I remember how it was -- JR
Sunday, November 14, 2021
Memphis Christian School Under Attack For Affirming Christian Values
A nationally-renowned private Christian school in Memphis is facing attacks from LGBT activists and a radical county commissioner for following the teachings of the Holy Bible.
Briarcrest Christian School drew fire after they announced a training session for parents and students on a Gospel response to sexuality and gender titled, “God Made Them Male and Female. And It Was Good. A Gospel Response to Culture’s Gender Theory."
Briarcrest promised an "enlightening look into the craziness our culture is throwing at our kids and leave equipped with a gospel response to share with them."
"When Superman is rewritten to be a homosexual, when parents allow children to choose their genders, and some schools are embracing students for being courageous by ‘coming out’ and considering transitioning...how do you respond biblically," the school pointed out in promotional materials.
LGBT activist Dylan Sandifer accused the school of promoting bigoted ideas.
“I understand that as a private school they can teach anything that they want, but that doesn’t mean that it’s right,” he told television station WREG. “I’m more concerned with LGBTQ students who are going to the recipients of hatred and rejection by the adults they look up to as authority figures, their parents, and their teachers as well their peers who are getting those ideas from their authority figures."
And the radical activists weren't the only ones triggered by the private school's lessons. “There has to be a reckoning with these institutions on the oppression they uphold and the gates they keep," Shelby Commissioner Tami Sawyer posted on her Twitter feed. She accused the school of spreading "hateful drivel against LGBTQ children."
In a statement to KWAM NewsTalk 107.9 FM, Briarcrest defended its commitment to teaching "students about all aspects of biblical truth, including biblical sexuality."
“Briarcrest is a Christian School that teaches and upholds the biblical principles found in scripture. We affirm our unity in Christ and that we are all created equal in God’s eyes. We will continue to strive to teach our students what is true and just in light of God’s word. We love people enough to tell them the truth about biblical sexuality. We have a responsibility to teach students about all aspects of biblical truth, including biblical sexuality. In addition, we strive to support parents in their efforts to raise biblically literate children who learn to defend their beliefs with gentleness and respect. Furthermore, as our culture attempts to silence biblical truth, we will proclaim the hope of the Gospel.”
Former Shelby County Commission Chairman Terry Roland told the television station that it's pretty clear God made two sexes.
"If you don’t know what sex you are look in your britches and it’ll tell you real quick what you are," he said. "They have all right in the world and people are tired of the left pushing this transgenderism. I think Briarcrest, they have all the right to do what they’re doing. It’s a private school and it’s a Christian School.”
The government has no right telling a Christian school what they can and cannot teach. And if the LGBT mob has a problem with the curriculum at Briarcrest, they are more than welcome to educate their children in a public school.
If only Commissioner Sawyer and the LGBT mob paid as much attention to the dumpster fire that is public education in Shelby County.
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Glasgow University retreats over ‘antisemitic’ label for journal article
The University of Glasgow has backed down from labelling a peer-reviewed journal article about pro-Israel lobbying as “antisemitic”, amid criticism from leading international academics.
The university was criticised for undermining academic freedom after it appended a preface in May to the four-year-old paper, apologising for its publication and claiming it promoted an “unfounded antisemitic theory”.
The university republished the article this week with a new preface, removing the apology and instead saying the paper promoted “what some would regard as an unfounded theory” about Israel.
The climbdown came after Noam Chomsky, the US linguist and foreign policy critic, and George Smith, a Nobel prize-winning chemist, were among more than 550 academics who signed a petition handed to Glasgow two weeks ago calling on the university to assert its commitment to free speech.
“[Glasgow’s] untenable position implies that other groups, states and corporations can all be the subject of critical academic analysis, but commentary on pro-Israel advocacy must be limited,” they said.
The article, published in Glasgow’s eSharp journal, for early career academics, had argued that “an Israeli state-sponsored strategy [was] focused on controlling public opinion in the UK”. It said Israel sought to “harness the resources of grassroots Zionist supporters” to bolster British government support for Israel, and to “discredit and neutralise pro-Palestinian discourses”.
Glasgow added the new preface to the article in May, after complaints and a story about the controversy in the Jewish Chronicle.
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Australia: We have some yawning gaps in balancing the history we teach
There has been much throwing about of brains in the review of the Australian national history curriculum. The federal Minister of Education, Alan Tudge, has declared that the draft consultation curriculum taught students to suspect Australia’s Liberal democracy: that teaching ANZAC Day as a “contested” idea is downright un-Australian, and that Christianity and liberal democracy should be far more emphasised.
Professor of History at the ANU, Frank Bongiorno, dismissed Tudge with a “gigantic yawn” in this masthead on Saturday. ”Any well-educated history student would know that … he is simply wrong. The origins of democracy lie in classical and pagan Greece, not Christianity or the West, both later inventions.”
As Australia’s pre-eminent historian of Australian politics, this kind of easy contempt, frankly, is below Professor Bongiorno. Christianity and the West do lie at the origins of democracy, and he knows it. Pagan Greek philosophy, Roman administration, and Christian spirituality combined to form the engine room of Western European history.
Over many centuries and contexts, the tiny Athenian 5th Century BC experiment was spun into modern democracy, through, for example, the Reformation, the English, French and American Revolutions, the Clapham sect reformers, the independence movements in the Central and South Americas, the struggle for female enfranchisement, among many other examples. After its short-lived origins in pagan Greece, radical Christianity and its various ideological offspring lay at the base of most of it.
That aside, however, he and many historians attacking Tudge’s complaints – particularly those who have never set foot in a primary school – have missed the larger point. The Australian Curriculum is not a tutorial for clever history undergraduates but mandatory school education: millions of small children, and their families, are compulsorily involved.
Consequently, this has far less to do with the theory of history than the theory and practice of mass education and civics. Unlike former prime minister John Howard, Tudge’s complaints about the curriculum have not peddled a particular theory of history, but relate to an imbalance between the big social ideologies that inevitably bump into each other in every mandatory curriculums, in every school subject.
In the past 50 years, all Australian curriculums – across all disciplines – have been framed by three ideologies. First, skills: that students graduate as economically useful. Second, cultural heritage: passing on through the generations “the best and the good”. Finally, and most recently, emancipation: to equip students to question and oppose dominant, oppressive power structures.
All three are important in a liberal democracy. Cut emancipation and the marginal are crushed; reduce skills and everyone runs out of money; trim cultural heritage and everyone forgets what is best, good, honorable and beautiful. The key to a successful curriculum in a liberal democracy is a judicious balance between all three.
There is much good about the recent history consultation drafts, particularly in teaching history as a disciplinary foundation, and especially the introduction of “Deep Time” First Nations Australia.
However, it is also clear that a balance between curriculum ideologies was lost. The relentless interrogation of European history, and Australia’s colonial cultural heritage, belonged squarely in the emancipation camp. This was mostly characterised by the depiction of First Nations Australians post-colonisation, almost exclusively, as a devastated, oppressed minority. The sheer volume of the material, inevitably, would displace the time for children to study other basic facts about European and colonial history, including, by the way, the incredibly rich post-colonial heritage of First Nations Australians, from first-contact to the present day, that is far more complex, diverse and proud than just that of a moribund, weakened people.
True enough, this oppression happened, it was abominable, and one of the original sins in our national story. The teaching of mandatory history is a necessary vehicle to propel us towards the great social goal of redemption and restoration.
However, teaching small children to relentlessly question a heritage about which they have not been substantially taught is like creating a literary critic who hasn’t read anything – the worst kind of critic. When emancipation drowns out cultural heritage in a curriculum, our children are consigned to spin round and round in an echo chamber of unresolvable complaint, never able to find solid footing on what is useful, what is good, and what is true. Such imbalance does not make us freer, and it certainly doesn’t make us kinder.
Bongiorno is right that the understanding, publication and teaching of history has different perspectives. This is something children must be taught over time: to rationally question and test the veracity of sources, and the merits of interpretations.
However, for children to learn history primarily about one perspective – that all power is suspect – is just one of many theories of history. Mandatory history as a vehicle for intelligently celebrating national heritage, is also a widespread, defensible educational approach. However, without emancipation in a curriculum, the teaching of national pride through the history classroom produces monsters. The balance is all.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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