Why does the author speak of the messiah in the past tense?

I am presently 21 years old, the oldest of five siblings, and the son of a wonderful mother and father. I was born in good ol’ North Dakota, but spent close to three-and-a-half early and formative years growing up on an orphanage my parents helped establish in Uganda–a beautiful country located in the heart of Africa. After returning to the United States, my family re-settled on a farm in North Dakota, where my mother somehow managed to homeschool myself and the rest of the rascal siblings up till I was a junior in high school. I spent the last two years of highschool at a tiny public school (20 in my graduating class), and after graduating took a year off to work, visit my old home and friends in Uganda, and get some direction on my next step in life. After a year, I decided to head to Dordt College with the aim of training to be a pastor someday. Since then, at the end of my sophomore year at Dordt, I have redirected my goals a bit, now majoring in both Theology and Philosophy with the intention of going on to further studies at the Graduate level, and to someday teach Theology at a highschool or college–God willing.

I’m a bit of a book-a-holic, and am ever cycling through delightful new reading material. My interests are very broad, ranging from rocks and minerals to Medieval philosophy, and sci-fi to the Mystics, but some of my primary reading is done in the areas of Theology, Philosophy and History. In addition to reading, I spend lots of time in the outdoors–camping, hiking, kayaking, and doing landscape photography. I could go on and on, but then I feel like I’d be bordering dangerously close to a Facebook/Myspace-like list of likes/dislikes, interests, relationship status, etc… So–I’ll end it here. I count it a great privilege to be able to learn from others’ ideas at the Veil Away, as well as contributing my own two cents.

Harris is a very clear, entertaining writer.  I thoroughly enjoyed his book.  But I found it lacking in some important areas.

I was reminded of this disappointment by an interview with Harris posted on CNN.com today.  In this interview, Harris says:

“The irony is that we actually agree much more about morality than anyone lets on.  The issue is, we do have whole cultures and subcultures that have, based largely on religious conviction, very distorted notions of how human beings can flourish.  We have people who think you should throw battery acid in the faces of little girls for trying to learn to read in Afghanistan.  So clearly, there are real-world correlates to that kind of thinking and that kind of orientation, and it’s not our job to not judge it and say, ‘Well, to each his own, everyone has to work out his own strategy for human fulfillment.’ It’s just not true.  There are people who are wrong about human fulfillment.”

Obviously, I agree.  There are rights and wrongs in morality.  But then, I’m a Christian.  I believe those rights and wrongs have been decreed by the eternal, omniscient, all-good God of the entire universe, from whom and to whom and by whom all things are forever, amen!  Harris simply asserts the immorality of throwing battery acids in the faces of little girls because it’s detrimental to “human fulfillment.” I appreciate Harris for taking an interest in my fulfillment.  But do his beliefs give him any reason to?

To take another example, in this clip, Dawkins describes the God of the Old Testament as, “A misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” Debatable, of course, but even if that were all true – who is Dawkins to say that misogyny, homophobia, racism, infanticide, genocide, filicide, megalomania, sadomasochism and malevolence are morally wrong?

It seems like Harris and the others are refighting the Enlightenment.  It’s as if these writers have never encountered the classic problem of is and ought: Science and reason, even if we accept their legitimacy, can only tell us what is, not what ought to be.*

That just seems like poor philosophy.  Other atheist writers, from Sartre to Nietchze, have attempted to answer these questions.  Harris, Dawkins, et al don’t even broach them.  And that’s a problem, because judging by the comment boards of the World Wide Web, a lot more people are reading Harris and Dawkins these days than their more sober forbears.

Thoughts?

* I read George Smith’s Atheism:  The Case Against God, in high school (a book that’s included in Harris’ bibliography).  Smith claimed that this problem was a non-problem.  I don’t have the book in front of me now, but he said something like, “It can be scientifically stated that if Frank wants some money, he ought to get a job.” Or, I thought to myself, he ought to rob a bank.  Or, perhaps he ought to murder his parents for the inheritance money.  Etc.

Frequent cross-country moves when I was growing gave me a broadly evangelical religious foundation –with an emphasis on the broadly. Due to the blessings and curses of small towns, I have spent significant amounts of time worshiping in Anglican, Baptist (American, Southern, and GARB), Methodist, Nazarene, Lutheran (Missouri Synod and ELCA), Missional, and Reformed (CRC , RCA, and URC) congregations as well as (unsuccessful) attempts to avoid God altogether.

The love of my life, Sarah, and I were married the year that the final, original Peanuts comic strip was published following the death of its creator, Charles Schulz, and have enjoyed the cohabitation (and thinning) of our respective libraries and cd collections ever since.

If college was supposed to be the meandering journey pictured in the glossy, tri-fold pamphlet, I have failed miserably. Pursuing my first set of bachelor’s degrees on my wife’s dime is both paradoxical and impetus to find the shortest line between an acceptance letter and the graduation handshake. With my schedule on track to graduate with degrees in Biblical Theology and Philosophy in 2011, I try to wedge-in studies of art, linguistics, hermeneutics, postmodern thought, and ethics.

Speaking of things wedged-in, books in the giant pile waiting to be read (or reread) include: Kevin Vanhoozer’s Transcending Boundaries in Philosophy and Theology, James Daane’s A Theology of Grace, Vance Packard’s The Hidden Persuaders, and Emmanuel Levinas’s Alterity & Transcendence as well as many, many others. I will be continuing my studies in Oxford this summer and hope to apply there for graduate studies, while also sending my info to Wheaton, The University of Edinburgh, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and Cambridge next Fall.

Afterward

In order to understand Broch and Seerveld’s arguments, it is necessary to locate them in relation to particular religious conviction or presuppositions. While Broch, himself, would appear to have harbored Christian leanings, he views the world as post-religious and, therefore, attempts to establish a new general value system of which the aesthetic is just one facet. Seerveld is unabashedly Christian in his philosophical orientation, however, this conviction also forces him to address not only the difficult issue of how kitsch relates to art, but how art relates to obedient Christian life. Indeed, Seerveld’s perspective on kitsch is grounded in his religious orientation as much as Broch’s perspective is grounded in his replacement for religion, the “general value-system.”

Yet, both men insist that true art is to be geared toward a transcendent goal. For Seerveld, this transcendence is tied to recognition of God as the divine pattern-maker for all of aesthetic life, informing normative behavior, and himself, the referent of all human artistic endeavor. For Broch, this transcendence is of a far more Platonic flavor. True cultural formation is movement toward the infinite where, in contrast, kitsch is the reactionary return to imitation of existing rational systems. The moment of cultural decline, in which he perceived himself to live, was understood as affecting a return to simple, emotive, and even base aesthetics. Thus, kitsch—itself—was understood by Broch as being emblematic of the universal decline of humanity.

“Every era of disintegration of values was also an era of kitsch. The disintegration of classical culture of Imperial Rome created kitsch, and the present era, standing at the end of that process in which the medieval worldview began, must once again find its representation in the aesthetically evil. For times of final loss of values are grounded on evil and the fear of evil, and the art that is to be their most obvious expression must also be an expression of evil at work in them.”

From the author’s perspective, the temptation is to see Seerveld as the Prophet Hosea, lovingly seeking repentance and return to faithful aesthetic obedience while Broch is cast as the Prophet Malachi, denouncing the popular aesthetic and warning of coming judgment. However, a more nuanced reading reveals that in actuality Broch is far more positive and Seerveld negative. Broch admits that all aesthetic work includes elements of kitsch, (beauty over good), and tendentiousness, (subversion of arts true purpose). This perspective leaves his audience with the possibility that existing popular art (kitsch), while not ideal, does at least contain some of the necessary elements of true art. Thus, while kitsch is evil in the general value system as a whole, it is fallen—but not unredeemable. In contrast Seerveld doggedly implies that absolute categories of true art and kitsch have no overlap, that is that kitsch is of another sort than true art. Ironically, by allowing art to be evil, Broch allows for it to be reclaimed in a way that Seerveld’s seemingly more tolerant view cannot. As Christians from neo-Calvinist traditions acknowledge that all art—not just kitsch—is fallen, it is Broch’s view that offers hope for redemption far more than fellow neo-Calvinist Seerveld.

Bibliography

Broch, Hermann. “Evil in the Value-system of Art,” In Geist and Zeitgeist: The Spirit in an Unspiritual Age: Six Essays by Hermann Broch, Ed. And Trans., John Hargraves. New York: Counterpoint, 2002.

Hargraves, John. Introduction from Geist and Zeitgeist: The Spirit in an Unspiritual Age: Six Essays by Hermann Broch, by Hermann Broch. New York: Counterpoint, 2002.

Seerveld, Calvin, A Christian Critique of Art and Literature, Second ed. Downsview, Canada: Toronto, 1968.

Seerveld, Calvin, Rainbows for the Fallen World. Downsview, Canada: Toronto Tuppence Press, 1980.

With all of the preceding in mind, the central question returns: is kitsch evil? However, this begs a more fundamental question: how do Seerveld and Broch distinguish between kitsch and true art? For Seerveld, true art is aesthetically obedient art, the result of an aesthetic life: the Christian’s faithful response to God’s creational ordinance of allusivity. This allusivity is the central tenant in Seerveld’s aesthetic program and is variously described as the quality of referential interplay between action and enjoyment, playful ambiguity, and “oblique, metaphorical constituency.” If these descriptors are less than clear, it would seem to be that Seerveld strived for intentionally vague language when defining his central tenant of good aesthetic formation:

“To posit that symbolic objectification must be law-abiding allusive is to affirm that it must be heightened by a playful, suggestion-rich ambiguity, its internal thematic convergence and consistency must make aesthetic sense by bearing a characteristically oblique, metaphorical constituency”

This is to say that the qualifying function of artistic (aesthetic) activity is its allusivity and that this allusivity is the embodiment of meaning in an meaningful-object that is most similar to the way that symbols allude to their referents in rich and complex ways. While all aspects of life manifest allusiveness, true art, by contrast, is qualified by allusivity and manifests allusive traits to a greater degree. The benefit of this insight for the question of the relationship of kitsch to true art is that this allusive functionality distinguishes art from kitsch.

Kitsch, then—while allusive—is not richly, complexly, metaphorically meaningful, causing Seerveld to argue that it is immature, superficial, slick, and not enlarging experience. Precisely the opposite of true art, but instead “canonizing immaturity.” By this Seerveld seems to argue that kitsch retains sufficient allusivity, despite its “denatured” status, to allow its audience to believe that a Terry Redlin print on the wall is true art—or at least true-enough art.5 Seerveld argues that kitsch is a “block” to the development of a “joyful, deep, and normatively obedient aesthetic life,6 and so is, to return to the original quote, so hurtful, if not evil.

To comment further is, perhaps, to enter into speculation, but it can be further argued that kitsch for Seerveld is kitsch precisely because it is not true art. Thus, while true art 1) unfolds creation, 2) in obedient submission to the rule of Jesus Christ, and 3) acknowledges its referent in God; kitsch 1) advances nothing, returning to nostalgic, sentimental re-imaginings of existing creation, 2) rejects the culturally formative command implicit in the rule of Christ, and 3) denies its divine-referential responsibility. For those who hold Seerveld’s perspective, kitsch is art in as much as adultery is still marital union and idolatry is still worship. That is to say, kitsch remains an aesthetic activity or even aesthetic life, but is a degenerate, corrupted form of the same that fails to recognize the normative mandates established in creation for its own outworking (unfolding). Perhaps this is one of the reasons that Seerveld is unable to finally call kitsch “evil” because to do so would be to, in some sense, diminish the creational structure in which art—even bad art—participates. Put another way, if kitsch relies on the repetition of established formulas and artistic convention, lacking genuine creativity and originality present in true art, it still repeats formulas and convention that were, in their first expressions, original and creative. For example, to call a painting of a rose “kitsch” because it reproduces a hackneyed convention is to deny that a rose, well painted and originally represented (re-presented) on canvas had been, in its first instance, an aesthetically obedient act. In effect, this would be suggesting that the rose-subject has transmuted, by process of repetition, from good to evil—a feat equal to that of turning gold to lead. Thus, it would seem that Seerveld is cautious in his evaluation of kitsch because he recognizes, as an art historian, that today’s art has the potential to become tomorrow’s kitsch and his delineation of the two has more to do with means of production and originality than content, though he touches on both.
As to a final verdict on good art verses evil art, true art verses kitsch, Seerveld himself seems conflicted in the midst of his own definitions. Good art is to be allusive, symbolic, metaphorical, richly ambiguos, while maintaining thematic consistency that is itself suggestive. Yet, good art must also demonstrate obedient submission to the rule of Jesus Christ. Is this obedience to be consciously maintained so that only Christians can produce true art? If obedience to the rule of Christ is merely to reflect the natural order as it exists as a result of creational mandates without conscious recognition of the Creator, then true art is far more inclusive of the work of secular artists, but do these artists truly find the ultimate referent of their work in God? Seerveld’s intellectual categories are binary, either a work is aesthetically obedient or it is not, either it is true art or it is kitsch. Yet, in application his definitions seem to yield a maddeningly ambiguos gray area between kitsch as poor art, but art none the less, and secular art as true art, but somehow less than art produced in full obedience to God.

Returning to Herman Broch for an alternative to Seerveld’s ambiguity, we find a far clearer critique of kitsch as it relates to cultural formation. Since culture formation is, by Broch’s definition, the positive value on his general value scale, true art is any art that contributes positively to cultural formation. The negative value in Broch’s system is death, so that art that does not participate in cultural advancement is not in rebellion against death and, therefore, is evil. Further, art, as a value system is to be autonomous, not co-opted under another value system. For example artistic cultural formation is not to in the service of political, religious, or economic concerns, and it is in fact, when these other systems invade the sovereign territory of art that they are established by their dogmatism as evil. Further, the character of this conflict between the artistic value system and the rival system must have the character of opposition so that what is good in art must be evil in the rival system and visa versa.

Broch’s arguments immediately require further clarification because examples of true art that are also tendentious (tendenziös) are so ready to hand. For example the art of medieval Europe is championed by Seerveld for exactly this reason: it reflected a Christian perspective. This example demonstrates that in medieval Europe the value system of art had been co-opted by a religious value system. Broch responds by suggesting that art, of all the value systems, has the greatest tolerance to invasion by oppositional value systems because it has no theme of its own; art’s theme is representation and so endlessly plays host to “alien value-systems.” Indeed, Broch argues that autonomous art’s only criterion is his expanded naturalism: universal truth grounded in reality.

Therefore, Broch does not call tendentious art, kitsch. Instead, he argues that the true essence of kitsch is in “the confusion of ethical and aesthetic categories.” That is, kitsch wishes to produce not that which is good, but that which is beautiful. Therefore, while employing the instrumentality of the world as it really is what kitsch actually seeks is the world as one wishes or fears it to be. That is one uses naturalistic methods to bring about a reactionary effect. Kitsch is that which relies solely on this effect, beauty, only using the good in an instrumental fashion. Broch uses as the example of opera in which the structure of the work is dictated entirely according to its intended effect rather than any artistic good that could otherwise limit the audience’s response.

Therefore, pulling together the tendentious and the affective, art becomes kitsch when its whole value system, (expanded naturalism), is overthrown or subverted by a rival system, (effectiveness). In the case of the medieval period, with its religious overtones, its art remains art because its primary value system is still culturally formative and aesthetic value grounded in expanded naturalism, (aesthetic sphere sovereignty). Opera, however, is kitsch precisely because it jettisons aesthetic’s expanded naturalism, and even rationality, in favor of dramatic effect. Thus, kitsch represents evil in the value system of art in that it overturns and supplants arts own native value system in favor of another.

For Broch, kitsch is undeniably historically determined. This determination takes the form of imitation of existing artistic movements at the expense of forms that are genuinely culturally formative. Thus, what makes kitsch evil is the degree to which it undermines the culturally creative aspect of true art by rendering it impotent by repetition, imitation, and subversion. Thus, where true art is creative, kitsch plunders creative art, imitating its formulas even as it negates their efficacy. By rendering true art’s nature merely a set of conventions, kitsch produces a totalization of those conventions. Therefore, for Broch, kitsch is not the same as bad art, (art that missed its calling in the positive value), but it establishes a formal value system all its own.

True art is focused on a target value (wertziel) of increasing knowledge and perception of the universe; art has an ethical purpose and an aesthetic effect. Kitsch, or anti-art, deals in what is already known, cannot increase knowledge, and has aesthetic effect as its only goal. Therefore, kitsch is neither bad nor failed art, but is art of the same sort—of similar essence—aimed at an opposite value goal from true art. That is all to say that kitsch is art, but art that seeks the beautiful, rather than the good.

How does the “cultural formation” of art express good or evil tendencies?

Not surprisingly, good, in Broch’s system is 1) any activity that is culturally constructive, 2) grounded in reality, and 3) representative of the totality of this new general value system. To be culturally constructive is to “discovery of new insights and new forms of seeing and experiencing that confer the character of universal truth.”  The character of universal truth is to be grounded in reality, what Broch calls “expanded naturalism” in which truth “show[s] the (inner or outer) world ‘as it really is.’” However, to leave Broch’s conception at this point is to doom its horizons to radically conservative empiricism in which the good functions only to defend and represent (re-present) the sensible world in which it finds itself. Cognizant of this fact, Broch notes a further tension between the good that reflects the world as it is, and the good that reflects “the final value goal”—that shows the world as one “wishes or fears it to be.”  Thus, the fiercely objective, naturalistic good is tempered by the subjective, idealistic good so that positive cultural formation becomes possible.

For Seerveld, the goodness of creation rests in three similar qualifications, good cultural formation is that activity which 1) unfolds creation, 2) in obedient submission to the rule of Jesus Christ, and 3) is acknowledge’s its referent in God. In line with his neo-Calvinist foundations, Seerveld argues for the existence of a biblical mandate that demands that not a pinch of life or human cultural response may be exempted from God’s claim upon it in Christ.  The bumper sticker version of this doctrine expressed in Abraham Kuyper’s “every square inch” argues that cultural formation is good, in that it finds its normative shape in God’s revelation of His will.  Thus, cultural formation, far from being optional, is not only necessitated, but commanded by biblical injunction to subdue the earth in accordance with God’s will.  This good cultural formation is, therefore, to be understood as referential to God, founder of the absolute value system in that it respects His norming and moves forward as a response to Him in gratitude.  Positive cultural formation for Seerveld is good according in that, like Broch, human creative activity is inherently positive, but Seerveld differs of foundation for culture’s ultimate value. For Seerveld the theological/speculative value system has not been overturned, nay, cannot be overturned by definition of its designation as ultimate and beyond human control. Human cultural formation is good because it carries on the unfolding of good creation ordained by God and is good in as much as it recognizes this fact. Broch, instead, while seeming to lament its passing, still consigns the old general value system, which Seerveld is championing, to the status of human artifact—created over time and the result of social consensus.

This last point was the view of Justice Holmes who did much to shape our view of the freedom of speech.  Holmes recognized that the Constitution allows for various modes of thought to be adhered underneath it – no one interpretation is more correct than others.  But the question of “correct” interpretation would perhaps put our discussion on another path.  For Holmes, and for most judges today, the important thing is applying the law to new situations.  Precedents and past opinions are important, but it is the judge who ultimately decides what the law is.  Like or not, that has been the effect of the Supreme Court since at least Justice Marshall in the early nineteenth century, though the tradition could be said to extend earlier than that.  Therefore, whatever principles that the judge might use, such as the “right to privacy” and all the conditions that it entails, the judge will decide whether the condition has been met or the principle violated based on the details of the evidence.

Back to the question of the Marine’s funeral, the Court will decide what should be done based on the details of the case.  Was the family of the Marine actually injured in any way by the protest?  How should we weigh the family’s situation of grief with the freedom of speech exercised by the protesters?  These are questions the Court will consider.  Of course, the Court will also consider how their decision could be interpreted as a precedent.  Or, they might find a precedent that closely resembles the situation of the Marine’s family and rule stare decisis.

The specific of the case are important.  I haven’t researched them any further, but according to Kenny’s post, the family is asking the Court to reinstate a verdict against the protesters.  It appears the the suit is private and civil – the protesters were not breaking the law, they were sued by the family for their actions.  The Court is then deciding whether lower courts should rule in favor of the protests on the basis of free speech.  Thus, we are dealing with a sort of balancing of rights.  I’m interested to know where this case ends up, but more importantly what the Court uses to substantiate its claims as to what the the law is.

One more distinction will be helpful as we debate this issue of the Court’s interpretation of the Constitution.  The court system in the the U.S. is a positive institution – it says what the law is, not what the law ought to be.  An institution saying the latter would be normative, and that in the U.S. is Congress.  So, when we talk about legislating morality, that happens in Congress where laws are made and, in a sense, proffered to the courts who will decide how those laws line up with the Constitution.  But at every step of the process, the “morality,” or even simply opinions and presuppositions of public individuals will influence how they interpret the text of the law .  Federal judges, though, have the final say and are in a unique position to determine the effect of the law.

Today I had the honor of listening to Bible Institute of Los Angeles professor John Mark Reynolds speak to local high school teachers about Critical Thinking.  As the school embarks on a new journey toward the “college preparatory” label, most teachers feel divided between pastoring students into Christianity (that “monstrosity” of an upbringing; Thanks for describing this problem in all its colors, Tom SB.) or teaching rigorous academics.  Reynolds clearly revealed the false dichotomy, and yet revealed an ultimate goal for Christian Religious Education: good habits of mind and heart.  He focused the habits of mind by calling them the skills to recognize validity in logic.  The habits of heart focus more on the experience a student gets as he steps into the interpretive experience, whether reading Plato or the Bible.  Put together, habits of mind and heart educate students to read for experience and to analyse.

The paper:

“With the goal of providing our nation with competent employees and citizens, corporations and educational associations, including Apple, Sun Microsystems, Walt Disney Company, and the National Education Association, ask educators everywhere to redesign curriculum and instruction for twenty-first century skills.  Among the standards is the call to “Promote deeper engagement with core subjects through analysis and synthesis, not merely descriptive or memorized facts: In a world of facts at our fingertips, depth of knowledge matters more than breadth.” (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2007).  This call is in response to the observation of the lack of critical thinking by employers and educators alike.  Critical thinking is the root of the skills of analysis and synthesis.  Richard Paul, in an address in Berkeley, California, defines critical thinking in two ways.  First, it is “a system for opening every system… it opens up business…chemistry…sports.  It enables us to put things into intellectual perspective” (Paul, 2007).  Second, “Critical thinking is thinking that analyzes thought, that assesses thought, and that transforms thought for the better. […] It’s thinking about thinking while thinking in order to think better” (Paul, 2007).

           My experience with ninth graders has inspired me to focus on the skill of critical thinking, as well.  The ninth graders I taught and observed for the past 4 weeks have numerous obstacles to developing critical thinking skills. The obstacles can be divided into two common categories, both of which are under the control of the teacher: learning environment and instruction strategies.  In addition to these categories, teachers should design instruction with the knowledge that most ninth graders are not yet skilled thinkers or meta-thinkers, nor are they deeply self-motivated.  Scaffolding is always necessary in the design of quality instruction.

           First of all, how can teachers foster critical thinking through the learning environment?  The Partnership for 21^st Century Skills claims that experts want a whole system that involves technology and place in relationship with the goal of both “formal and informal learning” in order to free children for their full development (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2009).  Two areas in which a teacher can improve their classroom environment, beyond many common sense lighting and classroom arrangement strategies and the more difficult task of fostering a critical thinking school culture, are providing “relevant contexts “ and utilizing all of the research and technology tools they have. 

           A phrase that could help form the connection between environment and instruction is “just in time” rather than “just in case” (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2009). By using technology to connect students to peers around the globe as well as the local community, student can solve problems “just in time” in a real context.  Developing a new perspective of classroom environment to include the internet space as well as local space can help expand the relevance of foreign language instruction, specifically.

           My first attempt at teaching ninth graders nearly failed, in my opinion, because I did not make relevant a potentially successful context.  We were to learn vocabulary in order to communicate about houses—rooms, furniture, their descriptions and locations.  I found a blueprint of a house up for sale in Barcelona that was also a UNESCO World Heritage site.  Many students had recently encountered UNESCO in a previous project, and I thought that filling in the blueprints with rooms and furniture would be sufficiently relevant.  However, I did not build into the situation enough relevance through an actual problem.  Rather, students simulated a small discussion over where they might put furniture in the house.  A real context would involve communicating with a peer in Spain, perhaps getting real pictures of a house from the peer, and extending the relationship into the future by dwelling in a common, internet space periodically.

           In addition to the lack of relevance, I did not prepare the ninth graders to accomplish the simulated task that I gave them.  Rather than providing the needed build-up practice, step by step instruction, a clear objective, and immediate feedback, I gave them a broad goal of “learning the house vocab” by “talking about this house and filling out the blueprint with vocabulary.”  I should have built in scaffolding strategies for the learning experience that would demand critical thinking. 

           A simple practice that will help students develop thinking about thinking involves a deck of cards.  The teacher, while giving a lecture or some other learning experience, will emphasize two critical questions.  For example: What does this Spanish word mean?  How does it fit into a grammatically correct sentence?  Give an example.  Then, during any point in the class time, the teacher will walk to the cards, draw one, and ask the person whose name was drawn to answer the two questions.  Eventually, by simply walking toward the deck of cards, nearly every student will be asking questions about their own thought: what does this word mean and how do I use it?  (Paul, 2007)

           This strategy would have helped my ninth graders to focus their thoughts, quite literally, on the activity.  A final strategy that connects place to instructional design strategies is small study groups.  In the context of my house blueprints, Margaret Fuller, a veteran teacher who advocates study groups, would say that an hour each week could encourage critical thinking if the study groups met over a real-world problem (ReLeah, 2006).  In my case, every Wednesday during the unit, my students should have met in groups of 5 to discuss several issues including how one should build and design a home.  Allowing for some freedom of interest to vary the topic, students would come, each Wednesday, with a reading or writing task in preparation for the group work.  They would leave with a summary of the time and a future goal and task.  In the case of foreign language, students would need to demonstrate what words they learned by writing some Spanish, and creating lists of words they would need to have a more meaningful discussion in Spanish.  This type of group work is meaningful and relevant to ninth graders because it is social, and it is beneficial because it may contribute to a culture of critical thinking (ReLeah, 2006).”  …For addition bibliographical info, please ask.

So Diogenes of Sinope vindicated a life of philosophy among the menial, so I too dare to speak, from the rarefied, cold, mountain top air of living as a college drop out, unloading trucks for the McDonalds golden arches.  A man whose veins pump the ghosts of Calvinist theologians and Lakota medicine men, my blood debates philosophical arcana with itself while I sleep.  And like any unlikely convergence of distant constellations, I walk many dissonant worlds.  A pair of eyes under the pine-thatch circle where razor hooks tie my bleeding father to a cottonwood tree, burning sage vapors balming the flesh offering to his god.  Singing with students of a Christian college in pristine, sterile sanctuaries, shiny pipe organ the lone iconography, something of Bavinck or Zwingli about to be proclaimed, with reference to the CRC confessional in every pew.  Slumped in foggy bars where we raise our glasses to the meaninglessness of our lives, and gulp down more fire like only those pursuing an oblivion could.

I wander.  And like anyone whose hometown is Nod, I’ve seen my share of uncertainties, ambiguities, and the maskedness of any sort of truth.  The world is the ultimate rorschach blot, where one sees “This is my Fathers kingdom glorified in unity and diversity” another sees “Life is a joke written by an idiot.”  I merely seek disambiguation of the riddle.  I can’t list my philosophic interests like a food connoisseur telling what he likes on the delicatessen menu, but if anyone should speak of what is and is not, how one can know, what is good, what is beautiful, what is man, what is or is not god, how shall a society be organized,  what happened in the past, what might happen in the future, I’ll try to listen.  If there’s interest, I may write on Jean Vanier, Friedrich Nietzsche, Frithjof Schuon, Zeno, Robert Ingersoll, Russell Means, Franz Kafka and everyone between.   In any case, I look forward to interacting with the readers and fellow writers of this blog, in what should be, a lively discourse.