My Beauty Best Teacher

Kofi Akosah-Sarpong comments on the bane of superstition and irrationality and efforts being made to mitigate their effects."...West Africans need a new mindset and new thinking informed by their experiences, culture and history. West Africans live in new challenges and new dangers, some of which emanate from within their culture, unknown to them has led them lead a dim life...In a move reminiscent of the European Enlightenment era, which used reason to demolish entrenched deadly superstitions, Ghanaian scientists are currently working on strategies that would help explain things rationally, based on facts and given reasons, and are also mapping out strategies for science acculturation in order to minimize the degree of irrationality in the Ghanaian society...The challenges facing the nation today is to transform the minds, attitudes and behaviours in our society to appreciate scientific approach to doing things..."
Via GhanaWeb

Kofi Akosah-Sarpong indicts journalists for their complicitness in perpetuating the memes of superstition, a phenomenon all too common across Africa. "...All intellectual laziness aside, what worries me, and I have a lot of worries as a Ghanaian/African development journalist, is a lack of a questioning, critical response to such supernatual interpretation of events that affects practically all that matters in Ghana/Africa...While most Ghanaians accept journalistic inquiry into various wrong doings or oversights or the implications of petroluem prices on the average Ghanaian, journalists have failed in asking about the implications of the rain of prophetic and other spiritual activities in Ghana's development process... By throwing journalistic inquiry on prophetic, juju-marabou mediums, religion and other spiritual activities that are inhibiting the Ghanaian development process, Ghanaian journalists will help open up the dark recesses of the paranoids and conspiracy theorists who feed on Ghanaians deep-seated beliefs in the superstitions such as witchcraft and prophetic revelations that block people from finding rational, reasonable solutions to their problems..."
Via GhanaWeb

My brother passed me this article "Look Who's Irrational Now," that talks about a comprehensive new study released by Baylor University yesterday that shows that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases belief in superstitious and pseudoscience. Belief in God decreased the belief in everything from the efficacy of palm readers to the usefulness of astrology. The study also shows that the irreligious and the members of more liberal Protestant denominations, far from being resistant to superstition, tend to be much more likely to believe in the paranormal and in pseudoscience than evangelical Christians.

In my own personal experience, I also find this true. The students in my class that are the most grounded, the most likely to use rational thought and chuckle at irrational claims, are those who are also the most traditionally Christian. And those students in my class who are openly anti-religious tend to believe in magic- they have charms and rings, they are superstitious about rituals, and I even had one anti-religious student put a curse on me. From the article:

Anti-religionists such as Mr. Maher bring to mind the assertion of G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown character that all atheists, secularists, humanists and rationalists are susceptible to superstition: "It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense, and can't see things as they are."

Maybe this is why Americans are becoming gullible fools? Maybe the fall of Christianity is the reason that they're more likely to buy into charlatans who promise to sell them the world? Maybe this is why they actually get excited and faint over the One when he gives a speech, and they mock those who 'cling to their guns and religion' while clinging to One who promises to walk on water and control the weather? Maybe the fall of traditional Christianity is the reason why people believe that Bush personally knocked down the towers on 9/11, or personally destroyed the levies in New Orleans- or any of the other host of irrational concerns that are now commonly accepted. Who knows? Guess I'll just have to ask for guidance and faith from my 2,000-year-old space god.

Shocked and agast, my son's pants were agape. Last night was the final game on the season and, the 26th straight win for the Westwood Wildcats and my son blocked a 270 pound behemoth with his pants flapping in the breeze.

My Westwood Wildcats Football Team 2010, 2011 State Champs winner 26 straight football games

We were picked to lose by 13 or 20 points depending upon who you asked. They had 10 boys over 200 pounds and one over 300 and we had barely 2, maybe.

My son's pants ripped during the last football game. When I say rip, I mean a big old tear from crotch to way up the back. My son's gray sliding pants were his only salvation from indecent exposure.

Last week I had snatched up the pants and was preparing to mend them when my son interrupted emphatically:

"We're wearing the orange pants for state, Mom, don't touch 'em. They'll get fixed in the off season when they send them in to the shop."

OK, so the word "shop" should have let me realize that I was being taken to the cleaners. Imagine my shock when I look at those boys coming out of the locker room and there I see my son's grey sliding shorts and those pants and the big old rip traveling quietly up towards the waist band in the back like spilled syrup on my kitchen counter.

Isn't it funny how we're not shocked at our children as much as we say,

"What is everyone going to say about his Mama, not fixing his pants like that?"

But after the game. After we won a second state championship in a 33-21 nail biter (it was tied 21-21 with 2 minutes to go in the fourth quarter), he sheepishly said,

"Mom, it would have been bad luck for any of us to fix our pants. We all agreed to leave the tears in our pants. When you're winning, you keep doing what you're doing until it doesn't work any more."

At that point, I didn't care what anyone said about his Momma, I was just glad they won (and very glad he was OK.) But his words echoed in my ears.

Fixing What Works Breaks What Works
Sure, it was to the point of superstition and but all I could think of was some teachers I know caught in very nonsensical situations.

For example, in the state of Georgia, there were some schools that were climbing in Math scores but the state required them to move from Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, etc. to Math I, Math II, and Math III and many of the best math teachers were lost in some districts.

They tried to fix what wasn't broken for some schools to fix what was broken for others.

In the south the saying goes,

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

But we don't listen to that in education. Here are just a few examples I can think of:

• An amazing teacher does a great job at a certain grade level. She hits her stride and is really doing a great job after a year or two. But "they" decide it is time for a change and give her a new grade level even though she's already taught that grade level at another school and knows it isn't a great fit for her.
  
• A reading program works incredibly well but there is a new curriculum director and she wants to change it because she's "heard" another one is better.
  
• A history teacher has a phenomenal history program and has a book he loves. He's aligned the book with videos and has written quite a bit of content to go along with the book for his students. It is "time' to update the book and "they" go with another program and he looks at the new curriculum to decide if he really feels like starting over. The new book isn't just a new book but a whole new way of teaching it.
  
• A school decides that everyone is going to now be "on the same page" so the teacher who loved to quickly teach more "boring" topics (which were mastered, by the way) to accelerate into some great things that are more advanced is held back because the other teachers in the group don't want to do it that way.
  
• A good teacher is now given a script so administrators can know exactly what is being taught in every classroom over the complaints of those teachers who feel scripts stifle the good teaching they've been doing for more than 20 years. These teachers are told they will be replaced if they can't go with the new turn teaching has taken.
  
• I teach keyboarding with a class average of over 70 words per minute (or gwam as we say.) I use the same textbook my Mom did and teach it the "old fashioned way" because it works. We don't go into software until after I've taught them all the keys. My friends in other schools who were forced to move to a software-based approach run about 30 words a minute and the kids look at their fingers. Many don't care about the right way to teach typing, only that software makes it easier. I'm happy with my circa 1994 textbook and don't want a new one! I'll do it the old fashioned way because it works but in many schools, I wouldn't be allowed to be so "backwards." My students are still blogging, making videos, using QR Codes and doing incredible things but I just need a book to teach typing. (See my 8th Grade keyboarding portfolio using QR codes)

"Get better and better every day in every way."

The WSJ reports:

Aid agencies that recognize the effectiveness of indigenous medical practices are more likely to have success in dealing with disease in Africa than organizations that don’t...Western doctors sometimes assume that rural medical practices in sub-Saharan Africa are founded entirely on superstition says Curtis Abraham a writer based in East Africa.In fact, some facets of the traditional approaches to medicine dovetail nicely with Western approaches.

Just read this excellent article by Arthur Herman called "Climate hysterics v heretics in an age of unreason." I loosely quote from it:

By now that evidence has become pretty conclusive that man is not causing global warming. Yet believers in man-made global warming continue to demand more and more money to combat climate change and still more drastic changes in our economic output and lifestyle.

The reason is that they are believers, not scientists. No amount of empirical evidence will overturn what has become not a scientific theory but a form of religion. But what kind of religion? In civilised societies the mind of man is subject to certain unaccountable terrors and apprehensions when real worries are missing. As these enemies are entirely invisible and unknown, like today's greenhouse gases, people try to propitiate them by ceremonies, observations, mortification's, sacrifices such as Earth Day and banning plastic bags and petrol-driven lawnmowers. Fear and ignorance are the true source of superstition. They lead a blind and terrified public to embrace any practice, however absurd or frivolous, which either folly or knavery recommends.

I totally agree with his line of thinking.

In a keynote speech covered earlier Dele Olojede stated "...The fastest growing industry in Nigeria today—faster growing than even the telecom sector, and perhaps just as profitable—is the faith industry, which feeds off the misery of the people and appeals to their worst instincts and propensity to superstition, illogic and unreason...This unquestioning faith has adopted and perverted one of the tools of modern management, which is the concept of outsourcing non-core competencies to others. In this case, our prophets simply ask us to outsource everything to God...I do not by this mean to single out Christians at all; I think the same is largely true,perhaps even more so, in the other major religions. But our country right now is in a desperate state, a time that calls for clear thinking and rationality, not magical solutions and a reliance on divine intervention. Life is grim and hard, and it should not be obscured by the sentimental philosophy of the pulpit, where everything is outsourced to God and people are encouraged to believe that the just and the good will somehow result from some deity reaching down through the clouds to sweep all our sorrows away..."
covered also on NaijaBlog

Kofi Akosah-Sarpong writes about the bane of 'miracles' in Sub-Saharan Africa."...In a continent where poverty is massive, resulting in weak sanitation/medical systems and a culture some of which aspects are troublingly mired in superstition, gullibility, and disturbing ignorance, the deep hope for miracles to cure diseases and other distresses is high, bordering on the tacky or fanatical. From the Gambia to South Africa, Africans believe in miracles are legendary. In West Africa, where spiritual churches are most prominent compared to other parts of Africa, people attend churches 24 hours a day with the hope of visions and miracles. Aside from the spiritual churches and the old, tied orthodox churches, juju and marabou mediums and witchdoctors abound, attracting miracle and vision seekers helpless in the face insurmountable distress..."

Unlike liberals, whose main motivation seems to be to control other people, my main motivation is to understand other people, and thereby understand the world better. Several times in my blog I have wrote about my attempts to understand how liberals think, and my attempts are starting to converge.

In The Religion of the Democrats I wrote:

The modern Democrat party feels that people are trapped in an unfair and unjust material world. In churches they blame a lot of people for this, and their anger and bitterness is felt quite clearly. They frequently point fingers at God himself, who unjustly and unfairly did this to certain groups and races... They frequently reject the traditional Christian teachings of God, and try to go over his head to find some greater power than him. To Democrats, there is some higher power yet than even God- The People, The World, The Globe- they call it by many names, but the idea is the same, that there is some remote and powerful being out there who is higher than God... Democrats today believe that man is good and that the world is evil- that man was a good and decent person but was ambushed and put in a nation or world where bad things occur. It isn’t man’s fault, it isn’t any groups fault- no one is at fault, since man is good. The fault lies with the world, which must be changed from its fallen state..."

In Book Review: The Man Who Was Thursday I wrote:

...their ideas about economic suicide for no reason, their dislike of labeling things right and wrong, and their views on life and mark them as the modern Democratic Party. And at the center of the inner circle there is a man who speaks to applauding crowds and says pleasing phrases, but he is under no illusions, and his actions have terrible consequences for our great nation...

In Stonehenge and the Descent into Barbarianism I noted that:

...As government becomes increasingly powerful in Europe and America and we move father away from our Founder's conservative views, more and more often we are seeing evidence of Western societies slide back to barbarianism, and this celebration by hippies, leftists, liberals, and pagans at Stonehenge is yet another example. Pagan religion is becoming increasingly popular and accepted in our society. I see it most in the numbers of people who openly and proudly proclaim that they are not Christian, and also are the most fervent and devout believers in man-made-caused-one-way-global-warming-solved-by-government-power. They now worship the Green God. Other people, in an effort to be fair and politically correct to everyone, have decided to worship every god, embracing a polytheistic view of the world, whereby they pray to whatever god they think will help them the most. Animal rights activists worship animals and many people worship men (like Obama)- paganism is on the rise, not decline, in our society...

In The First Commandment I really noticed liberals religion:

...In my view, this commandment is fairly easy to understand- believe in God, believe in his power, and worship him and no other gods. Not only that, one should also refuse to 'worship' other things- money, sex, success, beauty, status, etc. Also, this commandment further prohibits one from holding false beliefs about God- in other words, don't believe in a false or incorrect God... society increasingly promotes worship of a new God- Mother Earth. The increasingly worship of this God, increasingly at odds with the God of the Bible and Christians, is a shocking breach of the 1st Commandment... A moral society is a just one, and we are losing our morality- we are attacking our morality, and it all begins with worshipping of other gods...

Today my brother emailed me another piece of the puzzle. Albert Mohler, in this article, starts putting the pieces to the puzzle together after reading a piece by Howard P. Kainz, which reminds him of something that he had read earlier by J. Gresham Machen.

The radical idea (for 1920) is that evangelical Christianity and its liberal rival are, in reality, two very different religions. Oh, I realize that you might not believe that liberalism is a religion, but does it have dogmas? A group of writings that you have to read? People who 'know' the ideas better than others and are accepted speakers on any liberal subject? Observances or holidays that we have to celebrate? Parades or rallies? Do liberals get all frothy and upset when someone utters a heresy like "affirmative action is racist" or "global warming isn't real"? What does 'future man' look like to a liberal- going to heaven, or a heaven on Earth? Liberalism is a religion.

I want to caution you that I agree with the author- "not all liberals are committed to this religious vision of liberalism... conservatives may find common cause and common ground with these non-religiously committed liberals."

In order to make this world a better place, you should be aware that there are people out there that BELIEVE on faith alone that mankind must overcome 'religious superstition' by means of Reason, that empirical science can and will answer all the questions about the world, and that the human race, by invalidating and disregarding Christian traditions, can and will achieve perfectibility.