God’s meanings in revelation are clear, but they are also fluid in their boundaries: there is a normative story to be told, one which, for the 1611 translators is focused upon the sovereignty of grace and the consequent impotence of human mediation between God and the world. Everything has to be read against the backdrop which alone makes sense of Scripture as a whole ”“ the unique divinity of Christ and the gift of absolving and transforming grace to all who repudiate trust in their own works. The translators were not all in precisely the same place in the complex map of internal Protestant controversy in the early seventeenth century, but all would have subscribed to this overall view. This being said, however, the exact way in which the words of Scripture are seen and read as transparent to these mysteries will not be settled once and for all by this or that particular bit of human hermeneutical enterprise. Thus, knowing what is going on in the work of translation is a stimulus to recognising the ”˜common imbecility’ of which Hooker speaks and so to deeper involvement in the common life of the congregation. The qualified indeterminacy of Scripture, manifest in the sheer fact of the translatability of Scripture and the diverse possibilities of saying what it says, becomes an ecclesiological matter: it brings into focus the biblical vision of mutual edification within the Body of Christ. And insofar as it thus becomes part of the opening up of the believer to the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, we can see that the Christological hints which we noted in Smith’s preface are indeed not simply about removing obstacles to a clear and straightforward message but connected with the strengthening of the common life in which alone revelation is rightly received.

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As long as there have been colleges, there’s been an individualist, anti-college strain in American culture””an affinity for the bootstrap. But it is hard to think of a time when skepticism of the value of higher education has been more prominent than it is right now. Over the past several months, the same sharp and distressing arguments have been popping up in the Times, cable news, the blogosphere, even The Chronicle of Higher Education. The cost of college, as these arguments typically go, has grown far too high, the return far too uncertain, the education far too lax. The specter, it seems, has materialized….

[Indeed]…the skepticism is spreading, even among foot soldiers on the academic front lines. In March, “Professor X,” an anonymous English instructor at two middling northeastern colleges, published In the Basement of the Ivory Tower, an expansion of an Atlantic essay arguing that college has been dangerously oversold and that it borders on immoral to ask America’s youth to incur heavy debt for an education for which millions are simply ill-equipped. Professor X’s book came out on the heels of a Harvard Graduate School of Education report that made much the same point. The old policy cri de coeur “college for all,” the report argues, has proved inadequate; rather than shunting everyone into four-year colleges, we should place greater emphasis on vocational programs, internships, and workplace learning. Then, last month, a front-page article in the Times delivered striking news: Student-loan debt in the U.S. is approaching the trillion-dollar mark, outpacing credit-card debt for the first time in history. With all that debt, more and more are asking, what are we buying?

On the surface, [Nathaniel] Colleton seemed an unlikely drug dealer. He had grown up in a solid home. His mom was a paralegal and church pastor, his dad a longtime employee of The Citadel.

Colleton was a high school graduate. He played music for church services and volunteered to teach underprivileged kids how to read, his attorney, Dale Cobb, said.

Cobb said his client turned to selling drugs after he lost his construction job and couldn’t find work. Whether it was that or the lure of easy money, as police suspect, Colleton’s new occupation would short-circuit whatever future he had planned for himself.

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[Ellen] Barkin graduated from the High School of Performing Arts in Manhattan, even though her teachers advised her parents to take her out of school because she wasn’t “pretty enough” and had “very little talent and no spark.” It took her years to recover from that assessment, but once she did, she was cast in Barry Levinson’s “Diner” and found enough spark to burn up the screen with Dennis Quaid in “The Big Easy” and Al Pacino in “Sea of Love.”

–From a profile of Ms. Barkin in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine (my emphasis)

Thousands of families who attend church to secure places at popular Church of England schools face being denied entry under radical plans revealed today to overhaul admissions.

The C of E is drastically revising its guidelines to limit the number of places offered to those from church backgrounds….

The Bishop of Oxford, the Right Rev John Pritchard, chairman of the C of E’s board of education, said schools should end the bias towards children from religious homes even if it lowers academic results. He said: “Every school will have a policy that [it] has a proportion of places for church youngsters … what I would be saying is that number ought to be minimised because our primary function and our privilege is to serve the wider community.

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Will the Conservative Party make funds available to improve security around Jewish institutions including schools as recommended in the recent all-party report on anti-Semitism?

We’ve got to stop the rise of anti-Semitism, and I will always stand firm against anti-Semitism, in all its forms and wherever it occurs. I support the work the Community Security Trust does to provide extra vigilance for the Jewish Community. I have spoken at its dinners, supported its work and assisted with fund raising. I back faith-based organisations and what they do: they form an important part of my vision of the Big Society. But we also need to do much more in terms of freeing up the police from bureaucracy and paperwork and form-filling so that they have more time to focus on these sorts of issues. I can promise you is that with a Conservative Government we will never allow anti-Semitism to go unchecked in this country, and we will work flat out to reverse the radicalisation and root out the sources of radicalisation which have grown up over the last few years.

What is the Conservative Party’s commitment to faith schools?

I have visited Jewish Schools in London and Birmingham. I’m a big supporter of faith schools, personally as well as politically.

Personally, because my daughter, Nancy, goes to an excellent Church of England school and we’re really lucky in that. Politically, because I think that faith schools are a really important part of our education system and they often have a culture and ethos which helps to drive up standards. If anything, I would like to see faith schools grow. Through our school reform plans, there will be a real growth in new good school places, and we’re anticipating that some of these will be in faith schools.

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The nation’s college-bound students are increasingly looking for green ”” and no, that doesn’t mean just money.

Green means eco-friendly, and 69% of college applicants this year say having information about a college’s commitment to environmental issues would contribute to their decision to apply to or attend the school, according to a survey of 8,200 students by The Princeton Review. That’s up from 64% in 2008.

Academic reputation and financial aid still matter most, but “the environmental factor (is) definitely one of the things that makes a difference,” says Tucker Johnson, 19, of Harrison, Maine, who was offered admission to nine schools and must commit to one by May 1. Like other students nationwide, he is visiting campuses this month with a checklist of criteria. Among them: a sincere commitment to sustainability.

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The University of Texas Investment Management Co., the second-largest U.S. academic endowment, took delivery of almost $1 billion in gold bullion as the metal reaches a record, according to the fund’s board.

The fund, whose $19.9 billion in assets ranked it behind Harvard University’s endowment as of August, according to the National Association of College and University Business Officers, last year added about $500 million in gold investments to an existing stake, said Bruce Zimmerman, the endowment’s chief executive officer. The holdings reached about $987 million yesterday, as Comex futures closed at $1,486 an ounce….

“Central banks are printing more money than they ever have, so what’s the value of money in terms of purchases of goods and services,” [Kyle] Bass said today in a telephone interview. “I look at gold as just another currency that they can’t print any more of.”

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Delegates attending the first consultative conference for the Anglican Alliance in Nairobi have called for the Communion initiative to have as two of its key priorities the development of an Anglican Bank for savings and loans and a public education campaign on financial literacy and rights.

The consultation to take forward proposals for development, relief and advocacy across the Anglican Communion yesterday (April 14th) received a strong endorsement from Archbishop Eliud Wabukala, the Primate of Kenya.

Yesterday’s economic empowerment workshop heard presentations from Peter Warutere of the World Bank, Moses Ochieng of the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor and Peterson Kamau from the church’s own micro-finance agency Five Talents. They set out the challenges facing developing countries and set out strategies to overcome poverty globally, nationally and locally.

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“I went to the teacher to get her approval and she wanted to ask the administration to see if it was okay,” Jessica explained. “She said that I could do it as long as I called this treat ‘spring spheres.’ I couldn’t call them Easter eggs.”

Rather than question the decision, Jessica opted to “roll with it.” But the third graders had other ideas.

“When I took them out of the bag, the teacher said, ‘Oh look, spring spheres’ and all the kids were like ‘Wow, Easter eggs.’ So they knew,” Jessica said.

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“In the coming years, a lot of people will still be paying off their student loans when it’s time for their kids to go to college,” said Mark Kantrowitz, the publisher of FinAid.org and Fastweb.com, who has compiled the estimates of student debt, including federal and private loans.

Two-thirds of bachelor’s degree recipients graduated with debt in 2008, compared with less than half in 1993. Last year, graduates who took out loans left college with an average of $24,000 in debt. Default rates are rising, especially among those who attended for-profit colleges.

The mountain of debt is likely to grow more quickly with the coming round of budget-slashing. Pell grants for low-income students are expected to be cut and tuition at public universities will probably increase as states with pinched budgets cut back on the money they give to colleges.

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Muslim leaders in Kenya are calling for government action on Christian schools which have banned students from wearing the hijab, the head covering traditionally worn by Muslim girls and women – writes Frederick Nzwili.

Church leaders have defended the ban, saying head teachers have the right to determine dress code in the schools, according to a denomination’s religious traditions, discipline and philosophies.

“The problem has been with us for some time. In our private schools, we do not encourage or allow hijab. We insist the children have to be children just like the others. These are our laid-down procedures,” Roman Archbishop Boniface Lele of Mombasa told ENInews on 6 April 2011, six days after the Muslim leaders issued the demand in the coastal city.

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With great sadness we have been witnessing a day of tragedy in a school environment, at Tasso da Silveira elementary school, in Rio de Janeiro.

It is time for us to discuss our security system, especially the security in our public schools. It was a beautiful day, which looked like a normal day, just one more day of school for so many young students of Tasso da Silveira elementary, in Rio de Janeiro.

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Controversy over religious education in Victorian government schools is hardly new. The debate has raged since the 19th century when the Education Act established that public education should be free, secular and compulsory. A more recent complication is the rise of a multifaith society, along with a decline in religious observance by the slightly more than 60 per cent of Australians who identify as Christian.

While only one in 14 Australians attends church weekly, and one in six monthly, some of the strongest objections to the way religion is taught in school do not come from non-believers. The Religions, Ethics and Education Network Australia has written to the Prime Minister, premiers and education ministers urging a review so that the national curriculum improves on the current flawed model for teaching religion and ethics….

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Painful but important viewing, watch it all and be warned some of the language is disturbing and offensive–KSH.

When C.S. Lewis gathered with his colleagues in The Inklings to discuss their shared faith and latest endeavors, they met at a pub in Oxford called the Eagle and Child.

The parish hall of St. Alban’s Chapel at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge is larger than the Eagle and Child and it’s not serving draft beer, but the premise is similar: Gathering together for a meal and lively discussion of higher things.

The Rev. Andrew S. Rollins uses “Lunch with C.S. Lewis” to make some of the grand concepts of Christianity ”” the goodness of God, suffering, heaven and hell ”” accessible to an audience not limited to scholars.

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Jack London was the subject in Daterrius Hamilton’s online English 3 course. In a high school classroom packed with computers, he read a brief biography of London with single-paragraph excerpts from the author’s works. But the curriculum did not require him, as it had generations of English students, to wade through a tattered copy of “Call of the Wild” or “To Build a Fire.”

Mr. Hamilton, who had failed English 3 in a conventional classroom and was hoping to earn credit online to graduate, was asked a question about the meaning of social Darwinism. He pasted the question into Google and read a summary of a Wikipedia entry. He copied the language, spell-checked it and e-mailed it to his teacher.

Mr. Hamilton, 18, is among the expanding ranks of students in kindergarten through grade 12 ”” more than one million in the United States, by one estimate ”” taking online courses.

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Every other Wednesday, right after school at 2:45, the newest club at Rutherford High, the atheist club, meets in Room 13-211.

Last Wednesday, Jim Dickey, the president, started out by asking his fellow student atheists (there are a few agnostics, too) whether they wanted to put together an all-atheist Ultimate Frisbee team for a charity event.

“We can pay the entry fee from the club treasury,” said Michael Creamer, the atheists’ faculty adviser, who urged them to take part.

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Call-center company 24/7 Customer Pvt. Ltd. is desperate to find new recruits who can answer questions by phone and email. It wants to hire 3,000 people this year. Yet in this country of 1.2 billion people, that is beginning to look like an impossible goal.

So few of the high school and college graduates who come through the door can communicate effectively in English, and so many lack a grasp of educational basics such as reading comprehension, that the company can hire just three out of every 100 applicants.

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Canon Callaway, Deputy for Anglican Partnerships at Trinity Wall Street, is widely known throughout the Anglican Communion, particularly for his work in forging enduring links with the Church in Africa and establishing mutual partnerships as a model for ministry.

CUAC is a worldwide association of over 120 institutions of higher education and a network of the Anglican Communion. Its patron is the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams. Along with its predecessor, the Association of Episcopal Colleges, which consists mostly of the Episcopal colleges in the US, CUAC’s mission is promoting cross-cultural contacts and educational programs.

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More than 20 years after God’s bikies revved up my school, the Victorian Education Department still forces its primary schools to hold ”special religious instruction” taught by volunteers.

While other religious groups – including Jewish, Islamic and Hare Krishna – are accredited to run classes, 96 per cent are taught by Christian education provider Access Ministries.

The education department says schools, by law, must offer religious classes if approached by accredited course providers. This is despite the fact that less than 10 per cent of the population goes to church each week.

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Cheating has become more common in recent years. But a recent French case is the most sensational, and the most troubling.

In January, the French Chess Federation accused three of its members, including Sebastien Feller, a 20-year-old grandmaster, of cheating during last year’s Chess Olympiad. Feller, who is ranked No. 4 among French players, played Board 5 for the national Olympiad team and won an individual gold medal for his performance.

But the federation said he had help from Cyril Marzolo, an international master, who watched Feller’s games online and put the positions into a computer, which suggested moves. Marzolo relayed the suggestions to Arnaud Hauchard, a grandmaster and the French team’s captain, who used a code in transmitting the suggestions to Feller, the federation said.

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One of the hottest college campuses in the U.S. for Jewish students is also one of the unlikeliest: a small Lutheran school erected around a soaring stone chapel with a cross on top.

In what is being called a testament to word of mouth in the Jewish community, approximately 34 percent of Muhlenberg College’s 2,200 students are Jewish. And the biggest gains have come in the past five years or so.

Perhaps equally noteworthy is how Muhlenberg has responded, by offering a kosher menu at the student union, creating a partnership with the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, and expanding its Hillel House, a social hub for Jews.

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The relationship game among college-age adults today is a muddle of seemingly contradictory trends. Recent studies indicate that traditional dating on campuses has taken a back seat to no-strings relationships in which bonds between young men and women are increasingly brief and sexual. (A new website to arrange these encounters that began at the University of Chicago last month now is expanding to other campuses.)

But even as casual sex ”” often called “hookups” or “friends with benefits” ”” is a dominant part of campus life, a new report by the National Center for Health Statistics indicates the percentages of men and women 18-24 who say they are virgins also are increasing.

It all reflects an emerging paradigm that is altering the nature of sex and relationships among young adults: fewer men than women on campuses, a more openly sexual society that often takes cues from media, and a declining desire to make relationship commitments early in life.

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The Muslim pilgrimage, or hajj, commemorates the trials of the Prophet Abraham and his family. According to the Traditions of the Prophet Mohammed, Muslims must make the pilgrimage at the earliest opportunity in their lives because those who delay might be unable to go later, dying as sinners. Safoorah Khan, a teacher in Berkeley, Ill., takes her religion seriously.

Once Khan could afford the pilgrimage, she told the Berkeley Board of Education in mid-2008 that it was a religious requirement to make the pilgrimage as early in life as possible. The hajj fell in mid-December of 2008. Khan explained she wanted 15 school days off (19 days counting weekends), but that she’d return sooner if necessary.

In response, the board didn’t ask Khan why her religion required her to go that December. The board didn’t ask Khan how soon she could be back. The board didn’t say Khan’s absence would harm her students. The board just said such leave was not authorized by the collective bargaining agreement. End of discussion.

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In August 2008, nine months into her job as a math teacher in Berkeley, Ill., Safoorah Khan made an extraordinary request: three weeks off in December for a pilgrimage to Mecca, known as the hajj in her Muslim faith.

The school board said no ”” not an unreasonable reply to a relatively new employee whose leave would occur at a critical time, the end of a semester. Khan quit, went on the pilgrimage and lodged a religious discrimination complaint. The Justice Department has now intervened on Khan’s behalf against the school board.

So what could have been a teachable moment has instead turned into yet another federal lawsuit.

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The Mt. Elgon sub-region district local governments in partnership with Diocesan bishops of eastern Uganda have sealed discussions intended to start an African Anglican University (AAU)a living memorial to African martyrdom.

The proposed university will be established at the Bishop Usher Wilson Theological College, Buwalasi in Sironko.

It is to be a living memory of particularly Bishop Jonan Luwum and Dr. Martin Luther King Junior and a South African martyr, Manche Masemola.

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Around the country, law enforcement officials and educators are struggling with how to confront minors who “sext,” an imprecise term that refers to sending sexual photos, videos or texts from one cellphone to another.

But adults face a hard truth. For teenagers, who have ready access to technology and are growing up in a culture that celebrates body flaunting, sexting is laughably easy, unremarkable and even compelling: the primary reason teenagers sext is to look cool and sexy to someone they find attractive.

Indeed, the photos can confer cachet.
“Having a naked picture of your significant other on your cellphone is an advertisement that you’re sexually active to a degree that gives you status,” said Rick Peters, a senior deputy prosecuting attorney for Thurston County, which includes Lacey. “It’s an electronic hickey.”

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As many as 100 parents braved gale-force winds on a Sunday to find out more about the new primary school opening on their doorstep. It was a testament to the appeal of the new school ”“ the first state-sponsored Hindu school to be proposed under Education Secretary Michael Gove’s flagship “free” school policy. The school only has places for 60 pupils a year and will open its reception class for the first time this September.

The school, the Krishna Avanti primary school in Leicester, is modelled on an existing Hindu school already opened in Harrow, north-west London. It, like other faith school proposals for “free” schools, has its opponents, those that think the plethora of religious schools being opened under the Gove initiative will destroy community cohesion and increase segregation on racial and religious grounds among pupils.

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There is no child psychologist who will tell you that children thrive amid chaos and uncertainty. Children need stability, regularity, continuity. And yet every year, we shake up their lives at will. We fire the newest teachers, increase class sizes and play musical chairs with teachers all over the district. Schools struggle to plan, to build, and each school’s knowledge base is thrown to the wind.

Bita Nazarian, principal at James Lick Middle School in San Francisco’s Noe Valley, remembers what happened last year. In the middle of the year, she felt she had a crack team of educators, both veteran and rookie, at her school. James Lick was humming with possibility and esprit de corps. But then the March 15 pink slips came around. Fourteen of her best young teachers were given notice, and morale went through the floor. For the rest of the school year and through the summer, these teachers had to keep one eye on the classroom and one eye on job possibilities elsewhere. The entire school, especially students, felt this acute instability until August, when most were hired back. But by then the damage was done….

How can we hope to attract and keep talent in this profession when, at every step, we make it so difficult, so insecure, so unvalued?

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