At the turn of the century (1900) in New Hampshire, two teenage boys, Tom and Maxwell, decided to go for a swim across a deep pond. Tom, not a strong swimmer, began to panic and grabbed Maxwell in an attempt to stay afloat. They both began to go under. Maxwell, now panicking himself, freed himself…
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I’m going to add a 6th rule that I think should inform how we teach our children to read critically. We must teach them to rarely cancel or censor a writer or blogger simply because he or she takes a position that from our perspective is intolerable. Freedom expression is after all, the first amendment in…
The final rule in this series of posts, brief tips on how to help our older children read critically, is to encourage them to read with their eyes open. In other words, all books are bound to contain some errors. I’m not talking about factual errors although that can sometimes be the case. I’m mainly thinking…
That’s the title of a book written by Steve Brown, one of my favorite authors and speakers. His life and theology has been to a certain degree a series of U-turns- thinking that he understood something, only to later on change his mind. He’s open about this, and very much the opposite of the person…
Soon after my conversation to Christ, one of the youth pastors of the church I was attending preached a sermon whose provocative and funny (to me anyway) title has stuck with me over the years. He titled it, “Flesh Finders and Sin Sniffers.” As you might guess, the pastor was referring to church members, usually…
Earlier this fall I started a five- part series of posts on how to teach our children to think critically. Rule number 1 was “be gracious” to those who hold contrary views. Why? Because somethings can’t be reversed. Posts, texts, tweets, are permanent, apologies and retractions notwithstanding. On to rule number 2. Ignoring this rule leads…
I don’t know about you, but I’ve ingested way too much digital content lately. Of course, the catalyst for why I’ve been overindulging was the election. That includes the analysis of the results, the implications of the results, and of course the back and forth of who is to blame or is to receive credit for…
I started my classroom career teaching elementary school. One morning I was wanting to explain to my students the effect our words and actions have on others. To illustrate this, I took a 2 by 4 piece of wood and with a hammer, pounded a nail into it all the way through to the other…
Do you sometimes feel like you’re on the receiving end of a firehose of information that just never stops? That the only way to control it would be to cut off the flow, to turn it off? But, because we want the information, we “can’t” or don’t want to disengage so we find ourselves resorting…