Don't raise your hand!

British school bans raising hands

LONDON, Jan. 28 (UPI) -- A school in London has banned children from raising their hands in class and teachers from calling on students with their hands raised.

"It is every child's instinct and every teacher's instinct as well because it is ingrained in us," said Andrew Buck, the school's principal.

"Some pupils are jiggling so much to attract the teacher's attention that it sometimes looks as if they need the lavatory, then when it is their turn they often don't know the answer. Boys -- and it is usually boys -- are seeking attention, so they put their hands up before they have had time to think about the question."

Buck said the same children often wave their arms in the air, but when teachers try to involve less adventurous pupils by choosing them instead, it leads to feelings of victimization, the Daily Telegraph reported Saturday.

To spare embarrassment of the students who do not know the answer, the school has incorporated a "phone a friend" system, allowing one child to nominate another to take the question instead.



---Katie

Sierra Pacific Synod joins in Metro NY in advocating ignoring the CWA decisions (resolution being considered)

Shellfish had this post:

Resolution: Endorsing Restraint in the Administration of ELCA Policies Applicable to Sexual Minority Persons

Whereas, The 2005 Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America urged our church to concentrate on finding ways to live together faithfully in the midst of disagreement;and

Whereas, The discussion of the 2005 Churchwide Assembly concerning the ministry of partnered sexual minority persons provided no resolution of the disagreements by the action of a substantial majority; and

Whereas; A significant minority demonstrated their dissatisfaction with the current policy and practice of the ELCA with regard to the service in rostered ministry of partnered sexuality minority persons, though no proposals for exceptions to or alteration of current policy achieved a majority at the 2005 Churchwide Assembly; and

Whereas, It is clear that no resolution of this matter acceptable to all persons is possible at this time; and

Whereas, Service in the rostered ministry of the church is neither a right to be claimed nor a privilege bestowed, rather it is the duty and obligation of both candidates and the church to discern the calling of God for service in the rostered ministry in specific persons; and

Whereas, This vocation is confirmed by call of the church to a specific ministry; and

Whereas, There are many instances where the process of discernment has identified candidates and settings for rostered ministry where the only impediment to the call of the church is the preclusion to service by partnered sexual minority persons as defined in ELCA policy; and

Whereas, Many sexual minority persons, partnered and single, already serve in the rostered ministry in congregations of this church; and

Whereas, There are many instances where congregations have expressed their willingness to receive the ministry of partnered sexual minority leaders; and

Whereas, Rather than limiting ourselves to one resolution of our disagreements, we ought to invest the talents given us in those places where call is extended to and received by partnered sexual minority persons and discern the working of the Spirit through the lived experience of God’s people; and

Whereas, The Rabbi Gamaliel convinced the Sanhedrin not to act against Peter and the apostles saying,:...[If this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail, but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them - in that case you may even be found fighting against God![Acts 5:38-39, NRSV]: and

Whereas, The Metropolitan New York Synod (MNYS) of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, meeting in assembly October 29, 2005, voted to endorse restraint in the Administration of ELCA policies applicable to sexual minority persons and requested other synods to join them in that endorsement; therefore, be it

Resolved, That in furtherance of the goal of finding ways to live together faithfully in the midst of our disagreements, the Sierra Pacific Synod Assembly partner with the Metropolitan New York Synod in endorsing and calling for restraint in the administration of those ELCA policies that address the full service of partnered sexual minority persons in rostered ministry, ir order that the ministry of such persons to and with our congregations may be seen and we may discern whether God prospers the work of their hands [Ps. 90:17] and they may be [known] by their fruits [Matthew 7:16,20]; and be it further

Resolved, That the Sierra Pacific Synod join the Metropolitan New York Synod in requesting other synods to join us in endorsing the practice of restraint in the administration of policies applicable only to sexual minority rostered persons as a part of the continuing discernment process of the ELCA so that a number of ministries across the church may be looked to as exemplars through which our synods and the ELCA may evaluate the spiritual health and welfare of congregations and communities served by openly partnered sexual minority ministers; and be it further

Resolved, that in this time of disagreement and discernment all members of the ELCA earnestly pray: Lord God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us: through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. [Morning and Evening Prayer, LBW Prayer (251)]


We did not like the decision, so we are going to use high churchly language to advocate ignoring it. (Added: This is a resolution that has yet to be approved...pray.)


----Katie

This bank gets it.

Wow. A bank willing to take a loss to take a stand!

Nation's ninth-largest bank to cease eminent domain loans

CHARLOTTE (AP) — Regional bank BB&T Corp. will make no loans to developers who plan to build commercial projects on land taken from private citizens by the government through the power of eminent domain, the company said Wednesday.

"The idea that a citizen's property can be taken by the government solely for private use is extremely misguided, in fact it's just plain wrong," John Allison, chairman and chief executive of the Winston-Salem-based bank, said in a statement.

Click on the title!

---Katie

Liberals kicking themselves over Alito hearings.

Gene Edward Veith writes:

Columnist James Pinkerton of Newsday has an unintentionally amusing column about how Democrats are kicking themselves for the way they handled the Alito confirmation hearings.

It seems the Democrats attended a seminar led by several leftwing law professors, who told them that they could successfully oppose even well-qualified nominees if they would just keep hammering on the possibility they might turn the Supreme Court in a conservative direction. The Senators slavishly followed this playbook, only to find that, like most nostrums from leftwing law professors, it doesn't work.

The Democrats are also miffed that the usually reliable mainstream media let them down. The major networks showed the Senators bloviating and Mrs. Alito running crying from the room. That made us look bad! Jon Stewart even made fun of us on the "Daily Show"! How dare they! Whose side are these people on, anyway?

Mr. Pinkerton thinks a better strategy would be for Democrats to just let Republicans do their worst. Let the new Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade, he says. THEN there will be an anti-Republican, pro-abortion backlash that can sweep Democrats back into power. So he thinks. But it would indeed be good if Democrats would adopt the strategy of capitulation, since nothing else is working. But they are going to have to keep their leaders off of TV.

Heh heh

Visit Veith's blog by clicking on the title above. FYI - he is a Lutheran!

---Katie

What!? Boys are different from girls? Who'da thunk it?

Biology’s Revenge
Christina Hoff Sommers was right.

The surest way to get attention in American society is to become a crisis. Boys are now on their way to achieving this dubious but indispensable distinction with the new cover of Newsweek, "The Boy Crisis."

It is to be hoped that the crisis establishes a simple truth that is astonishing anyone ever forgot — boys and girls are different. Or as Newsweek puts it, "Boys are biologically, developmentally and psychologically different from girls — and teachers need to learn how to bring out the best in every one."

A crisis always needs its own politically correct argot. A neurologist quoted in Newsweek takes a step toward establishing one here with his statement, "Very well-meaning people have created a biologically disrespectful model of education." Thus, the boy-in-crisis has a rallying cry, "Don't disrespect my biology!"

That's what has been happening for years. Feminists have wanted to believe that, given the right socialization, boys would give up their stubborn fascination with earth-moving equipment. As someone once said, "You can have your own opinion, but you can't have your facts." Similarly, you can have your opinion about what gender should be, but you can't have your own brain chemistry. Newsweek notes how in the womb, the brain of a male fetus is bathed with testosterone.

Click on the title above to read the rest.

Anyone with both boys and girls know they are different from the very start.

---Katie

Why do we put up with this?

Police face Mexican military, smugglers Armed standoff along U.S. border By Sara A. Carter and Kenneth Todd Ruiz, Staff Writers

VIEW OUR BEYOND BORDERS BLOG Mexican soldiers and civilian smugglers had an armed standoff with nearly 30 U.S. law enforcement officials on the Rio Grande in Texas on Monday afternoon, according to Texas police and the FBI. Mexican military Humvees were towing what appeared to be thousands of pounds of marijuana across the border into the United States, said Chief Deputy Mike Doyal, of the Hudspeth County Sheriff's Department. Mexican Army troops had several mounted machine guns on the ground more than 200 yards inside the U.S. border -- near Neely's Crossing, about 50 miles east of El Paso -- when Border Patrol agents called for backup. Hudspeth County deputies and Texas Highway patrol officers arrived shortly afterward, Doyal said. "It's been so bred into everyone not to start an international incident with Mexico that it's been going on for years," Doyal said. "When you're up against mounted machine guns, what can you do? Who wants to pull the trigger first? Certainly not us." An FBI spokeswoman confirmed the incident happened at 2:15 p.m. Pacific Time. This renders me speechless. Click on the title for the rest of the article. ---Katie

Foot in Mouth Hillary

click here to see it reeeeeally large!

Separation of Church and State - Only Required for Conservatives?

2 evangelical churches accused of illegal politicking

By The Associated Press
01.19.06

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A group of religious leaders from nine denominations have accused two evangelical churches of improperly promoting an Ohio candidate for governor and want the Internal Revenue Service to investigate.

The 31 leaders from central Ohio met on Jan. 15 and signed a letter asking the IRS to determine if the churches should lose tax-exempt status because of their support for Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, one of three Republicans seeking the nomination.

The Rev. Rod Parsley of World Harvest Church in Columbus and the Rev. Russell Johnson of Fairfield Christian Church in Lancaster improperly used their churches and affiliated entities for partisan politics, the complaint to the IRS says.

"If they don't want to be a tax-exempt organization, they can go and do and say whatever they want," Rabbi Harold Berman of Temple Tifereth Israel in Columbus said on Jan. 16. "But if you do want to take advantage of the tax benefits that are granted to churches and synagogues, then I think you need to follow the rules."

(snip - Click on the title to read more.)

The clergy who signed the complaint are affiliated with the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A.; the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ); the Episcopal Church; the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; Judaism; the United Church of Christ; the United Methodist Church; Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.); and the Unitarian Universalist Association.

---------

Ugh. Why am I not surprised. I am waiting to see if members of the above mentioned bodies, which includes my own liberal church body, will file a complaint about this:

Speaking during a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event, (Hillary) Clinton also offered an apology to a group of Hurricane Katrina survivors "on behalf of a government that left you behind, that turned its back on you." Her remarks were met with thunderous applause by a mostly black audience at the Canaan Baptist Church of Christ in Harlem. The House "has been run like a plantation, and you know what I'm talking about," said Clinton, D-New York.

Of course not. They are only concerned about the fact that these churches are trying to get conservative Christians to vote. Period.

Double ugh.

---Katie

27 years and counting!

Today is my 27th anniversary! I am blessed with a wonderful husband!

I was reading Free Republic tonight and told hubby that today was also the 25th anniversary of the resolution of the Iran Hostage Crisis. He asked, "That was *after* we were married?" Heh, heh, hard to believe!

---Katie

Christians and homosexuals

One of the things that has been very hard for me in this whole sexuality issue in the ELCA is the false dichotomy that seems to exist...you either support ordination of non-celibate homosexuals and the blessing of same sex unions or you don't care about homosexuals, or hate homosexuals or, gasp! - you are homophobic....

What should the relationship be between the Church and homosexuals? Probably about the same as it is with other sinners, don't you think?

How does the church help homosexuals and their families and friends?

I found an excellent Seventh Day Adventist site that seems to address this issue quite well. Click on the title and check it out. Tell me what you think!

---Katie

All the news that's fit to print...

...or that fits our agenda?

Did you hear about the three Algerians arrested last month by Italian authorities for plotting to attack ships, railway stations and stadiums in the United States? Did you know that the man who blew himself up outside an Oklahoma stadium in October had a ticket to Algeria in his apartment? Why do you think this information did not make headlines in the United States as it did in Italy, Britain and France? Hmmm.

Real Clear Politics has the story. Click on the title!

---Katie

That's a Mouthful

"That's a Mouthful" by Jay D. Dyson (01/17/2006)

The Teachers' Union is mad...

Here is John Stossel's reply to the mad teachers:

January 18, 2006
Myth: Schools Need More Money
By John Stossel

"Stossel is an idiot who should be fired from ABC and sent back to elementary school to learn journalism." "Stossel is a right-wing extremist ideologue."

The hate mail is coming in to ABC over a TV special I did Friday (1/13). I suggested that public schools had plenty of money but were squandering it, because that's what government monopolies do.

Many such comments came in after the National Education Association (NEA) informed its members about the special and claimed that I have a "documented history of blatant antagonism toward public schools."

The NEA says public schools need more money. That's the refrain heard in politicians' speeches, ballot initiatives and maybe even in your child's own classroom. At a union demonstration, teachers carried signs that said schools will only improve "when the schools have all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber."

Not enough money for education? It's a myth.

The truth is, public schools are rolling in money. If you divide the U.S. Department of Education's figure for total spending on K-12 education by the department's count of K-12 students, it works out to about $10,000 per student.

Think about that! For a class of 25 kids, that's $250,000 per classroom. This doesn't include capital costs. Couldn't you do much better than government schools with $250,000? You could hire several good teachers; I doubt you'd hire many bureaucrats. Government schools, like most monopolies, squander money.

America spends more on schooling than the vast majority of countries that outscore us on the international tests. But the bureaucrats still blame school failure on lack of funds, and demand more money.

In 1985, some of them got their wish. Kansas City, Mo., judge Russell Clark said the city's predominately black schools were not "halfway decent," and he ordered the government to spend billions more. Did the billions improve test scores? Did they hire better teachers, provide better books? Did the students learn anything?

Well, they learned how to waste lots of money.

The bureaucrats renovated school buildings, adding enormous gyms, an Olympic swimming pool, a robotics lab, TV studios, a zoo, a planetarium, and a wildlife sanctuary. They added intense instruction in foreign languages. They spent so much money that when they decided to bring more white kids to the city's schools, they didn't have to resort to busing. Instead, they paid for 120 taxis. Taxis!

What did spending billions more accomplish? The schools got worse. In 2000, five years and $2 billion later, the Kansas City school district failed 11 performance standards and lost its academic accreditation for the first time in the district's history.

A study by two professors at the Hoover Institution a few years ago compared public and Catholic schools in three of New York City's five boroughs. Parochial education outperformed the nation's largest school system "in every instance," they found -- and it did it at less than half the cost per student.

"Everyone has been conned -- you can give public schools all the money in America, and it will not be enough," says Ben Chavis, a former public school principal who now runs the American Indian Charter School in Oakland, Calif. His school spends thousands less per student than Oakland's government-run schools spend.

Chavis saves money by having students help clean the grounds and set up for lunch. "We don't have a full-time janitor," he told me. "We don't have security guards. We don't have computers. We don't have a cafeteria staff." Since Chavis took over four years ago, his school has gone from being among the worst middle schools in Oakland to the one where the kids get the best test scores. "I see my school as a business," he said. "And my students are the shareholders. And the families are the shareholders. I have to provide them with something."

©2006 JFS Productions, Inc. Distributed by Creators Syndicate

---Katie

Stupid in America

Click on the title to read about this episode of 20/20 that really takes our education system to task. A government monopoly on education is not in our children's best interest...yet the FL Supreme Court has thrown out the voucher program established to help poor kids get out of F schools!

---Katie