
 |
|
May 25, 2012
Mark Clayton: Is Hillary's State Dept. hacking Al Qaeda? Not quite
Erika Bolstad: Temple cancels Wasserman Schultz speech
The Kosher Gourmet by Ethel G. Hofman: The former president of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, whose members included the likes of Julia Child, is back with contemporary Shavous cuisine: Ruby Fruit Soup, Sweet Noodle Kugel with Cheese, Key Lime Curd, Calsone Casserole Frittata with Wild Mushrooms, Sun-dried tomatoes and Olives, Baked Tilapia with Pepper Cheese Cream and Brown Sugar Shortbread
May 24, 2012
Jeff Jacoby: The peace process battered Israel's reputation
Michael Muskal: 'Pro-choice' position hits record low, according to poll
Chris Farrell: Are We in a Tech Bubble?
The Kosher Gourmet by Penelope Wall: PHILLY CHEESE STEAKS --- hold the steak!
May 23, 2012
Tony Pugh: More private colleges offering tuition discounts
Mary Beth Franklin: How to Choose the Right Annuity for You
Tina Susman: The wig wasn't enough: Man gets 13 years for posing as his dead mom
The Kosher Gourmet by Emma Christensen:A simple way to do fish right
May 22, 2012
Warren Richey: Can US group challenge overseas surveillance act? Supreme Court to decide
Thomas M. Anderson: Walking Away From a Mortgage
The Kosher Gourmet by Megan Gordon: Enjoy a celebration of the most rich and layered flavors: Black bean, sweet potato and quinoa chili
May 21, 2012
Mark Clayton: Cybersecurity: How US utilities passed up chance to protect their networks
Howard LaFranchi: NATO summit: Who will foot the bill for long-term Afghanistan security?
Chris Farrell : Earn Dividends in Emerging Markets with This WisdomTree ETF
Stephen Whiteside, Ph.D. : Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: Social anxiety disorder --- or just shy?
Guy Jackson : Victim's father regrets death of Lockerbie bomber
The Kosher Gourmet by Mario Batali: Famed chef's veal shoulder farsumagru: A festive meat course for late spring
May 18, 2012
Rabbi Berel Wein: Striving: The People of the Book's Book for (All of) the People
Steven Goldberg: 5 Great Stock Picks and the Exchange-Traded Fund that Owns Them
Mary Pickett, M.D.: Ask the Harvard Experts: Don't be forced into gluten-free lifestyle based merely on a doctor's false-positive test
The Kosher Gourmet by Carolyn Malcoun: DIY healthy lunchbox treats: HOMEMADE FRUIT BARS for kids and brown-bagging adults alike
May 17, 2012
Warren Richey: Teacher fired for being unwed and pregnant can sue religious school, court rules
Josh Mitnick: Netanyahu's 'centrist' coalition is already proving it's anything but
Steven Goldberg: Earn Dividends in Emerging Markets with This WisdomTree ETF
Amina Khan: Research links coffee to lower death rates
The Kosher Gourmet by Faith Duran : Cheesy Potato Breakfast Casserole with Cheddar and Sun-Dried Tomatoes
May 16, 2012
Carmen Terzic, M.D., Ph.D. : Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: A variety of exercises can help improve balance
Melissa Healy: National strategy on Alzheimer's disease aims to halt it by 2025
The Kosher Gourmet by Joyce White : GOODNESS GRACIOUS: GREENS! 4 winning recipes that are no longer just for down-home folks (Includes expert tips & techniques)
May 15, 2012
Kristen Chick: Obama administration resumes arms sales to Bahrain despite serious unresolved human rights issues. Activists feel abandoned
Pat Mertz Esswein: Homes are now affordable again and mortgage rates are low. What you need to know before you buy
Kathy Kristof: Our Practical Investor Fights Inflation with These 6 Investments
Sue Hubbard, M.D.: The Kid's Doctor: Lactose intolerant young child? Check again
The Kosher Gourmet by Kathy Hunt: Spread a Little Excitement with EXOTIC CONDIMENTS (4 RECIPES)
May 14, 2012
Lisa Gerstner: How to Protect Your Identity, Finances If You Lose Your Phone
Harvard Health Letters: Heart disease and dementia
The Kosher Gourmet by Megan Gordon: MANGO COCONUT OAT MORNING MUFFINS are a bright but hearty delight
May 11, 2012
Jessica L. Anderson: Get the Best Deal on a Used Car
Jett Stone: Forget face-lifts and fake knees. Scientists have seen the fountain of youth --- and it's broccoli
The Kosher Gourmet by Chef Mario Batali: The famed chef's vegetable dish that tastes true to the season: FAVAS AND SUGAR SNAP PEAS WITH POTATOES AND TARRAGON
May 10, 2012
Sergei L. Loiko: Putin sends warning to U.S., NATO in Victory Day speech at Red Square
Mary Rourke: How being a 'mentch' got Vidal Sasoon his start and fighting in Israel's War of Independence provided him with confidence and a strong sense of his own identity
Jeff Bertolucci: Get Home Phone Service for Less Than $10 a Month
The Kosher Gourmet by Betty Rosbottom: Gleaming with its golden, crimson, and snowy white hues, this silken smooth and creamy STRAWBERRY ORANGE TRIFLE looks impressive, but is easy to prepare
May 9, 2012
Sharon Palmer, R.D. How you can reduce your risk -- or delay -- chronic diseases associated with aging
|
| |
Jewish World Review
April 21, 2011
/ 17 Nissan, 5771
The Bible in School: A Retort to Modern Contempt
By
Paul Greenberg
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
There was a time when the Bible and Shakespeare were recognized as twin pillars of not just English literature but Western civilization. Wherever the English-speaking peoples went, these books would go, for they were compact storehouses of wisdom, strength and beauty.
Even the humblest cabin along the American frontier might have a family Bible and maybe a copy of Shakespeare's plays. Those books would introduce a young Abe Lincoln to life and thought, and it showed. One day it would show in the language he would mobilize on behalf of nothing less than the American Union itself.
Mr. Lincoln and his country would both face many a trial in his time, as freedom does in all times, but he would go forth to meet those tests in the whole armor of the Word. Beware the man of one book, it has been well said. Especially if it is The Book.
Now we seem to live in a biblically illiterate era, and it shows. Not just in the quality of the prose that crosses an editor's desk every day, or in the junkspeech that politicians and educantists mouth as a matter of course, but in the paucity of thought behind their tinny catch words.
Today the English language is said to be much improved. We're assured that it has been streamlined, made so much more functional, reduced to the essentials, or maybe to just numbers. Not just our computers but our thought becomes binary, shorn of connotation and resonance, starved of greatness.
Greatness? What's that -- one more outdated romantic notion? Instead, we want to know the Bottom Line. We want a PowerPoint presentation, not literature. And so the rolling cadences of the King James Version and the comprehensive worldliness of Master Shakespeare must be digitalized and locked away in Kindle's electronic hieroglyphs, unsought and untroubling. We can relax, for our consciences are safely stored. And a brave new generation twitters in a language large enough only to fit the tiny screens of its apps.
| RECEIVE LIBERTY LOVING COLUMNISTS IN YOUR INBOX … FOR FREE! |
| Every weekday NewsAndOpinion.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". HUNDREDS of columnists and cartoonists regularly appear. Sign up for the daily update. It's free. Just click here. |
|
Such is what passes for thought among the young and all-too-restless of any age. Now it's a Facebook world, always in communication but with not much to communicate. Its tweets may be able to inspire revolutions, but not what comes afterward. In an internetted world, speed is of the essence, not depth. And that, too, shows.
Even now the West is engaged in a great conflict the extent of which we scarcely recognize. We find ourselves led by a commander-in-chief -- the title used to be Leader of the Free World -- who at best sounds an uncertain trumpet. (1 Corinthians 14:8) Even the most astute observers cannot be sure what aims he is pursuing, if any. His words waver, his policies are more like moods. But what else could they be? For, unformed and uninformed by literature, language languishes. And language is the very currency of thought. When it is devalued, thought itself is diminished.
Today the biblical allusions that were once every American's rightful inheritance may elicit only puzzled looks, or, worse, pass completely unnoticed in the detritus of our deconstructed, disconnected dialogue. One school of linguists assures us that language is just a mask for privilege and status, anyway, rather than something of intrinsic and inexhaustible value. The Bible may now be reserved for ceremonial occasions only.
Even in church schools where the Bible may be drilled into students, it may be reduced to only a series of Do's and Don'ts, a set of rigid rules rather than a never failing garden of inspiration and instruction, song and story. But as many a court has ruled, there is no constitutional bar to teaching the Bible as literature -- with all literature's scope and power. What a pity to deny it to students; it leaves our young unarmed in mind, in spirit, in soul.
At this year's session of the Arkansas legislature, a bill was introduced that would lay the groundwork for a course in the Bible in the state's public schools, where it should have been taught all along as an integral part of our literature, history and thought. Instead, it has been banned as effectively as Darwin's "Origin of Species." Both have been marked Controversial (as if all great ideas aren't) and so may be relegated to the closed stacks. Much like books listed on the Index in medieval times. They are not to be discussed lest they corrupt the young. Wasn't that the charge against Socrates, too?
The passage of such legislation is to be applauded, not feared. Other, states, sensing the vacuum in their students' education, have introduced courses in the Bible, carefully drafted to avoid mere indoctrination. And such courses have withstood the inevitable challenges in court. For there is nothing in our litigious society, no matter how needed or elevated, that will not be challenged in court -- or at least by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The object of this bill is to let school districts in Arkansas teach the Bible unafraid, and, in the language of HB 1032, without "religious doctrine or sectarian interpretation." The courses would be designed not to "disparage or encourage commitment to a set of religious beliefs," but to acquaint students with the very basis of so much of Western civilization itself.
Who could object to the study of the Bible for its own sake in order to fill so obvious a gap in the education of the next generation?
Answer: The ACLU, of course, along with all those who confuse the Constitution's neutrality toward religion with a mandate for ignorance.
The executive director of this state's chapter of the ACLU acknowledged that the bill was drawn: "On its face, it's not unconstitutional. If they followed it word for word, line by line … and taught the Bible academically, it would be fine. But…" And with the ACLU there is always a but. "But," the ACLU's director went on, "in a pubic-school setting, I think it would be very difficult to teach it properly, and very tempting to teach it with religion."
Yes, careless and/or opinionated teachers we will always have with us, along with the best kind. But if a history teacher gives his students ideology instead, or an algebra teacher gets an equation wrong, we don't cease teaching history or math. Any more than we should deny our children the Bible with its majesty, wisdom, poetry, humor (have you read the Book of Jonah lately?) or just verbal delights. Any more than we should ban any mention of Evolution in biology classes.
Let the Bible ring out in our schools, inseparable from Western civilization. Let its words, as it says on the Liberty Bell, "proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof." (Leviticus 25:10.)
Paul Greenberg Archives
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Send your comments by clicking here.
include "/usr/web/jewishworldreview.com/t-ssi/jwr_squaread_300x250.php";
if (strpos(, "printer_friendly") === 0)
{}
else {
=<<
© 2010 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Alan Douglas
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
Marybeth Hicks
A. Barton Hinkle
David Horowitz
Jeff Jacoby
Renee James
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ed Koch
Ch. Krauthammer
Michael Ledeen
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Pat Sajak
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Ben Wattenberg
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
Lisa Benson
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Ed Stein
Danna Summers
John Trever
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
Tech Maven
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|