Last month, Canada was lauded by the OECD for how its college system connects graduates with the labour market and leads to lower youth unemployment. In its annual global education survey, the OECD found that youth employment in countries where vocational training was strong fared better in the last recession and recovered faster.

Yet a bit of rifling through the report suggests that Canada is quite unusual among countries with vocational education: We wait a very long time to offer it. As a result, we are one of the few countries where more people graduate from postsecondary than high school. We think that having lots of graduates from higher ed is good. But what if it means that we waste an awful lot of time in high school?

Compare Germany, Austria, Poland and Slovenia. There, partnerships between business and schools start in high school and training continues throughout one’s career, leading to promotions and advancement in spite of the “lack” of postsecondary credentials.

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320 Year 8 and Year 9 students from Archbishop Holgate’s School, a Church of England Academy, will be recognised for their remarkable volunteering projects at a Young Leaders’ Award Ceremony on Wednesday 10th July at 7pm.

The Young Leaders Award, developed by the Archbishop of York Youth Trust, has been delivered through the School’s Citizenship lessons.

School teacher Mrs Caroline Capper said: “The Award is a fantastic opportunity for students to learn about people of faith such as Martin Luther King, Ghandi, Bono and Nelson Mandela….”

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What is it like to operate a religiously-based institution of higher education in what is a seemingly secularized world of academics? How does a small college become a university and expand its enrollment? And what are the challenges these schools face in recruiting faculty? These and many more questions are answered by Dr. Joseph Castleberry, president of Northwest University (NU) located in Kirkland, WA just outside of Seattle. Dr. Castleberry took over the reins of NU shortly after it moved from being Northwest College to Northwest University.

Our conversation begins with a description of Northwest, including its history (starting as a Bible college in downtown Seattle 75 years ago) and current enrollment. Joe talks about the recent transition from “college” to “university” and explains the rationale behind that decision. He notes how NU is expanding into a number of branch campuses in Salem (OR) and Sacramento (CA), which are physical “brick and mortar” locations, and extensions in Nampa (ID). Northwest is also developing online degree programs for continuing adult education, as well. The purpose of these expansions is to go where the demand for higher education is, particularly with respect to ministerial training, which he says must be “close to the ground.” We also discuss how NU recruits students and while Dr. Castleberry reveals that most students come from Washington State, efforts to recruit abroad (both in the US and globally) often rely upon personal missionary networks, particulary via the Assemblies of God.

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Nine of Britain’s brightest state school pupils have turned down places at Oxford and Cambridge, mostly to attend Ivy League universities in America, put off by the stuffy elitism and high fees.

It is the first time that a group of state-educated pupils has spurned Britain’s top two universities and follows a warning from the government’s social mobility watchdog that Oxford and Cambridge are failing to meet targets for widening their social mix. Experts predicted that it could be the start of a brain drain of children abroad.

Last week David Laws, the education minister, told The Sunday Times that he was deeply concerned by the situation and planned to intervene.

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The Church of England could be given the power to run thousands of secular state schools in UK under a deal with the Department of Education.

The Church will be forced to preserve the character of non-faith schools and community schools joining a Church of England academy chain would not have to change its admissions policy, religious education lessons or employment terms for teachers, according to a report in the The Times.

But the move would give Bishops the power to appoint governors at the schools.

The plan has caused disquiet among secular groups, who said the decision would irreversibly increase religious influence over state schools

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Biola President Barry H. Corey decided that a replica “Jesus saves” sign would create “a fitting reminder” that the school’s core values have not changed in the 105 years since the school’s founding. The Bible Institute of Los Angeles eventually shortened its name to Biola and moved from downtown to La Mirada in 1959.

The sign, one-third the scale of the originals, is incorporated into a 38-by-59-foot photographic mural of the original Bible Institute building and displayed on the side of a parking structure in the interior of the university’s 95-acre campus.

“The placement and size needed to abide by our city’s codes and requirements, including height limitations and sightlines that restricted visibility to our campus boundaries,” Corey said.

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Speaking about today’s seminar, Archbishop Justin said: “The Church of England was at the beginning of national education of this country and continues to be crucial to its flourishing. Today, bishops and diocesan board of education chairs have worked together to develop a vision for the future of church schools which will continue our mission of transforming every part of our society.

“It is obviously true that good schools help produce an educated workforce. But the Christian vision is a far greater one. It is about setting a framework for children as they learn which enables them to be confident when faced with the vast challenges that our rapidly changing culture brings to us.

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I know you understand. Posts will be catch as catch can. I am considering open thread topics on an edifying subject so if you have suggestions for such threads please post in the comments below. Also, please pray for Elizabeth and me. I do not in any way exaggerate when I say there is no time when we have more needed prayer than now. Among many other things there have been: two graduations, a knee operation for Kendall, Elizabeth preparing to start a new job teaching at MUSC (starting July 1), and Kendall’s father having a shunt put in his brain. We need refreshment and rest. Many thanks–KSH.

The vast majority of the 1,430 education programs that prepare the nation’s K-12 teachers are mediocre, according to a first-ever ranking that immediately touched off a firestorm.

Released Tuesday by the National Council on Teacher Quality, a Washington-based advocacy group, the rankings are part of a $5 million project funded by major U.S. foundations. Education secretaries in 21 states have endorsed the report, but some universities and education experts quickly assailed the review as incomplete and inaccurate.

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Oh boy, he’s having a baby.

It’s hard to ignore these images of teenage boys sporting “pregnant” bellies and that’s exactly the intent of Chicago’s new eye-catching teen pregnancy prevention campaign.

Launched last month, it aims to “spark conversations among adolescents and adults on the issue of teen pregnancy and to make the case that teen parenthood is more than just a girl’s responsibility,” according to the Chicago Department of Public Health….

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At the annual Q conference this spring, Christian engagement with public schools was a big topic. Among the quick-hit presentations was a talk on a church-school partnership in Portland, Ore., that many churches around the country are viewing as an inspiration and a model.

Captured in a documentary titled “Undivided,” the Portland story goes like this: As part of a day of service by the area’s evangelical churches, members of a large suburban congregation gathered at a struggling city high school to spend a day sprucing up the building and grounds.

The people from SouthLake Church were not content with one and done, however; they have “adopted” Roosevelt High School and made the relationship the central component of the church’s ongoing public engagement these past five years.

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Sammy Rhodes didn’t court Twitter fame. Maybe he flirted with it a little, but he only did it to make other people smile.

As the following grew for his 140-characters-or-fewer jokes posted under the handle @prodigalsam, Rhodes discovered the dark side of fame. Other Twitter comedians began to attack Rhodes for allegedly stealing jokes. As is typical in internet spats, it quickly turned personal and ugly.

“The internet has taught me two things: 1. People are the best. 2. People are the worst,” Rhodes tweeted on May 29.

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2013/06/08/2809008/huge-twitter-following-not-always.html#storylink=cpy

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“The game was there for us to win,” said USC coach Chad Holbrook. “Sometimes you won’t have opportunities against (North Carolina). Today we had them. When you don’t execute and you don’t capitalize on the opportunities you have in this setting against a team like that, you’re not going to win. It came back to get us.”

The errors will sting the most, because USC’s bats were far from inefficient Saturday. The Tar Heels tied the game at two in the first inning when left fielder Graham Saiko dropped a routine fly ball that would have ended the inning, but instead allowed a run to score. In the third, North Carolina cut USC’s lead to 4-3 when Cody Stubbs doubled with two outs, and Moran scored from first because right fielder Connor Bright missed the cut-off man.

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“Clutter is the disease of American writing….We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.”

–William Zinsser in a profile article in the N.Y. Times.

Education is forever balancing and rebalancing uniformity and creativity. Basic competence has to be mastered. But innovative thinking must be encouraged. Read the canon of great literature, but don’t be afraid to demolish conventional wisdom. Students and their parents seek out the best school and best teachers, hoping for the best education. But students can flourish at middling colleges and with average teachers if their reading is inspiring, their lab work intriguing, their thinking encouraged.

When you read Laura Pappano’s cover story on the huge stir being caused by Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs, pronounced “mooks”), you may at first think that there’s nothing new under the sun. Correspondence courses, after all, began in the 19th century. Over the decades, educational institutions have experimented with teaching via radio, television, closed-circuit video, and the Internet. And each new distance-learning technology has prompted predictions of the demise of ivy-clad campuses, the loss of mentoring by belovedly quirky profs, and the end of fond memories of college life. Fifteen years ago, a reporter from The Boston Globe marveled at how 1990s cutting-edge technology ”“ “a two-way PictureTel compressed-video system linked by high-speed phone lines” ”“ was connecting a classroom on Martha’s Vineyard with a university on the Massachusetts mainland. As one university official told him (well, actually, told me): “What is better in terms of quality ”“ a dull, boring, standard lecture, or a penetrating lecture by a great teacher, backed up with all the best video props…?”

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The biggest issue is, what does it mean to be obedient to Christ? Before any specific issue is really the posture of the heart toward Christ, and how we encourage a spirit of obedience among 18-year-olds who perhaps up until this point, their experience of faith has been youth group.

All of the language of serious, committed faith is obedience language””take up the cross and follow. It’s the cost of discipleship. It’s not pretty stuff that you can make nice. It’s pretty rugged stuff, but that’s the gospel. Theologically, how do we convey that truth in a graceful way and not water it down? Then that has implications for all the other issues.

Of course every Christian college president is worried about this, but homosexuality is a very real issue for campuses. We have gay and lesbian students here. I have met with them. I have talked with them. They are Christians and they are trying to figure out, “What does this mean? How do I live?”

The Scripture that I need to be obedient to leads me to the conclusion that marriage is a relationship between man and woman, and sexuality is to be used in that context.

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….my personal appreciation for the pedagogy the Common Core outlines and the texts it strongly recommends is that it can bring us back to the vision of Horace Mann, the pioneer of our Common School movement. Mann’s major goal was training disciplined citizens. One of his key principles was that classrooms should pull together children from varied backgrounds, yet provide them with common understandings.

Mann aimed to establish schools with a common vision. The Common Core State Standards aim to help existing schools provide essential preparation for a diverse population. It is hoped that through a common experience with both literary and informational texts, students will gain insights and skills needed in order to rebuild the common foundations of our diverse society. Thus the recommended texts include key passages from Patrick Henry, George Washington, the Constitution, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Learned Hand, Margaret Chase Smith, and Ronald Reagan. All of these help us think beyond ourselves to engage a grand social experiment.

In his Experiment in Criticism, C. S. Lewis argued that “the necessary condition of all good reading is ‘to get ourselves out of the way.’ ” We get out of the way of the text when we read it closely for what it has to offer. The Common Core Standards encourage such close reading. We get out of the way when we check our own interpretations in constructive dialogue with others. The Common Core Standards call for publishers to produce materials that “provide opportunities for students to participate in real, substantive discussions that require them to respond directly to the ideas of their peers.”

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St Mellitus College, founded in 2007, offers on-the-job experience as well as theology.

The numbers attending church on Sundays may be falling, but an innovative new college to train Anglican clergy has already attracted 500 students, making it the newest and one of the largest in the country.St Mellitus College, which started in 2007, opened the doors of a new building in November. It is the first training college for clergy to focus especially on leadership, and to combine theology with on-the-job experience in churches, youth centres, homeless shelters and Christian work in the inner cities.

“It’s the same pattern as business schools or the way doctors are trained now,” says Graham Tomlin, the college dean. “Previously those training for the ministry went to a full-time residential college. Now they can spend time in parishes as lay workers while coming here part of the week and on several residential periods a year. Or they continue in their jobs as doctors or bus drivers while training part-time for the ministry.”

As a result, St Mellitus, a joint project by the dioceses of London and Chelmsford, has seen a surge of applications from the start, with 110 full-time ordinands and around 400 lay students. A survey showed that three quarters of the ordinands would not have considered going into the church, or would have done so much later, had this work/study pattern not been available.

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At Boston College’s commencement ceremony on Monday, Cardinal Sean O’Malley won’t be in attendance. The leader of the Boston archdiocese announced on May 10 that he would not deliver his traditional graduation benediction at the Catholic school because the college had invited Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny””a supporter of abortion rights in Ireland””to deliver the graduation address and receive an honorary degree.

The cardinal said the invitation has caused “confusion, disappointment and harm” by ignoring the U.S. bishops “who have asked that Catholic institutions not honor government officials or politicians who promote abortion with their laws and policies.”

In April, Mr. Kenny’s coalition government introduced legislation with the curious title “The Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill 2013.” It will allow access to direct abortion for pregnant women if they claim to be so distraught about the pregnancy that they are in danger of committing suicide. Mr. Kenny has said that he “would like to see the legislation enacted before the Dail [parliament] rises for the summer.”

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For five years I was a student under Dallas’s direction at USC. Having been so deeply impacted by his written work, I was pleasantly surprised to find that he, himself, was far more compelling than anything he had written. To be with him was to draw near to the Kingdom of God. He seemed effortlessly to communicate the peace, security, love and acceptance of God by his mere presence. I found it nearly impossible to remain anxious about anything while with him. And it was my repeated experience to witness the disarming of anger, contempt, fear, and countless other inner ailments with a simple look, a gentle word, a touch.

Dallas is the best teacher I’ve ever met. His work in philosophy always penetrates to the perennial problem ”“ that issue of central importance to the human condition ”“ in whatever discussion he’s a part of. During his time with us, he loved to think, write, and talk about a philosopher by the name of Edmund Husserl. He saw in Husserl a few crucial insights required to make sense of our ability to have knowledge of the world. But he didn’t allow the world of Husserl scholarship (and it is a real world unto itself) to define his research agenda. Rather, he brought the insights of Husserl to bear upon urgent questions about life, meaning, and the Kingdom of God.

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Key figures within North-East Church of England schools have welcomed a report which places their work at the heart of education.

Senior Anglican figures make the comments in a YouTube video based on a conference staged by the Durham and Newcastle Diocesan Education Boards.

The event, attended by everyone from headteachers to governors, was in response to publication of the Church of England’s Chadwick Report, entitled The Church School of the Future, which said they are at the heart of the nation and should robustly assert their Christian ethos.

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…today’s prom is serious business. And I do mean business: The credit-card company Visa reports that prom spending will reach an average of $1,139 per family this year, up 5 percent since 2012. Most of that spending is still done by girls, who post their dresses on Facebook in the hopes that no one else will purchase the same one.

Meanwhile, boys now compete to devise the most elaborate ways to ask girls to prom. Two years ago, a student who serenaded his intended date in class — backed up by a cappella singers — ended up on “Good Morning America.” So-called “promposals” have since become ubiquitous on the Internet, generating millions of Youtube hits.
What’s going on here?

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Radical and intolerant Islamist leaders preached to crowds of students at almost 200 official events in the past year, according to a study of external speakers at universities including Cambridge, Birmingham and University College London.

Segregated seating for male and female students is understood to have been implemented for at least a quarter of those public meetings held by the Islamic societies at 21 universities.

Two institutions have announced investigations into segregated meetings. But research by Student Rights, which was set up to tackle extremism on campus, indicates that the practice is prevalent across Britain, despite university equality rules forbidding it.

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One September day in eighth grade, when he was walking home from school, Mike saw his maternal grandfather, Charlie Wesson, pull up beside him in a car. Wesson had always been there for Mike, attending his games, winking when he faked a fever in grade school so they could spend the day together. This time, the news was bad. He needed to go home, immediately.

Young Mike saw a crowded house and knew something was wrong. His father had died of a heart attack after hip surgery. A short and difficult life was over, at 43, but the son thought largely about his mother. His parents were not married anymore, but he knew her life would change, too.

“I just felt like I had to pick myself up and my mom up,” he said. “It was a very tough time for her. I felt like I was trying to take control of my life and not rely on other people to do things for me.”

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First, we need to recognize that some doctrines are more important than other doctrines. All Christians recognize this to some extent. For example, the doctrine of the return of Jesus Christ, the second coming, is much more important than the question of whether Christ will return before or after the tribulation. If you deny the second coming of Christ, it calls into question whether you are a Christian. But Christians have always disagreed about the exact timing of Christ’s return. So which doctrines are more important and which are less important?

One way to think about this issue is to distinguish between three levels of doctrines. First level doctrines include those a person has to believe in order to be a Christian. These include things like the inspiration of Scripture, the divinity of Jesus Christ, the humanity of Christ, the sacrificial death of Christ for our sins, and his bodily resurrection. Now I am not saying that every Christian understands these doctrines fully. But if a person rejects these doctrines, can they really be a Christian in any historic sense?

Second level doctrines include those which are important because they promote the health of the church.

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A former top level church boss has appeared in court charged with lying about his degree to win his £45,000 a year job.

Maximilian Manin, 54, was the most senior official in the Lincoln Diocese, which is responsible for all Church of England parishes in the county.

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I don’t mean to suggest that we had romance “right” in the days of chastity belts and arranged marriages. But I feel as though we all sort of know how romance ought to play out. Hookup culture is an unnavigable mush of vague intentions and desires, and that’s true even on nights when people don’t go home with novel odors and difficulty urinating.

We can try to dress it up as being freeing or equalizing the genders, but I fear it only leaves us equally impoverished.

C.S. Lewis said that “friendship is born at the moment one person says to another: “What? You too? I thought I was the only one.” Maybe I’m naive and idealistic, but I prefer the narrative in which emotional and physical love come as a package, one experienced with a very small subset of the population. I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m not the only one.

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The way some schools in Nevada teach sex education could be changing.

A bill moving its way through the Nevada Legislature would require all districts to provide uniform, medically accurate and age-appropriate sex education lessons. Topics would include abstinence, abortion, contraceptives, domestic violence and sex trafficking. Students would be automatically enrolled in sex education classes under the proposed law, and parents would need to sign a document for their children to opt out of the instruction.

Currently, sex education instruction varies by county, although all counties have sex education advisory boards by law.

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