God Blogging (and more)
Godblogging (and more) is my take on religion, education, journalism and whatever else might fit under the “and more” umbrella. In judging Godblogging the best news blog in Arizona in 2009, the New York Times’ Aron Pilhofer wrote, “Many newsrooms have launched blogs over the past few years, and, frankly, very few of them are good. Godblogging is one of the rare exceptions. It is very, very good. … well-written, well-reported, interesting and entertaining. It’s a model of news blogging done right, and well deserving of this award.” You can read the most recent posts here, or follow them on Twitter @rshorton. I also write occassionally at Getting Schooled about my transition from education reporter to high school English teacher-in-training. A sample from each blog is below.
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If you are a college graduate who needed student loans to get that degree – ever more precious in an economic downturn and a competitive work environment – you should be thanking Ted Kennedy today. If you’re a female who got to play sports in schools forced to fund women’s athletics with some semblance of equity to men’s, thank Kennedy for Title IX. If you’re a person who grew up in poverty, working your tail off at minimum-wage jobs and still had too much month at the end of the money, you can thank Kennedy for his push to raise – more than once – the minimum wage. If you or your child are disabled and you’re offered decent education and a chance at work without discrimination? Kennedy and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Kennedy, who served in the Senate for 46 years, died last night at the age of 77 from complications of a brain tumor. He was a life-long Catholic. While he was involved in just about every piece of major legislation that brought a better life to the working poor, the issues closest to his heart were equal rights, health care and education – both improving it in general and improving access to higher education for people of little means. I often think of critics of Kennedy’s – the college-educated pro-life advocates who focus solely on his stance on abortion and stem-cell research – and wonder: Do they realize that their college educations, the brains they trained in university classrooms and now use to mount arguments against killing the unborn, are, in part, gifts from the late Senator? Women, minorities and the poor especially should recognize that without Kennedy’s passion for improving access to higher education for all, many would not have made it into those classrooms.
I once had the privilege of spending two days with Fr. Charles Curran while researching and reporting a story on the controversial priest. Besides discovering that he was about the nicest person I had ever met and by far and away the most humble, I found out what he thought of his critics and supporters. He said one consequence of being a lightening rod for certain issues was that people thought they knew him. Those who liked what he said tended to put him on a pedestal, and those who disliked him tended to demonize him. The truth, he said, was somewhere in the middle: He tried always to do right, but sometimes he failed.
That’s what I think about Edward Kennedy – he was a man who tried to do right, but sometimes failed. He was neither all saint or all sinner but, like all of us, a mixture of both. Still, for all his personal-life struggles, the man never failed to show up for the common man when he took to the Senate floor. He never failed to speak up for the poor and disenfranchised. (And here, to preempt comments that he failed to show up for the unborn, I contend that Kennedy looked out and saw the millions CURRENTLY living in poverty and despair and tried to relieve that suffering immediately. His work positively affected millions of the living, even if he never publicly supported the fewer millions of unborn.) Kennedy was a man born into extreme privilege who considered it his life’s calling to make life better for others. Few of us, I believe, can say the same.
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Readers will recall that I’ve discussed school reform and obesity, and so, on first glance, one would think I’d be all for “structured recess.” While I am very much in favor of recess in general, I find myself a little leery of the latest talk about “recess coaches” which you can find reported on here in the New York Times, the Baltimore Sun, and various other spots (proving, as one blogger said, that a certain PR guru needs a raise).
What makes me leery is that this seems like yet another attempt to schedule every single second of every child’s day to the point that pretty soon a kid won’t be able to play Hopscotch without the Recess Police stamping the idea into the ground.
Here’s the background: Playworks, a California based nonprofit, is sending “recess coaches” to low-income urban schools to remake recess. Now, God knows, kids need to play to learn (and those who play behave better in class), and anyone paying attention to education reforms in the past decade knows that recess has been eliminated in some schools in a misguided effort to increase test scores.
Additionally, one look at any school and the spare tires that kids are carrying around clearly illustrates that kids need to move more! But still … should recess become just another class? Isn’t the idea of recess to allow kids the freedom to play what they like, how they like, with whom they like? Have we forgotten how our own educational days were punctuated with spontaneous games of playground chase and Mother May I and Red Rover?
Before anyone jumps me (which sadly happens on playgrounds), I admit that recess can be little more than a bully pulpit for bullies, and so structured play is a step up from that, for sure. I’m just wondering if making play structured, showing kids rules and regulations for getting along and “playing nice” might actually backfire. Part of the way children learn is through discovery and I remember quite a number of lessons my children learned on the playground: They learned to advocate for their friends, when said friends were being bullied; they learned to take turns; they learned to stand up for themselves; they learned what it felt like to be left out – and that hard lesson helped them develop empathy for others who were left out.
It certainly wasn’t perfect and heaven knows kids get hurt on playgrounds running into each other. But by trying to take all the risk out of free play (which is at least part of what seems to be behind recess coaches), it seems we are just trying – more and more – to control childhood to the point that kids literally cannot be kids. Yes, yes, yes – playground bullies need to be nipped in the bud – thus the need for playground monitors. Yes, yes, yes – learning structured games can develop a sense of teamwork and cross barriers to bond communities – thus the need for teachers and administrators to consider integrated learning on the playground at certain times.
But every second of every recess does not need to be structured. Children need to have choices to learn how to make the good ones. So maybe adults should relax a little and (gasp!) let the children play.
