How long will we continue to limit the learning of our children by our need to be in control of it? The new ELSE Education Act replacing NCLB, should have included an apology from the Congress for all of the mischief that the NCLB led to in spite of its good intentions. It was an inappropriate response to a misunderstood … Read More
A Typology of Paradigms for Improving School
After thirty years of significant criticism, perhaps it is time to go back to the past in search for future thinking about our schools. In 1846, Horace Mann’s 12th annual report to the Massachusetts Board of Education affirms, “… the absolute right of every human being that comes into the world to an education.” It required a national commitment to … Read More
There is No Neutrality – True Education Primarily is A Relationship-Driven Activity
There is No Neutrality – True Education primarily is a relationship-driven activity Richard Edlin comments: The reflections below from Scot McKnight (prof of NT at Northern Seminary, Lombard, IL) echo the focus that Jamie Smith, Benson Kamary, Roy Atwood, Doug Wilson, myself, and many others put on the key dynamic that education is not primarily the transfer of information. It … Read More
A Look Back…
The following speech was given during Homecoming Week at Unity Christian High School in Orange City, Iowa on January 19 of this year. It was given by my father, Marion Van Soelen, who served as Unity’s principal from 1970-1977 (and a servant in Christian education for 50 years). Clearly, I am pretty biased when it comes to the content, but … Read More
A Letter to my Daughter on her Graduation from Christian High School
Dear Katie, Graduation Day at last! Congratulations! Bravo! Well done! Hurrah! I’m so filled with love and pride right now I’m about to burst. Many times I’ve come into your room late at night and found you toiling over algebraic equations, or struggling to plumb the depths of Dostoyevsky, or trying to think clearly and Christianly about the big questions of life. I … Read More
Education, Micro-aggression, Viewpoint Diversity, and the Tolerance Mirage of Rampant Secularism
One consequence of the contemporary postmodern ideology that there is no truth beyond each individual’s concept of it, is the increasingly desperate attempt on college campuses to eradicate any evaluative reflection concerning one tribe or person’s truth by any other tribe or person. This has led to the apparent evil of “micro-aggressions”, or what Lukianoff and Haidt describe in their … Read More
The Financial Tsunami: The Effect on Cost and Price
In the last post on the CESA heads surveys, conducted in the spring of this year, we looked at this group of school leaders’ views of the educational marketplace, primarily its effect on enrollment and re-enrollment. We examined the phenomenon that despite the fact that 70% of the surveyed schools have grown in the past five years, some quite dramatically, … Read More
Redefining Smart – A Book Review
Quality educators who have operated from their heart, from relationships with students, and who have seen themselves as coaches and designers of learning, will be greatly heartened by a new book, Redefining Smart: Awakening Students’ Power to Reimagine Their World (Corwin, 2016). I found it difficult to put the book down. As a psychologist, educator, and disciple of positive psychology, … Read More
Christian Education for “Normal” People
This article originally appeared in the Ontario Christian School Administrators Association newsletter, The Rudder. In June, I read Evangelism for “Normal” People by John Bowen. I expected that it might make me consider how I understand evangelism; I didn’t expect that it would make me reconsider how I understand the movement of Christian education. Bowen shares the ideas of a … Read More
Preparing Our Kids For The Innovation Era
Recently I read two very compelling books that offer some of the best recent synthesis of our current state of change in education. One focuses more on changes at the learner level and one takes a global perspective. Both come to similar conclusions as to where we should be heading. Given my enthusiasm for each book, I would like to … Read More