I do know that "shortages" like this are complex in explanation. Sometimes, it doesn't mean there aren't any qualified candidates to fill the shortages. Sometimes it only means that that's where the needs are greatest, where there are fewer applicants. But someone more knowledgeable than I am would have to address this. If you're reading this and you have some insights, please comment below.

If someone can demonstrate a clear and definite shortage in Virginia, if I am mistaken that there isn't one, then I apologize for misleading my readers and followers and I am glad to have been called on it by Aaron and Eva.

But I still don't think TFA in it's current incarnation is a good model.

The shortages would likely be in high-poverty schools and in areas such as special education. I don't think that a TFA corps member, with very little training and no experience is equipped to do a good job in such positions. I also don't think it gets to the root of the problem. Why is there a shortage? Why are those positions hard to fill? Why don't adequately trained and/or experienced teachers want those jobs? Why are the students in schools with these shortages coming to school presenting such challenges?

If TFA changed so that their corps members would commit beyond two years and so they had more training, education, and something akin a year long apprenticeship first and/or if they worked to change the root of the problems in the American education system and those behind high teacher turnover and shortages, I would sing their praises, too.


UPDATE: Aaron also said that the TFA legislation passed unanimously in both houses, with major support across the state. Now, I know, as I said in my blog post cited above, that no one seemed to be fighting it and I know that the bill passed handily, but I'm not sure that it had "major support across the state" from the public and from Virginia education stakeholder groups. But maybe I'm wrong. Any thoughts, readers?

On Governor McDonnell's Education Reform Summit

Dear Governor McDonnell,

I got the news only a few days ago that you were holding a K-12 Education Reform Summit on Monday August 5th. I am disappointed by the "agenda" of the agenda and by the who's missing from the panels.

At the summit, are you mentioning that Virginia's public education system is ranked in the top ten? Are you discussing the fact that the teachers in our state are among the lowest paid in the country relative to our affluence? How about discussing reforms such as lowering class sizes, de-emphasizing high-stakes standardized testing and test-narrowed curricula in favor of more rich and varied curricula? What about classroom practice--is that being discussed? How about discussion of developing and retaining the great teachers we already have? What of the massive cuts to public education in this state? I don't see any of those items on the agenda. But I do see charters, privatization, disempowerment of local school boards, virtual education, and non-professional teachers--a reform agenda of ALEC's and one that most parents have said they reject.

And who is serving on the panels? 

Well, first, let me applaud you on including two Virginia Superintendents and several Virginia college presidents. Also, kudos to you for including a former Virginia public school principal and someone who is both a former teacher and current state legislator (way to kill two birds with one stone!). I'm glad that some Virginia education scholars and leaders from Virginia's Department of Education will be there, too. Hopefully, these folks can bring knowledge and expertise to the discussion.You have also included many people and private interests from out of state, like the Governor of Tennessee, several charter school advocates, representatives from for-fee organizations that place non-professional and un-credentialed people in the classroom to work as teachers and administrators, as well as some consultants from the private education industry sector. 

But you know who is not included on the panels? Most other Virginia K-12 education stakeholders. You have not included any current K-12 teachers or principals. I don't see any school counselors, school nurses, school social workers or school safety officers on the panels. There are no school board members or other local decision makers. Not one representative from a Virginia-based charter school will be there. Most glaringly, there is not one person there representing Virginia's families. Not one. There are no parents or parent representatives there, and there are no students. 

I suppose those excluded stakeholders could go on their own and watch from the audience. But most working people can't afford to drive across the state on a weekday and then pay for lodging and the Summit fee. Why is this Summit not open and free to the public? Why is it not on a weekend? Public education is for the public and paid for by the taxpayers. Where are our representatives and the representatives of our co-stakeholders at your Education Reform Summit, Mr. Governor? 

Sincerely,

Rachel Levy

Ashland, Virgnia

Turtles and Hares in Modern School Reform

I ended my last post with a larger point about the problem of "disruption" in modern education reform:

"This is exactly what happens when you rush into big, 'disruptive' changes without thinking about them or fully understanding what you're doing. You break things that weren't already broken and you make messes."

This is not an original thought to me. For one, it's been said over and over again by many more knowledgeable about education than I am. For example, look at Larry Cuban's recent post about turning around urban schools and Paul Vallas, comparing wiser marathon turnaround superintendents to the more impetuous sprinters:

In many instances, sprinter superintendents follow a recipe: reorganize district administrators, take on teacher unions, and create new schools in their rush for better student achievement. They take dramatic and swift actions that will attract high media attention. But they also believe—here is where ideological myopia enters the picture—that low test scores and achievement gaps between whites and minorities are due in large part to reluctant (or inept) district bureaucrats, recalcitrant principals, and knuckle-dragging union leaders defending contracts that protect lousy teachers from pay-for-performance incentives. 

Such beliefs, however, seriously misread why urban district students fail to reach proficiency levels and graduate high school. As important as it is to reorganize district offices, alter salary schedules, get rid of incompetent teachers and intractable principals, such actions in of themselves will not turn around a broken district. While there is both research and experiential evidence to support each of these beliefs as factors in hindering students’ academic performance, what undercuts sprinter-driven reforms in these arenas is the simple fact that fast-moving CEOs fast-track their solutions to these problems, get spent from their exertions or create too much turmoil, and soon exit leaving the debris of their reforms next to the skid marks in the parking lot. Swift actions certainly garner attention but sprinters quickly lose steam after completing 100 meters.

Exactly. So where else did I come around to this way of thinking? Because, let me tell you, it does not come naturally to me.

1) I learned this from my parents. My father is a very cautious and thorough person who doesn't buy a toothbrush without researching it first in Consumer Reports. My mother has worked for thirty plus years as a civil rights lawyer and school finance expert in DC. She has witnessed change and disruption over and over again in the DC Public Schools--so much so that she's seen some of the same changes tried two times, sometimes by the same crop of people. It's not that some changes aren't needed, but first we must ask: How they might these changes work? Have they been tried before? If yes, to what effect? What do the affected communities think about these changes? People like her try to say:Yes, we tried that in nineteen such and such and it was a disaster. Um, yes, that needs to be changed but what are you going to change it with that hasn't been tried before? The school communities were really upset the last time that happened. The reformy response: History? Who needs it? Democracy is over-rated.

2) From the great school leaders I have worked for. This is why I don't argue when reformers (of any stripe) point out how much school leadership is crucial. The best principals and administrative leaders I worked for went about making changes carefully and deliberately with the input of their faculty and staff. I remember my first year at one high school was also the new principal's first year. The ESL teachers there (including me) were really pushing him to make some changes right away and he said, "No, I'm going to observe and learn about how things work already and then I'll see what needs to be changed." He was right. The next year he did make some changes. I didn't agree with all of them and they weren't immune to political considerations, but the transition was so much smoother than it would have been otherwise.

I remember when DC mayor Adrian Fenty came in and hastily replaced Clifford Janey with Rhee. The local community was jarred by the way Fenty did this (locking him out of his office, freezing his e-mail account, not getting input from the public or the City Council, etc.) but not one person said to me that it wasn't time for him to go. I remember saying, well, even so, shouldn't Fenty observe and see how things are working first before he makes such drastic changes? I was thinking of that school principal I had worked for.

3) I live in a very conservative area of Virginia. Sometimes, it's like a foreign country. There are many  things that don't jibe with me, but sometimes there are advantages. They are ssslllooooowww. Which means in education that they haven't instituted big changes without taking their time, though this is changing as the Tea Party slash and burn mentality is alive and well here right now. They didn't do whatever's trendy just to do it--they skipped the whole ed tech boom and invested in what has been thus far a very successful technical and trade high school instead (not that we don't desperately need updated technology and textbooks now, but that's a different story). They don't throw money at problems (although now they seem to be with-holding money at problems). All of this has prevented the hasty, "disruptive" thoughtlessness that pervades so much modern school reform, though as I said that is changing somewhat with the similarly minded "break everything" Tea Party presence.

Before I end, I do want to acknowledge that there is something invaluable in the urgency of a we-can't-wait-for-change-we-have-to-do-it-now modus operandi. There's certainly urgency to move, but just because you're not sprinting doesn't mean you're standing still. The problem is that in modern education reform, as with the Tea Party, there's not much slowing the sprinters down, especially when they are fueled by gobs of dollar bills.

Tony Bennett: Songs in the Key of C, No Wait, A

Here's my two cents about the Tony Bennett grade changing story that Tom LoBianco broke. This was hard to write--with blogging there can be so much pressure to be timely that conflicts with my wanting to read and carefully consider everything on the subject. I'll do my best here.

My initial concern was that the liberal media would treat this merely as a "bad actor" case, you know: Look how corrupt this GOP guy is! Republicans are corrupt! I mean, look at the headline of the original story: "GOP Donor's School Grade Changed." I don't share most Republican ways of thinking, but corruption is political party-blind. In turn, I was concerned that conservatives would treat this as a "political hit job" conspiracy on the part of the liberal media or "opponents of reform." Like this.

Looking at all of the coverage--the journalistic coverage, the analyses, and the defenses (the list in the link doesn't include the Fordham Institute's Mike Petriili's defense, Rick Hess's of AEI interview with Bennett, or this article about the context of Bennett's decision)--there's a real disconnect. Many skeptics of current education reforms such as test-based accountability are saying this is corruption and by design. Many accountability hawks say there's a reasonable explanation for this and that there's little to nothing wrong with what Bennett did. If you read the defenses and the interview, they are earnest.

Now, don't get me wrong, the whole campaign donation business is shady and certainly the charter sector is ripe for crony capitalism and hucksterism--just look at what goes with the charter sector in Florida (speak of the devil) and the White Hat charter school company in Ohio. But I have no evidence that the donation influenced Bennett's thinking or that he's particularly corrupt. What he does seem to suffer from is a deep certainty that he's right about his education reform policies and that the statistics must be on his side, even if that means having them fixed. I've heard it said about Michelle Rhee when she was in DC that it was almost like she wasn't telling mis-truths when she did. She was so convinced of her own rightness that she couldn't hear herself saying one thing one day and a different thing the next. It was all the truth to her. I'm afraid that Tony Bennett seems to be suffering from this malady, as well.

How it worked in Bennett's office seems to be how it works in the work places of reformers. "Choice" and charters as a model are always better. It's okay if we lose a few neighborhood or comprehensive schools because those are probably failing or close enough to failing anyway. How many times have we heard that it's okay to sacrifice a few good teachers here and a few decent schools there in the service of "objective" evaluations system? Systems that will largely weed out the bad and identify the good. So, you lose a few good teachers. So you close some decent neighborhood schools. Oh well. No use crying over a little spilled milk. In the face of schools like this one being labeled failing, and teachers like this one getting a fire-ably low evaluation, how many times have the proponents of such systems said, Well, the evaluations are not perfect but they're better than what we had before.  (Um, who has demanded perfection?)

And so two things happened. First, a double standard: a well, it's not perfect, sorry was not issued in the case of Christel House Charter (and does anyone else find it unseemly that the school is named after it's director and maybe biggest donor? Is that what a public school should be?) Then, the formula was fixed so the appropriate grade would come through. The math was done in such a way that it didn't maintain the integrity of the formula. Sherman Dorn's analysis shows why this was unethical while Anne Hyslop explains how the math doesn't add up.

Surprisingly, most of my thoughts mirror the thoughts given at this Fordham forum published today, which is not to say I agree with all of the thoughts expressed--I especially think the word "flap" in the title is a pretty glaring understatement. But otherwise it is the most frank, humble, and thoughtful  discussion of the limits of school grading I think I've ever heard from accountability hawks. I found myself nodding in agreement. This particular process was unfair and showed favoritism. These processes need to be more science than art. We need an objective measure that everyone adheres to and this can provide that. These grading systems aren't ready for prime time. Schools shouldn't be boiled down to a single grade. Please read the whole thing.

But I was still left wanting.

1) Where in this conversation is the statistician to discuss the validity of the school grading process? First of all, I'm pretty sure these metrics--school grading metrics as well as teacher evaluation metrics--are being used in ways they were never intended to be used. I admit when I'm in huff, I refer to them as "junk science," but as Matt DiCarlo points out here, they're not junk science even if they're just being used in junky ways. If these metrics were being used as thermometers that would be one thing, but they're being used as a hammers. Second of all,  I'm not at all convinced that there is such a metric system out there somewhere waiting to be formulated that would ever work well as a school grading or teacher evaluation system. And I'm not going to take Fordham's or New America's or Tony Bennett's word for it that there is, any more than I would take my own word for it that there isn't. I want to hear from an expert. If anything, the stats people in the Bennett e-mails show that Indiana's school grading process is not valid. Having to "run different options" to arrive at a desired outcome shows that. What went on in Indiana seems to me at best an exercise in statistical gymnastics and at worst, one in statistical fraud. I have yet to be convinced by anyone with any statistics expertise that these systems are valid. In general, the people with expertise in statistics that I trust the most have been lukewarm at best on their efficacy.

2) Not ready for prime time?! Shouldn't be used for high stakes decisions?! Maybe this isn't a science yet?! There shouldn't be stakes attached to these?! I agree but isn't it a little late to be saying this? What rock have you people been under? All of these metrics ARE prime time. They've been prime time! Remember when Fordham crowned Indiana as its Education Reform Idol? Was the school grading plan not one of the criteria for judging the winner? These metrics have done been high-stakes. That ship has sailed. They've been used to evaluate teachers and schools, to fire teachers, to unfairly label schools, close down schools, to allow for burdensome federal interventions and harsh state takeovers. Lots of people have been saying these metrics are not ready for prime time, if they're appropriate at all. Why wasn't this thoughtful discussion had before spending so much money, before making high-stakes decisions, before making such a mess. Where was the humility and thoughtfulness then?

3) Where was the stakeholder from Indiana in the forum? A superintendent maybe. A parent or two. Why not ask them what they think of school grading in Indiana? There was talk of transparency. Isn't this an accountability measure that's being discussed? Isn't the premise behind these school grading systems to help parents and the public? Aren't such systems produced on the public dime? Isn't someone like Tony Bennett a public servant, accountable to the public? Okay, so no parent on the panel--maybe no one was available. Look at the public's "accountability moment" then. Didn't the public speak loud and clear when they failed to re-elect Tony Bennett? As Kombiz Lavasany tweeted: " Two Republicans lost in Indiana last year. One was Richard Mourdock for his rape comments. The other was this guy [Bennett]." The school grading plan was the center of his policy platform. And he lost. What do you think the public, who ostensibly this metric was to benefit, then thought of that policy?

This is exactly what happens when you rush into big, "disruptive" changes without thinking about them or fully understanding what you're doing. You break things that weren't already broken and you make messes. And it's what has happened over and over again with education reform in this country. It's time to call a moratorium on school grading and teacher evaluation metrics and maybe on some other stuff, too.

My GRE Experience

This summer I am spending some time getting ready to take the GREs, in case I want to go back to school for something or other. Despite some misgivings, I have decided to "go public" with my experiences preparing for and taking the test. Since I write so much about high stakes testing and since it has had such an effect on the educational lives of my children and on my life as a teacher, I figured writing about it was too good an opportunity to pass up-- like when Katie Couric broadcast her colonoscopy live on public television. Not, mind you, that I am Katie Couric and not that I wish to increase the incidences of GRE test prep, nor will I broadcast live my review or examination sessions (can you imagine?).

So, other than this introductory post, I will also write posts about each of the sections: verbal, quantitative, and analytical. I am reluctant to submit to this test, but I can't get into graduate school without it, so I don't have much choice. If anything, the place I find myself in will authenticate (that sounds like one of those words that isn't a real word, doesn't it?) my experience. Despite other and superior means of demonstrating my qualifications for entry into graduate school, I am stuck taking this test. Am I a hypocrite for deciding to prepare when I deride test prep so much? Maybe--you'll have to see how much and in what ways I've decided to prepare before you judge that.

I took the GREs once right after I graduated from college. I was told this was the best time to take it when everything, especially test taking, is still "fresh." I actually found it was a horrible time to take it because I was burnt out and had no thoughts of going back to school anytime soon. Also, the GREs were nothing like the tests I had in college, thank god. I did not prepare, I did not take it seriously, and I scored poorly. The second time I took it was a few year later-- fifteen years ago (fifteen!) when I was applying to masters and teacher certification programs. (In case you're interested, I wrote about my experience in ed school here.) I reviewed a little--I was motivated to have a strong application--and then just took the plunge. I did surprisingly well--not like Merit Finalist well but well enough, for me--I'm not a good test taker.

For this time, I checked out a GRE book from the library and I'm currently plugging my way through it. The verbal section is really not something I can practice for. The best I can do is be familiar with the format and stick to the format. I will probably write the most about this section--it's the most problematic as far as I'm concerned. The quantitative sections, I do need to review for. Most of the math is rattling around in my brain somewhere but I wouldn't be able to access it without reviewing first, especially with the math I don't use on a regular basis. There's also some types of questions that I don't remember being on the versions of the SATs and GREs I took long ago. Preparing for the writing section will probably just mean familiarization with the format. I think the biggest hardship will be losing the ability to sleep on what I wrote and edit it later. My usual writing process is to think and read for days or even weeks or months about something, then vomit out a draft and then leave it for a bit, think more, and then clean up the mess in stages. Can't do that on the GRE.

Now, it's been very hard for me to accept that I have to take this god foresaken test. Though it's kind of fun to re-learn the math and I know that at least some of it will be helpful in certain graduate programs (and in understanding what the heck Bruce Baker is talking about), I resent having to take the test and I resent the time I have to spend reviewing for it. I feel like once you reach a certain age, you should be excused from the GREs, like age out of it or something. To be honest, I think about it (or actively avoid thinking about it) every day: I need to to study. I'm going to bomb it. The admissions folks are going to think I'm an idiot. I can't believe I missed that question. I feel so stupid. I wonder if there are any pickles left. And then when I start to resent it: Isn't there a lot more than these test scores that would show I'd be a good graduate student? I mean, I practically am a graduate student. I read and write all of the time and make no money! What a waste of time! 

And then I start to understand how so many American children must feel during every testing season, or even every school day.

WYD - 3

The last part of Sophie's talk in Rio, HUMANISING ECOLOGY.

 Taking all of this into account, it means that we need a humanistic ecological vision that takes account of the special nature of human beings, as well as the ecosystem in which we belong. This vision, as Pope Benedict said, should take in “not only the environment but also life, sexuality, marriage, the family, social relations”; that is, our “duties towards the human person” (Caritas in Veritate, 51). For all these things are part of what we mean by the nature of human beings. We are social by nature. We are born into families. We find meaning in our lives through loving and serving others. We have a dignity that can be expressed in the form of rights and duties.

Pope Benedict taught us that Christianity tries to balance the value of the human person with the value of nature as God’s creation. The Book of Genesis – as well as the Psalms and many other parts of the Bible, which praise the glories of nature – teach Christians to be responsible and gentle and wise in the way we behave towards the world around us. The virtue of
Prudence instructs us to take special care to preserve the natural resources on which our lives and those of our children depend. The other three “cardinal virtues” that are part of the Christian life are just as relevant. Temperance tells us that we must not become greedy, addicted to consumption, living a lifestyle that depends on having more and more. The virtue of Justice reminds us that many of us in the richer countries of the world support our lifestyle at the expense of the poorer countries. And we need the virtue of Fortitude or Courage to strengthen us for what we have to do – to find ways to change the way we live, to be kinder to the earth, fairer to our fellow human beings, and merciful towards the animals and plants that God has created out of his love and wisdom.

Pope Francis recently condemned our culture’s unrestrained greed, saying: “Man is not in charge today, money is in charge, money rules. God our Father did not give the task of caring for the earth to money, but to us, to men and women: we have this task! Instead, men and women are sacrificed to the idols of profit and consumption: it is the ‘culture of waste.’”

We need to escape this culture of waste that we have created: it is our duty as Christians.

Pope Benedict said that, while Christians have a host of compelling reasons to become ecologically responsible, nevertheless “modern Christianity, faced with the successes of science in progressively structuring the world, has to a large extent restricted its attention to the individual and his salvation” (Spe Salvi, n. 25). That means we have been too concerned about “me”, about my personal situation, my salvation, or mine and that of my immediate circle – not enough concerned about the rest of the world. But as Christians we shouldn’t separate the two, because the world has been given to us by God to look after. We can’t hope to save ourselves without trying to fulfill this mission with which we have been entrusted. So the other reason that prevents us getting involved in ecology is “individualism”. It is a disease of our culture, and it is this that makes us isolated, and prevents us working together for the sake of others.

Here are some final statistics. In 1960, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency, the United States produced approximately 88 million tons of municipal waste. By 2010 that number had risen to just under 250 million tons. This jump reflects an almost 184 percent increase in what Americans throw out, even though the population increased by only 60 percent. Everything we buy these days is produced to be cheap and not to last, wrapped in layers of plastic packaging that more often than not ends up in landfill sites. As a culture we seek quick fixes and easy options, but these quick fixes are costing the planet – and subsequently future generations – a lot. The production of clothes, for example, has a major impact upon human lives as well as the environment, for the most part not seen or considered by the average shopper. “Prices rarely include the real social and environmental cost,” says Safia Minney. She is the founder of the successful ethical fashion line, People Tree. In fact, once again, we see that the environmental and human elements cannot be separated. The World Health Organisation believes that around 20,000 farmers in developing countries die a year as a result of agricultural pesticides used in cotton farming.

I said that I was going to speak about how environmental ecology connects with the Theology of the Body. Well, ethical fashion is an example. Remember that clothing is a huge industry worldwide. Remember also that it is all about those fig leaves and those coats of skin in the Garden of Eden, the protection and ornamentation of our alienated human bodies. The clothing industry is only one among many, but it demonstrates exactly how a pattern of consumer choices that seems very trivial at the time adds up to create a huge impact both on our fellow human beings – such as the workers who are employed to make the clothes as cheaply as possible – and on the environment that is partially transformed, for better or worse, by our actions.

As young people we are consumers of clothing, and most of us would agree we should try to make sure we are not supporting unfair businesses, or buying things whose negative impact on the environment is hidden from view. If we are running a business, it is easy to say that we must not exploit our workers unfairly, or use immoral or illegal business practices to destroy competitors. That’s easy to say, sometimes less easy to do, in a fiercely competitive economy. We need ethical consumer organizations and corporate whistleblowers to help us. One thing we mustn’t do is assume that what we buy, what we wear, what we eat, is somehow unconnected with what I was saying earlier about the planet. If there is one thing ecology has taught us, it is that everything is connected.

In his speech to the German Bundestag in September 2011 called “The Listening Heart”, Pope Benedict said this: “We must listen to the language of nature and we must answer accordingly. Yet I would like to underline a point that seems to me to be neglected, today as in the past: there is also an ecology of man. Man too has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will. Man is not merely self-creating freedom. Man does not create himself.”

The Theology of the Body by Pope John Paul II is all about what we find when we understand our own nature as created by God. The Pope talks about the “spousal” or “nuptial” meaning of the body, about the fact that we were made for love, and that there is a “way of living the body” in its authentic masculinity and femininity. This nuptial meaning has been limited, violated and deformed over time and by modern culture, until we have almost lost the power of seeing it, but it is still there to be discovered with the help of grace, like a spark deep within the human heart. The “language of the body” is part of that “language of nature” that Pope Benedict speaks of. The way we live, the clothes we buy and wear, the work we do, the way we treat each other, and, yes, the way we treat animals and the whole of nature, should reflect our understanding of that language – the fact that we are put here not to destroy and exploit but to love and cooperate.

***
By way of conclusion, I want to sum up very briefly the difference between secular and Catholic environmentalism.

The extreme secular attitude to climate change and ecology could be represented by this short and snappy quote from the environmental organization Greenpeace: “The earth is 4.6 billion years old. Scaling to 46 years, humans have been here for 4 hours, the industrial revolution began 1 minute ago, and in that time, we’ve destroyed more than half the world’s forests.” Humans, in other words, are the enemy of the earth.

Standing here in front of you, more than halfway through my first pregnancy at the age of 25, you could say that I physically embody the fundamental difference between secular and Catholic understandings of ecology and environmentalism. The secular environmentalist might say, on the basis of the Greenpeace quote I just read, “Don’t have children if you can help it! Or if you must, have one or two at the very most. Humans are to blame for environmental damage, and it would be better if we had never existed.” But the Catholic environmentalist says something different. The Catholic might say: “Yes, it is true, and terrible, that we have let down the rest of creation by being bad stewards of its treasures. But we are the greatest treasure of them all – the natural world’s most precious resource – and we still have the power to turn this around, with God’s help. It is by continuing to have children, and by teaching those children well, that we can help clean up the mess that we have made.”

In our families, and with our children when they come, we must draw on the love that opens our eyes to reality, as Pope Francis says in his encyclical Lumen Fidei (2013): “Faith knows because it is tied to love, because love itself brings enlightenment. Faith’s understanding is born when we receive the immense love of God which transforms us inwardly and enables us to see reality with new eyes” (n. 26). In turn, by revealing the love of God the Creator, faith “enables us to respect nature all the more, and to discern in it a grammar written by the hand of God and a dwelling place entrusted to our protection and care. Faith also helps us to devise models of development which are based not simply on utility and profit, but consider creation as a gift for which we are all indebted” (n. 55).

Stratford and Sophie Caldecott, 24th July 2013, Rio de Janiero, Brazil

NB. Sophie has an interesting article on beauty on her own blog.

WYD – 2

Sophie's talk in Rio continued.

One of the symbols of the ecology movement is a famous photograph of the earth from space that was taken by one of the Apollo spaceships on a lunar mission in the late 60s. It showed people very vividly that we all live on one extremely beautiful and delicate planet. It tells us that all creatures on the earth are dependent on the ecology and resources of planet earth. Political boundaries between one nation and another are invisible from space, and so the image also came to represent a way of transcending our national differences and our enmities in order to work for the preservation of the planet we share.

But the image also teaches us something else. We are just one among many
millions of animal species – but it shows us that human beings are special. It is only the human animal that can venture into space in order to take such a photograph. And like it or not, we play a central role on the planet. Even secular ecologists admit that we are more capable than any other species of destroying the entire ecosystem. This means that we have a heavier responsibility than any other species. And our Christian faith tells us that this responsibility is part of what we were created for. The Book of Genesis (2:15) tells us that “God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.” That vocation to cultivate and look after the earth continues after our exile from the Garden of Eden; that is, after we began to sin. All that changed was that the job suddenly became more difficult. God told Adam: “cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall eat the plants of the field” (Gen. 3:17-18).

This looks like a punishment, but really it is just the natural consequence of what man had done and what he had become. He had run away from God, tried to hide in the forest, ashamed of his own body. He had become alienated from God – no wonder everything had become more difficult for him! And the thing to underline is that in becoming alienated from God, he was also alienated from himself, from his wife, and from his own body. When God quizzes him about what had happened, he admits eating the forbidden fruit (whatever that means – it isn’t necessarily an apple!), but he blames his wife for giving it to him. And his own body (and hers) is now an embarrassment to him. He is aware of himself as a lonely creature in a dangerous world that he can never quite understand. The return to God is going to be a long and difficult road.

And yet man remains special. Even in disgrace, he has a unique relationship with the world. He and the woman together, who were made to help each other in this, are not abandoned by God just because of sin, since God now clothes them with skins so that they will survive outside the Garden, and sends them out to “till the ground” (again) from which they were taken (Gen. 3:23). They are given the same job they had before they fell from grace!  [Continued here.]

World Youth Day 2013

Sophie Caldecott (now Lippiatt) is representing her family at WYD this year, having been invited by Creatio to speak on Faith and the Environment to the young people there. It is a talk she and her dad wrote together, representing the concern of two generations for the world that we will hand on to the next. Ecology should be part of everyone's education. Taught the right way, without the intrusion of ideology, it can help to awaken a deeper appreciation for God's creation in its complexity and interdependence, as well as a sense of moral responsibility. In fact a concern for ecology and conservation runs deep in the family. Her uncle Julian is a professional conservationist. Leonie, her mother, also has a deep interest in the subject, and her great-grandfather, an artist, was involved in setting up the Kruger National Park in South Africa. Sophie's talk on 24 July began like this:

Through the pontificates of John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis, ecology has become an important part of Catholic social teaching. In 2011, Pope Benedict said, "The importance of ecology is no longer disputed. We must listen to the language of nature and we must answer accordingly.” In his
inaugural Mass, Pope Francis asked us to become “'protectors' of creation, protectors of God’s plan inscribed in nature, protectors of one another and of the environment." We have been reminded over and over again that, as Pope Francis also said in a Tweet on 5 June: “Care of creation is not just something God spoke of at the dawn of history: he entrusts it to each of us as part of his plan.”

What I want to do in this talk is reflect on the “plan” that the Pope speaks of. In particular, I want to show how ecology is part of a much wider plan that includes something you may not think at first was related to ecology at all – namely the Theology of the Body. But in fact, the Church’s teaching on the environment and on the human body, on cherishing the natural world and cherishing our human nature, belong together. They cannot be separated.

Of course, in some ways the natural environment is easier to talk about. Our generation is at last waking up to the beauty, the richness and diversity, the fragile complexity, of the environment on which our lives and societies depend. We are waking up to it because it is evaporating in front of our eyes. Philip Larkin’s poem, "Going, Going", sums it up in a very moving way. “I thought it would last my time - / The sense that, beyond the town, / There would always be fields and farms, / Where the village louts could climb / Such trees as were not cut down…” he begins, going on to say that now he is not so sure: “For the first time I feel somehow / That it isn’t going to last”. Suddenly all of these changes seem “To be happening so very fast”. Another of my favourite poets, Joni Mitchell, in her song “Big Yellow Taxi”, says something similar. You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone!

My uncle Julian has been working as a conservation biologist all over the world for more than 30 years. During that time, he has seen so many landscapes devastated and so much of the world depleted and degraded that he finds it hard not to be depressed. He tells me that around 70% of the millions of land-based species on the planet used to live in areas that were particularly supportive of life (rainforests, for example). These areas amounted to about 16% of the earth’s land surface. But since 1950, around 86% of that rich habitat has already been destroyed, mostly by human farming and industry. You can imagine the effect on biodiversity.

Don’t worry, this talk is not going to be full of statistics. The point is simply this. My uncle has dedicated his life to trying to save as much as he can, but he is doing it without the support that our faith gives us. He is defending God’s creation without even knowing who God is – just because he knows it is the right thing to do. Not only is he defending the beauty of nature, but he is trying to help preserve human life on earth, which depends on the survival of the “ecosystem”. As Catholics, we have even more reason to get involved in this issue. [... read next section ...]