An Anglican chaplain at a British university has rebutted claims that universities throughout the U.K. are a breeding ground for extremist recruitment, and that universities are not doing enough to tackle the problem.
Jeremy Clines who is the Anglican chaplain at the University of Sheffield has said that Islamic extremists were not the problem for universities, but rather government spending cuts were of greater concern.
Middle Tennesseans and their children are at the center of the emotional national debate about separation between religion and public school life.
For most of American history, God was welcome in the public schools. The same is true today for many school systems across the Nashville area, where open prayer is held on school grounds, sports teams pray before games and high school graduations are routinely held in churches.
But objections from families and national civil liberties groups find Middle Tennessee at the center of the litigious argument over separating public schools and church.
At the graduation ceremony for Duquesne University Law School Sunday, commencement speaker Gov. Tom Corbett urged the graduates to practice law morally and with compassion, looking beyond the law and to their faith and consciences to guide them.
“It’s not something the law will ask of you,” he said. “You must ask it for yourself.”
Theresa May told The Daily Telegraph that universities were not taking the issue of radicalisation seriously enough and that it was too easy for Muslim extremists to form groups on campuses “without anyone knowing”.
She also said the Government would cut funding to any Islamic group that espoused extremist views, and set out the “key British values” to which those seeking support must subscribe. It is understood that about 20 groups are already losing their funding.
Mrs May made her comments ahead of the publication this week of the updated version of the Prevent counter-terrorism strategy.
Over the last half-century, the number of Catholic schools has fallen to 7,000 from about 13,000, and their enrollment to barely two million children from more than five million. A disproportionate share of the damage has come in big cities.
So when a landmark topples as Rice [High School in Harlem] did ”” and as Cardinal Dougherty High School did in Philadelphia last year, and as Daniel Murphy High School did in Los Angeles two years before that ”” it ought to provoke more than sentimentality or tears. It ought to sound an alarm about a slow-motion crisis in American education.
To grasp what is being lost, one needed only to look through the roster in the graduation program for Rice. With a student body that is 98 percent black or Hispanic, with 80 percent of its students requiring financial aid, virtually every graduating senior was bound for college: Penn, Cincinnati, Holy Cross, Fairfield, Iona. Four of the Rice men had received scholarships in excess of $150,000.
New York City may again block religious groups from using school facilities outside of regular school hours for “religious worship services,” a federal appeals court in Manhattan ruled on Thursday.
Deciding 2 to 1, a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said the city had “a strong basis to believe” that allowing the religious services to be conducted in schools could be seen as the kind of endorsement of religion that violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause.
“When worship services are performed in a place,” Judge Pierre N. Leval wrote for the majority, “the nature of the site changes. The site is no longer simply a room in a school being used temporarily for some activity.”
For various reasons, some good, many Western universities are keen to establish Islamic Studies programs. And for various other reasons, the same is true of Islamist organizations ”” which tend toward a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. To this end, with a professed goal of fostering “understanding” of Islam, the latter offer hefty financial endowments to universities.
Some critics worry that such a scenario may be in progress at Huron University College, an affiliate of University of Western Ontario (UWO). Huron offers post-baccalaureate and professional degree programs in theology. The College recently accepted a $2-million endowment for a new Chair in Islamic Studies within the College’s historically Anglican Faculty of Theology. About half the money is to come via fundraising facilitated by the Muslim Association of Canada (MAC), and the other, matching half from the Virginia-based International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT). A cofounder of the latter group was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007-2008 trial of Sami al-Arian, an Islamist academic linked to jihadism….
Congratulations to them.
Perhaps it is because both my parents were teachers, but this is my favorite scene from the movie. Watch it all–KSH. (It ties in with the finale as those of you who know the movie well know; it can be found here).
…Li Yinhe, a researcher at the Institute of Sociology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), says that education alone will not be the answer to a problem so deeply ingrained in Chinese culture. “This is a social custom, and it’s well known that social customs are the hardest to change,” Li says. “In traditional society, people believed that the more wives a man had the more successful he was. Now this tradition has found room to grow again.”
Throughout China’s dynastic history, keeping mistresses was not only tolerated, but actually had the official seal of approval from the men at the top. The country’s emperors maintained legendary harems of concubines, as did noblemen, wealthy merchants and anyone seeking to enhance their social status. Indeed, the country’s most famous classic novel, Dream of the Red Chamber, relates the story of an imperial concubine in the Qing dynasty who supports her entire family, including its own numerous concubines, thanks to the emperor’s patronage.
That historical context has perpetuated the notion that having a mistress equates to having status and power. Now, in today’s status-hungry China, keeping a mistress is once again the fashionable thing to do.
Doctors are among the most richly rewarded professionals in the country. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that of the 15 highest-paid professions in the United States, all but two are in medicine or dentistry.
Why, then, are we proposing to make medical school free?
Huge medical school debts ”” doctors now graduate owing more than $155,000 on average, and 86 percent have some debt ”” are why so many doctors shun primary care in favor of highly paid specialties, where there are incentives to give expensive treatments and order expensive tests, an important driver of rising health care costs.
Selimah Marie Harmon was born in Oxford, England, in 1993–how could she be done with secondary school already? Where does the time go?–KSH.
For one picture of her [singing] you can go here and look at photo #1 (she is in the middle, closest to the front).
You may also find the schedule here and, if interested, you may read about the school there.
The Charleston County School District’s proposed budget for next school year won’t raise taxes or furlough teachers, but it does include cuts that will affect employees.
With the exception of teachers, every district employee will be furloughed next year, and no employee will receive a cost-of-living increase or salary hike for additional years of experience.
The school board approved on Thursday the first reading of its proposed $332.1 million operating budget, which is about $2.6 million more than this year. That budget covers classroom expenses, and the board voted 7-2 for it.
Church of England Schools must have a “critical mass” of Christian students and teachers to maintain their distinctive ethos, the Bishop of Exeter has told his diocese. Diluting the Christian element of church schools would no longer leave them Christian and would rob them of their unique character.
In a letter released to coincide with the start of term for Devon’s 131 Church of England schools, Bishop Michael Langrish said the church had “always been committed to the education of all children.”
However, the “work of all our Church Schools is grounded in a Christian understanding of the nature of human beings and their relationship both with other people and with God. This understanding finds expression in teaching, in pastoral care, in worship and in the total school ethos” the bishop said in his April 28 letter.
Trinity Episcopal Cathedral announced Wednesday that it will close The Cathedral School at the conclusion of the school year.
Preschool programs serving children ages six weeks to 4 years will remain open.
The 54-year-old Episcopal school serves students in pre-K through fifth grade and had become something of a Little Rock institution. Its enrollment started to decline after the opening of an elementary school at Episcopal Collegiate School in 2009, but had grown by 34 percent in the last three years, according to school officials.
Karen Dombi was thrilled when her three oldest children were picked for student government this year””not because she envisioned careers in politics, but because it was one of the few programs at their public high school that didn’t charge kids to participate.
Budget shortfalls have prompted Medina Senior High to impose fees on students who enroll in many academic classes and extracurricular activities. The Dombis had to pay to register their children for basic courses such as Spanish I and Earth Sciences, to get them into graded electives such as band, and to allow them to run cross-country and track. The family’s total tab for a year of public education: [ ].
“I’m wondering, am I going to be paying for my parking spot at the school? Because you’re making me pay for just about everything else,” says Ms. Dombi, a parent in this middle-class community in northern Ohio.
You need to guess how much it cost them for 3 children for one year; then read it all.
It is one of the most important religion stories for a decade or so. The Church of England seems to have changed its mind on church schools. A few days ago, the Bishop of Oxford, the Right Reverend John Pritchard, who is also chairman of the Church’s board of education, said he wanted just 10 percent of places reserved for church attenders. It’s a total turn-around. For a decade the Church has bullishly defended the system, and dismissed dissenters as traitors to the cause.
What happened? The C of E has realized that the popularity of its schools is bad for its image. How can this be? The popularity of church schools is due to their success, and why should success be a cause for shame?…
All in all, Canadians are a pretty comfortable and happy lot.
The country ranks at or near the top in many of 11 well-being indicators in a new quality of life index, unveiled Tuesday by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Only Australia topped Canada.
“Overall, I think Canada seems to be a pretty good place to be,” said Matthias Rumpf, an OECD spokesman in Washington. “But,” he cautioned, “it shouldn’t make them complacent about everything.”
It’s literacy center time in Mary Sires’ first-grade class, and students don’t even look up when visitors enter the room.
Students are absorbed in the day’s activities, which include using iPads to write and draw comic strips and reading books they’ve written on the small, tablet computers.
This technology has seized the attention of Sires’ students, roping them into lessons every day. It’s been instrumental in helping Sires give both her high achievers and stragglers the attention they need, and she uses the device as much as she can.
For more than 800 years, the University of Oxford has led the world in the study of the divine. For centuries, it has sat alongside Cambridge as the leading centre for the study of the Bible.
Now academics are considering a proposal to rebrand theology at Oxford as “religious studies” because of the growing demand from students who wish to study Islam, Hinduism and Judaism as well as Christianity.
The requirement to have an A level in religious studies to study religion at Oxford is also to be dropped.
Secularism is moving slowly in America, but the story of religious belief and practice here looks even more complex if one takes a long view. More than 60% of Americans belong to some formal religious body today. In the late 18th century, that number was less than 10%.
Any intellectually serious program in secular studies will avoid triumphalism and deal with the complexity of secularism’s history. It will know that the recent history of Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand is not the history of all humanity. It will also acknowledge that there is not merely one variety of secularism””some secularists have strong beliefs in paranormal phenomena, which disgusts other secularists. A serious program will also acknowledge that some of the best work on secularism has been done by Christians, foremost among them the Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor.
A few years down the line, how can we know that secular studies at Pitzer is living up to its promise? One sign: If some of its students come in as devout atheists or agnostics and leave as religious believers.
The individual stories are familiar. The chemistry major tending bar. The classics major answering phones. The Italian studies major sweeping aisles at Wal-Mart.
Now evidence is emerging that the damage wrought by the sour economy is more widespread than just a few careers led astray or postponed. Even for college graduates ”” the people who were most protected from the slings and arrows of recession ”” the outlook is rather bleak.
Employment rates for new college graduates have fallen sharply in the last two years, as have starting salaries for those who can find work. What’s more, only half of the jobs landed by these new graduates even require a college degree, reviving debates about whether higher education is “worth it” after all.
The United States is falling dramatically behind much of the world in rebuilding and expanding an overloaded and deteriorating transportation network it needs to remain competitive in the global marketplace, according to a new study by the Urban Land Institute.
Burdened with soaring deficits and with long-term transportation plans stalled in Congress, the United States has fallen behind three emerging economic competitors ”” Brazil, China and India, the institute said.
The brutal job market brought on by the recession has been hard on everyone, but especially devastating on the youngest members of the labor force.
About 60% of recent graduates have not been able to find a full-time job in their chosen profession, according to job placement firm Adecco.
And for those just entering the workplace, a bout of long-term unemployment can affect their career plans for years to come.
The word “cafeteria” just doesn’t cut it. The Bear’s Den in the South 40 dorm complex at Washington University is really more like a collection of high-end mini-restaurants, serving everything from fresh seafood to vegetarian.
And like the student body it serves, the Bear’s Den has become increasingly diverse, a place that needs to please more palates and ideologies.
So, early this year, when the campus’ Muslim Student Association approached the school’s food service provider, Bon Appetit, and asked it to provide halal options ”” food prepared in accordance with Islamic law ”” the company agreed. In April, with the Student Union’s support, the Bear’s Den launched a halal food service, making Washington University the first school in the state to offer halal food, according to organizers.
[The running online commentary]…instead of being a distraction ”” an electronic version of note-passing ”” the chatter echoed and fed into the main discourse, said Mrs. [Erin] Olson, who monitored the stream and tried to absorb it into the lesson. She and others say social media, once kept outside the school door, can entice students who rarely raise a hand to express themselves via a medium they find as natural as breathing.
“When we have class discussions, I don’t really feel the need to speak up or anything,” said one of her students, Justin Lansink, 17. “When you type something down, it’s a lot easier to say what I feel.”
With Twitter and other microblogging platforms, teachers from elementary schools to universities are setting up what is known as a “backchannel” in their classes. The real-time digital streams allow students to comment, pose questions (answered either by one another or the teacher) and shed inhibitions about voicing opinions. Perhaps most importantly, if they are texting on-task, they are less likely to be texting about something else.
Colleges and universities have long offered majors in religion or theology. But with more and more people now saying they have no religion, one college has decided to be the first to offer a major in secularism.
Starting this fall, Pitzer College, a small liberal arts institution in Southern California, will inaugurate a department of secular studies. Professors from other departments, including history, philosophy, religion, science and sociology, will teach courses like “God, Darwin and Design in America,” “Anxiety in the Age of Reason” and “Bible as Literature.”
The department was proposed by Phil Zuckerman, a sociologist of religion, who describes himself as “culturally Jewish, but agnostic-atheist on questions of deep mystery.” Over the years he grew increasingly intrigued by the growth of secularism in the United States and around the world. He studied and taught in Denmark, one of the world’s most secular countries, and has written several books about atheism.
Shortly after September 11, 2001, I was in a classroom addressing students at a Midwestern Catholic college, where I was a professor. Reuters News Service had run a story stating that it would not refer to the 9/11 attacks as “terrorist” because one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. I asked the students if they agreed. They did. I said I assumed then that they did not think the attacks were morally wrong. Their reply was that the attacks were wrong, but not morally wrong. What then did they mean by “wrong,” I asked. Did they mean “psychologically disturbing,” “politically incorrect”?
[This and another] personal experience[]… serve to illustrate in microcosm the ideological shift that has taken place in the U.S. over the course of the past forty years ”” a shift toward an ever more pronounced secularism that is depriving us of the moral authority required for integrity and self-government, both personal and corporate.