Emoji miracle
Sometimes, you just need to use tiny Asian pictures to tell a Bible story.
So sit back, kids, and let uncle Owen tell you about the time…
Jesus turned the water into wine… Read more
Posts from the ‘education’ Category
Jan 28
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That’s just my box talking: theology and creativity
Practically speaking, a lot of Christians think of theology like a box.
They think it forms the walls and lid for our minds and souls. The box shelters us from evil. Creativity — thinking outside the box — represents some kind of disruptive assault on all that is right and good.
We Christians have a hard time knowing when to be orthodox and when to be groundbreaking. There’s not much room for creativity when it comes to theology. It’s a set system. And that’s ok. But, it’s harmful to let our fixed theology calcify our minds.
The easy and lazy path is to be conservative in everything and fight change of every kind.
If you’re the kind of person that is threatend by change, I’m not judging you. I’m just inviting you to consider that you’re predisposition to favor the status quo (to be conservative) may be the function of other factors — your personality, your past experiences, your personal preferences.
In other words, if you don’t like Jackson Pollock, it’s not God’s fault. Read more
Teaching to Preach
The project of learning has changed fundamentally in the past few decades. Not too long ago, much of education was a matter of learning how to find information. That’s no longer the case.
Thanks to the advent of the Internet, locating a wealth of information on any topic is as quick and easy as tapping a few words into your web browser.
Finding information is easy. Figuring out what to do with it is the new challenge. What sources are trustworthy? How do I prioritize what I find? What is the difference between fact and opinion? These are the kind of questions a contemporary education must prepare the learner to answer. Read more
Learning by the Foot
Making a bulletin board is a lot of work. But, when that bulletin board is 24 feet long and covers 130 square feet, it’s a looooooooooot of work. Wait until you see this. Arguably one of the greatest moments in elementary education history. Read more
Venetian Starters
Earlier this week, we watched my buddy Eric try out some ink black spaghetti.
Now, just for fun, here’s Eric trying out some traditional Venetian appetizers on the banks of the world famous Grand Canal. Read more
10 ways to make soccer awesome
They say a starving person will eat anything. And I’d say that’s almost always true. As a hungry sports fan in the middle of a sports famine, I almost sank my teeth into soccer this summer. Almost.
What would it take to get me to bite? Here are 10 ways to make soccer awesome. Read more
May 18
Tonight, CNN races to call American children "racist." Not so fast…
CNN reports that biased racial attitudes begin forming in young children and that American black and white children are both biased toward whites. And, they say they have a scientific survey to back it up.
It goes like this.
An interviewer shows a young white girl illustrations of girls lined up from lightest-skinned to darkest skinned. Then, the interviewer asks her questions like: “Which girl is the smartest?” and “Which one is the good girl?” She points to the lighter-skinned girls. When the interviewer asks, “Which girl is the bad girl?” the little white girl points to the darker-skinned illustrations.
Her mother looks on through a live camera feed and cries. Obviously, scientifically, her sweet little girls is a budding racist. Or is she?
Not so fast.
This poorly crafted survey is an example of what researchers call a “confounding bias” introduced by how the questions were phrased and how the test was presented. I’m not making any comments about race or racism here. I’m only talking about the validity of the survey from a scientific standpoint, as a way to remind us all to be careful what we accept as “proof” of a particular point of view. Just because people in lab coats stand around with clipboards doesn’t mean it’s science.
In this survey’s case, there are a number of problems:
It goes like this.
An interviewer shows a young white girl illustrations of girls lined up from lightest-skinned to darkest skinned. Then, the interviewer asks her questions like: “Which girl is the smartest?” and “Which one is the good girl?” She points to the lighter-skinned girls. When the interviewer asks, “Which girl is the bad girl?” the little white girl points to the darker-skinned illustrations.
Her mother looks on through a live camera feed and cries. Obviously, scientifically, her sweet little girls is a budding racist. Or is she?
Not so fast.
This poorly crafted survey is an example of what researchers call a “confounding bias” introduced by how the questions were phrased and how the test was presented. I’m not making any comments about race or racism here. I’m only talking about the validity of the survey from a scientific standpoint, as a way to remind us all to be careful what we accept as “proof” of a particular point of view. Just because people in lab coats stand around with clipboards doesn’t mean it’s science.
In this survey’s case, there are a number of problems:
- This girl had no option to chose that “none of the children are bad.” She was forced to make a value judgment.
- Lack of variables. No other visual characteristics like hair color/length, eye color, clothing or even position of light and dark illustrations in the line-up were introduced in the line of questioning. Would the girl have made a different choice if the darker-skinned illustrations where wearing purple dresses and the survey taker’s favorite color happened to be purple? The survey doesn’t rule out these possibilities.
- Because of the lack of variables introduced, no correlation can be drawn between the girl’s choices and her racial attitudes. It’s scientifically useless.
Since this survey did not introduce any other possible variables – say, asking the same question but with the illustrated children arranged in a different order in the visual, for example – the survey isn’t scientifically conclusive.
But then, why would a black child point to the light-skinned child as being “good” or “smart”?
The survey’s results say that even black children pointed to light-skinned illustrations as being the “good” or “smart” children. How could it be anything but the child reflecting a belief that light-skinned individuals are somehow better then them or, at least, better off socially?
Here’s something else to consider. Children are not able to think abstractly at this young survey-takers’s developmental stage. When she is picking a child out of the line up, she isn’t drawing abstract conclusions about value based on skin color. Quite the opposite, she sees herself as a “good” and “smart” child, so she picks the illustration that “is like me.” (If you watch the video, you’ll see this is the case.)
This survey could just as easily be viewed as a measure of a child’s self-esteem than a test of his/her views on an abstract race construct. Why would a black child pick a light-skinned illustration as the “good” one? Maybe his or her parents and teachers have sent the dark-skinned child negative self-esteem messages. Therefore, the “good” child is the one that is opposite to them. That’s a self-perception that would fall on the shoulders of parents, teachers, and other influences in the child’s life.
Since the survey didn’t test for these possible variables for the responses it gathered, it’s interesting but scientifically useless. Again, this is not a defense of any kind of racist behavior. But, in the race to call young Americans “racist” I’m just flipping on the yellow light of caution.
Just because this survey is labeled “science” doesn’t mean it’s the genuine article.
