The Kingswood connection

When I was growing up, the only Kingswood School I had ever heard of was the private high school my father had attended in West Hartford. Every fall they had Kingswood Day, and he took my sister and me along with him. I’m sure he went to see old classmates and teachers, as well as simply to be back in a place that must have had a lot of memories for him. I went because they served hot dogs and ice cream sandwiches and showed cartoons for the children.

Yesterday, glancing through wikipedia’s list of events that took place on June 24 in various years, I learned that in 1748, John Wesley founded Kingswood School in Bristol, England. (It later moved to its current location in Bath.) Following the link to wikipedia’s page on Kingswood School, I learned that there was in fact a connection to the school my father had attended.

George Nicholson, an alumnus of Kingswood School in Bath, decided to establish a school for boys in West Hartford, Connecticut. He gave it the same name, as well as the School’s crest, motto, colors and distinctive symbol, the Wyvern. (Today it is Kingswood-Oxford School, having merged with a girls’ school called Oxford.)

If the school founded by Nicholson retained those traditions, I wondered if it also retained a Methodist view of things. I never was aware of any religious aspect to the school during those Kingswood Day visits, but I would guess that back in the days when my father was a student, most schools - public and private - took for granted certain religious views and practices.

The Kingswood School founded by John Wesley has a page on their website describing the Christian ethos that they see as their heritage.

John Wesley’s aim was to create an academically rigorous school in which young people really understood what they were learning, but he also recognised that “an ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge” because he understood that happy and supportive relationships are central to the educational process. The Christian foundation of Kingswood remains central to its ethos and explains why the school is such a caring place.

Chapel, fund-raising for charities, and volunteer work are all regular features of school life. We happily welcome students from other denominations and faiths, and students who come from families with no faith. All we ask is that each student is prepared to set out on his or her journey of personal discovery and is willing to participate fully in the caring life of the school community.

I looked also at the page about Chapel and Community, and I found that again the emphasis is on a sense of caring community and giving attention to the needs of the wider community through charities and volunteer work. Having attended a Christian college myself, where daily chapel attendance and Sunday church attendance were compulsory, I find it strange to have chapel services linked primarily to our horizontal relationships with one another, without reference to our vertical relationship to God.

(That same emphasiswas prevalent in the church we attended with my father – which was Congregationalist rather than Methodist. So long as you were a caring person, it was seen as a given that your heart must be in the right place as far as God was concerned.)

Whatever my thoughts about their view of Chapel, however, I was quite impressed with an art project that the students completed this past year. Take a look at this lion, which is not only visually beautiful (I love the color blue) but also teaches a mathematical lesson (he became known as Mathematicat).

Fun and the arts

A lot of people wouldn’t put “fun” and “the arts” into the same sentence, unless there were a “not” somewhere in there. Obligatory visits to art museums, required literature classes, and mandatory attendance at concerts can certainly make the arts seem a lot more like work than fun.

But the Artsology website is all about making it fun to learn about the arts. Play games, or learn about “topics, events and major figures in the arts, including visual art, music, literature and dance.” For instance, learn about Hieronymous Bosch, whose paintings have long fascinated me. Or get an introduction on how to read music (an important skill, in my opinion, but one lacking in many otherwise educated people.)

As often happens when I start looking around on the web, I more or less stumbled on Artsology. I was looking for art-related sites, but not expecting to find a site I’d want to bookmark to visit again and again. It started with yesterday’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, an adaptation of Van Gogh’s painting “Starry Night” in which are hidden various well-known images from the study of astronomy (such as the Comet Hale-Bopp and the Crab Nebula). I can only identify a few of them, but I find the idea of this scavenger hunt appealing.

That made me think about other well-known paintings that have been adapted for various purposes. How many variations on Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” have I seen? Or Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” or his “The Last Supper”? I used to have a postcard-size print of an adaptation of “The Great Wave off Kanagawa,” varying from a faithful representation at the bottom to a pixellated look at the top (promoting some computer product or other, I’m sure, though I can’t remember what).

I was actually looking for a site discussing this type of alteration of famous paintings when I came across Artsology. (It has a page showing a few famous images used in advertising. I recognized the first, second, and fourth, though it had never before occurred to me that the cover picture for the movie Home Alone was taken from a famous painting.) So I haven’t learned much about what I went looking for (not that I knew what I was looking for, just that the subject interested me), but I found something just as good. Maybe better.

Congrats to the grads

There have been many times, as a mother, that I’ve thought back to my own childhood and thought, “Is this how it was for my parents?” or “This must be how my parents felt.” But probably never more so than today, watching my older son graduate from high school.

For the most part I think I’ve resisted the temptation to live through my children, wanting them to repeat experiences I had or pushing them to do things I never had the chance to do. Neither of them has shown an interest in arts and crafts, or playing a stringed instrument, or going hiking. My older son played in the marching band, which brought back memories of my participation in flag corps – but if I mentioned it he reminded me how much more effort it takes to play an instrument and march at the same time.

He is a good student by nature, having inherited both intelligence and a streak of perfectionism from both his parents. It was no surprise to see him get straight A’s, and we rarely had to either help him with homework or push him to finish assignments. Unlike me, he doesn’t enjoy creative writing, so he probably had to work harder for A’s in English classes than I ever did. And unlike me, he is a good enough instrumentalist to get straight A’s even in Band (I usually got an A- in Orchestra).

So it was not with great surprise, but with considerable pride, that we learned he was one of nineteen graduating seniors with a 4.0 average. I do my best to avoid bragging about my kids, but on graduation day it seems OK to mention that he was a valedictorian, something I longed to do but never quite managed. I know my parents were very proud that I was salutatorian, and I imagine I felt much the same way today that they did thirty-one years ago.

There’s something so stirring about the melody of “Pomp and Circumstance.” It’s still going through my head now, but I don’t mind. The ceremony in the gymnasium was long and hot (despite the enormous fans blowing at the doors), but it went surprisingly quickly for me (not for my bored ten-year-old). I looked out at the sea of purple gowns and mortar boards, and recognized young men and women I have seen in concerts and musicals over the past four years.

Even though I don’t know the majority of them, I know they are young people with hopes and dreams, anxieties and self-doubt. Whether or not they excelled academically, every one of them worked hard to get where they were today. For four years they have shared classes, lunches, jokes, wins and losses, good times and not so good times. Today was probably the last time they’ll ever all spend together.

For them it’s both a celebration and a good-bye. And it’s much the same for us parents. We celebrate what they’ve accomplished. And we know that in a few months, many if not most of us will be saying good-bye as they go off to college. Congratulations, and good luck, to the class of 2010.

Chicks or books

I was outclassed today. By a bird.

Most Wednesdays, my “reading buddy” is thrilled when I show up at her kindergarten classroom. She picks out a couple books to read, and her teacher picks out a game or two for us to play. We go to a table in the hallway, and spend about twenty minutes playing games (all of which reinforce reading or math concepts), then read the books.

When I started, she could identify beginning letter sounds, but that was about it. And she rarely gave me time to read a page before she turned it. Today she easily spelled out “man,” “bug,” and “pop” (though she does get “b” and “d” mixed up). And when I read, she insists on pointing to each word, and says some of them with me. I don’t pretend I had much to do with her progress, but it’s nice to see.

Today, however, she got bored with the game quickly. And I had barely started the book (The Day Snuffy Had the Sniffles) when she asked if it was time for me to go yet. Usually she wants me to read one more book, or play one more game, and I have to insist that I must get back to the office. But today there was something far more appealing inside the classroom.

State in a box

Nebraska float

I’ve always thought learning was fun. I especially like it when there’s a project that involves creativity, finding things, and figuring out how to present them visually. I always liked doing posters, making an exhibit to accompany a book report, or making a model of something.

When I found out my younger son had this “state in a box” assignment, I was excited. I was actually somewhat disappointed to find out that he’d do most of the work in school. When his older brother had a similar assignment (Nebraska, for a “parade of states”) in fifth grade, it was a family project, and we all worked together, though we made sure that he did the bulk of it.

Since our son picked Michigan as his state to research and report on, I figured it would be easy to come up with information and artifacts – he was born there, and we lived there six years. The license plates I found in the garage were ruled out, however, as simply being from the state and not telling about the state. (Come on – they show how the state uses its many lakes as a tourist attraction!)

When he told us he wanted to take in a sample of Motown music, I had little idea what that was, but I went through our dusty stacks of CD’s in the basement. I found a name that meant little to me, but I knew it wasn’t either classical or Christian (as most of our CD’s are). I opened the Lionel Ritchie CD and saw the word “Motown” on the CD – bingo!

Since license plates were out, I looked through the toy cars in his room, searching for one with recognizable brand characteristics. I had never realized how many of them are just generic cars rather than models of real cars. Fortunately, someone gave him a remote control Corvette several years ago. I cleaned off the dust, replaced the batteries, and discovered that a remote control car drives Kyra (our almost-two-year-old black lab) into a frenzy of barking.

When I saw Al wearing his University of Michigan T-shirt (a hand-me-down picked up sometime during our six years in Michigan), I thought surely we could find a way to work it into his display. But the teacher said no to that too. Al wanted me to help him make a model of a wolverine, but my creativity failed me there. I did some research of my own at the library, then came home with a box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes.

Friday my son did his presentation to his classmates (and some parents), though I missed it because I had forgotten and his text message to my cell phone somehow never arrived. So he did his own presentation to me at home. I had watched him painstakingly draw the state flag (and wish he had picked a state with an easier flag), but I hadn’t seen his hand-drawn license plate, or his clay representation of Michigan.

Somehow I need to find an outlet for my own creative interests, since my own job (auditing security access changes, approving software deployments, ordering new computers and accessories) does not lend itself to such pursuits. I like writing blog posts, but that’s not the same as scrounging around for materials to make things, mixing paints to get just the right color, or cutting, shaping, and gluing.

Catechesis for the 21st century

Two blog posts that I read this morning have been percolating in my brain. One warns of the danger of putting too much emphasis on doctrine, and too little on a changed life. The other warns against letting experience become the authority rather than sound doctrine. Both are concerned with the appropriate place of doctrine, and both are no doubt reacting against an imbalance often witnessed in our churches.

Dr. Platypus commends another blogger’s critique of an article in Christianity Today, “The Lost Art of Catechesis.” The authors of this article note with dismay that the lay-led Sunday School movement has pretty much replaced the previous practice of pastor-led catechesis. Despite all the good that is accomplished in Sunday School, children who have grown up in it know a handful of Bible stories (the same ones get taught over and over again) but generally lack “for any form of grounding in the basic beliefs, practices, and ethics of the faith.”

The critique jumps on what is seen as the subordination of Bible stories to learning a set of theological statements. If that were the essence of catechesis, I would agree. Many people associate catechesis with a catechism, a set of questions and answers that constitute a systematic explanation of what a Christian is to believe and do. They were intended to ensure that Christians understood the essentials of their faith, but today they are associated with a practice of rote memorization divorced from a practical outworking of one’s faith.

How did that happen? This post at Parchment and Pen notes a changing attitude toward study of the Bible over the course of church history since the Reformation. The Reformers insisted that Scripture was the authority, rather than tradition. They emphasized study of Scripture, not only for clergy but for laypeople as well. (And they also developed catechisms to go along with that study, as the authors of the CT article noted.) With the coming of the Enlightenment period, however, people came to see reason as the final authority rather than revelation.

Tackling financial illiteracy

I read today’s news, that the Obama administration had “announced a new campaign to promote financial education for high school students nationwide,” with mixed reactions. On the one hand, it’s a no-brainer that students need a better understanding of financial issues, both to handle money wisely in their personal lives and to be well-informed voters when it comes to how their tax money is used. But is a new campaign pushed by our President the best way to accomplish that?

Looking for related news stories, I discovered that the President’s Advisory Council on Financial Literacy had made a number of recommendations last January (prior to Obama’s inauguration), including that “Schools should be required to teach financial education from kindergarten through 12th grade.” Wondering why it took so long to even start to implement these, I read another article which explained that the changeover in administrations was one barrier to faster progress (presumably that would have been the case regardless of who the outgoing and incoming Presidents were).

It also pointed to the difficulty in implementing any kind of nationwide educational requirements, because most curricular decisions are made locally. Furthermore, teachers are already struggling to fit current curricular requirements into their class schedules. How are they going to squeeze in one more?

Ideally financial literacy is not treated as a separate program but is integrated into other classes. I think several things I read did stress this point. But I can’t help wondering something that I didn’t see addressed in any of the articles I read – what are the reasons this isn’t happening already? If something as obviously needed as financial literacy hasn’t already been incorporated into classroom teaching, are there underlying problems that won’t be solved by simply adding a new program at the federal level?

When fingers do the reading

Monday evening, our Webelos den went to the library to work on earning their Communicator pin. After going over how to find books and how to take good care of them, the children’s librarian brought out what looked like a very large photo album. This was a Braille copy of the Bible, she explained, and she gave the boys a chance to feel the pages.

My parents had friends who were blind, so I was familiar with the look and feel of Braille materials from an early age. (Not that I ever learned to read them.) It came as somewhat of a surprise, Monday, to realize that it has been so long since I have seen someone actually using Braille that it was probably something completely new to these fourth grade boys.

The librarian added that no one was using the Braille books anymore, so they had been removed from the library’s holdings. She saved the Braille Bible herself, because it seemed a shame to lose something so wonderful. Today people use recorded books instead, she explained.

When I was growing up, there were recorded books, but they weren’t widely available. When my grandfather had cataract surgery, he had patches over his eyes while he recovered, and we took turns staying with him and helping him out while he was unable to see. To pass the time, he listened to some recorded books, which were loaned out by the organization that made them available to blind people.

Books: Education (Opposing Viewpoints)

For a book less than two hundred pages long, this took me a long time to finish (and not only because I mislaid it for two weeks). The subject is interesting and relevant, and each viewpoint is short enough to finish easily in one sitting, even with a dog whimpering for attention (or maybe it’s the food I’m eating while I read) and staring at me with her big dark eyes. But as with the previous book that I read in this Opposing Viewpoints series (on Islam), I felt that the viewpoints were addressing various aspects of the issue without answering the points made by other writers.

Partly that is a result of these books being compiled from previously written materials, rather than essays written for the purpose of the book. The best books I have read that present opposing viewpoints allow each author to directly address the points made by other authors in the same volume – and better yet, to respond to their responses. One article did directly criticize the views expressed in the previous one, which had been written by then-President Clinton and was no doubt widely distributted. But its objection was that too many people would jump on what Clinton said to do without noting that he said one had to go about it the right way.

That probably applies to just about everything written on the subject of education, and accounts for a great many of the problems in the system at all levels. It is folly to take any one recommendation about education and try to apply it across the board, without consideration for how it will work out in a specific situation, and often without heeding the cautions that accompanied the initial recommendation. The best piece in the book, I think, is one that emphasizes the need for each local community to have authority for and take responsibility for implementing educational programs that meet their needs and their goals. That author also stressed that it is a long, difficult process, with no quick or easy fixes.

There are some places where bilingual education is done well. One of them happens to be in a community near ours, where elementary students (whose parents choose to have them participate in this program) learn to be fully bilingual, regardless of whether their first language is English or Spanish. Other bilingual programs have been found to be dismal failures. It is a mistake to say that bilingual education is best based on the success in West Liberty. But it is even more mistaken to say that the whole idea is flawed because of the places where it has been done so badly.

Reading Buddies

I am now a Reading Buddy.

Considering that google reported approximately 21 million hits when I searched on “reading buddies,” it’s hardly a new idea. Somewhere in those 21 million pages, I might possibly find who started the first program, whose success was copied over and over again in schools across the country. At least one of them has been around since 1994. So I’m somewhat surprised I never heard of it before.

I have known of programs pairing adult volunteers with students who struggle with reading. When we moved to Michigan in the fall of 1998, I volunteered in such a program at a nearby school until I found full-time work. But there, it was the students who did the reading, and our role as volunteers was to listen, help with difficult words, and ask questions to check for comprehension. I’ve no idea how much my participation helped the girl I worked with – six weeks is probably not long enough to make a big difference. (They assured me before I started, though, that they were glad to have me even for a limited time.)

In this program, though, I do the reading – at least most of the time. According to the school principal, who presented the idea of the program to our church a few weeks ago, many of the children in his school have no one read to them at home. Most of the children live in poverty, and statistics show that they get read to about a tenth of a percent of the time a middle class child is read to. One of the many websites I looked at said that in households living in poverty, there are often no children’s books in the house, and often no adult able to read them anyway.

I’ve no idea how many hours I read to my boys over the years, or how many hours my father read to us as children, but it’s sad to think of a child getting only a tiny fraction of that time. My own boys are long past the age when I sat and read to them at bedtime (though once in a while my younger son does ask me to read something). I’ve always felt a bit awkward with children until I get to know them (I was very relieved to discover that I didn’t have the same problem with my own children because I’ve known them since birth), but I love books, so I decided this was a program I had to get involved in.