Lessons from the Monarch Butterfly

Today at Science Monday at Veritas Academy of Tucson, I will be teaching about the monarch butterfly.  All butterflies are remarkable because of their complete metamorphosis.  In addition, the monrch is exceptional because it migrates up to 2,500 miles per year to the same spot in Mexico that its ancestors have gone to since time immemorial, can fly as fast as a racehorse (25-30 mph), and can cross the entire Caribbean Sea without a rest stop.

One of the many lessons the monarch can illustrate is the way it protects itself.  Because it ingests large quantities of milkweed in its larval stage, the monarch retains the toxin of the milkweed the rest of its life.  This makes it poisonous to most birds, allowing the monarch to escape many predators.  The viceroy butterfly, which looks a lot like the monarch, does not ingest milkweed, is not noxious, and yet benefits from the same protection!  

This reminds us that bitter experiences can be used by the Holy Spirit to conform us to the image of Christ. 

"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.  For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son..."  Romans 8:28-29.

Conspiracies - intentional and otherwise

What was it the Left raged against in the Cold War? "the vast military-industrial complex"?  Then in the Clinton era it became the "vast right-wing conspiracy." And for the apocalyptically minded, it's always been the "Illuminati-Rothschild-Rockefeller" triumvirate.

In the past I have always maintained that no matter how much these entities seem to be working in tandem, none of these so-called conspirators are really "together" enough to have thought it all up and pulled it off intentionally, at least not on a human level.  All such earthly alliances are corrupted by sin nature; one of the most common themes of literature is the betrayal of betrayers. And Scripture, of course, warns us: "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." (Ephesians 6:12). I can believe that demons thought all this up, but humans are just too flaky.

That groundwork having been laid, my current favorite conspiracy is the "vast pseudo-intellectual media/academia/entertainment alliance." Their favorite causes defy reason on a cosmic scale:  loving whales and hating unborn humans, creating an ever-increasing welfare dependency as a sign of a healthy nation, maintaining a porous border and fostering self-loathing for America's history and heritage...I could go on and on.

But my little corner of the "rage market" concerns education, and last week the New York Times, as a public service, came out with a convenient lesson plan for American teachers to use in teaching children how to understand and relate to the current debt crisis. Someone at the Times has done his homework:  the lesson plans are classroom-ready, leave little work for the teacher to do, supply relevant news articles from the Times itself, correctly state objectives for the lesson in "educationese," show alignment to national and state standards, provide appropriate interactive participation techniques, and even spell out exactly what "open-ended" questions to ask. The problem is, (Surprise! Surpirse!) it's a bit slanted:

1.  For an emotional "opener," the teacher is instructed to tell the story of a Cowboy Poetry Festival in Nevada that will now lose its federal sponsorship. Poor cowboys!  Poor Nevada!  How do the mean Tea Party folks expect poetry to survive without government funding?
2.  In naming the areas where cuts were not made, the lesson uses the word "successful" to describe President Obama's resistance to cutting Planned Parenthood. Clearly something all school chidlren should rejoice about!
3.  Other cases of "non-neutral" language abound: "Newly empowered Republicans"  have agencies with benign -sounding names in their "cross hairs."  Planned Parenthood provides "family-planning services."  Students are directed to links to such "non-neutral" groups as the National Priorites Project, which educates citizens on how to help government "create budget priorities" (without a word about eliminating any budget categories). The board of the National Prioirities Project, by the way, is a Who's Who of the most liberal universities in America.
4.  Now it gets fun!  Students are asked to name all the ways that life will be affected (read "worse") when and if further cuts are made to:  Pell Grants,the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Head Start, Planned Parenthood, Medicare, Medicaid, Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts, along with home-heating aid, high-speed rail financing, housing assistance programs, discretionary money for education and clean energy programs
5.  Finally, and most importantly, no mention is made of: the Constitution, what constitutes a budget, the consequences of indebtedness, the history and purposes of taxation, or the American traditions of self-reliance, thrift, and hard work. And certainly no mention of the sacrifices made by past generations for the sake of liberty.    

Without expensive support from the New York Times Learning Network, here is a snapshot from the lesson plan I will be using with my students (in the "free world" of private education):

"If the US Government was a family, they would be making $58,000 a year, they spend $75,000 a year, and are $327,000 in credit card debt. They are currently proposing BIG spending cuts to reduce their spending to $72,000 a year. These are the actual proportions of the federal budget and debt, reduced to a level that we can understand." (from Dave Ramsey).

In Search of...."Pretty Good"

From the July 16 New York Times:


"Some parents in affluent suburbs such as Millburn, N.J., are working to keep out specialized "boutique" charter schools, which they say would divert resources and students from public schools. They say charter schools, conceived as alternatives to low-performing urban schools for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, are unnecessary in successful districts. Supporters say the charters expand school choices that should be available to all students."


Since I no longer have a separate blog devoted to education, readers of Dove Mountaineers will have to put up with the occasional rant about education.  And there is so much to rant about!

First of all, the parents in Milford would not have come up with this "objection" if

1. The teachers' unions had not already "alerted " them to this danger and brainwashed them with greedy and irrelevant hysteria.
2. They had not been throughly grounded in collectivism and anti-free enterprise proganda by attending public schools themselves.
3. They themsleves had attended very rare and "boutiquish" schools which teach logic.

Applying said logic, look closely at the two allegations against the charter schools in this article:

They "divert resources" from public schools.    However,

• Charter schools are public schools.   They are government controlled, government funded, and do not restrict admissions, except by virtue of size limitations.
• They have a right to the same resources as any other public school.  The monies ("resources") follow the student.  If the students choose to go to a particular public school, the resources will go there.
• No state that grants charters sets aside special resource provisions for charter schools that are not avilable to any other government funded school.

They "divert students" from public schools.

      And here is the real objection.  According to the political agenda of the teachers' unions, parents and students should never have the freedom to choose a performing school over an underperforming school, because it threatens their job security. 
      How? If charter school A is clearly outperforming neighborhood school B, it will gradually (or rapidly, in some cases) siphon off students from neighborood school B.  And with the students, comes the per/pupil share of that district's tax money.   Since staffing is based on enrollment, some teachers at neighborhood school B will eventually lose their jobs.  They could, you might suppose, just switch over and teach at charter school A, and no doubt some do. 
      However, charter school A probably outperformed neighborhood school B by: 
               (a) hiring only campetent teachers with a willingness to improve at their craft;          
               (b) holding teachers accountable for the performance of their students;          
               (c)  dismissing incompetent teachers;  
               (d)  requiring each teacher to teach to a standard set by the school itself, instead of forming an island of non-achieving autonomy within his or her classroom.

Make this your template whenever you hear or read something about school choice:   Opponents of school choice believe schools exist to provide jobs for incompetent people.  The benefits to students never come into the discussion.   If adults do not want there to be a high-achieving school in their district, these adults want America's future to be lead by marginally educated graduates of mediocre schools. 

But we are in crisis mode, and "pretty good" leadership is not going to get this country out of the mire it is in.  Especially "pretty good" leadership that believes that the state is the only beneficent provider of education, and that a fictional egalitarianism is not only achievable (it isn't), but desirable. (?!)