Feb
07
2012
Worth a Look 2.7.12
Newsweek on the rise of urban homeschooling:
We think of homeschoolers as evangelicals or off-the-gridders who spend a lot of time at kitchen tables in the countryside. And it’s true that most homeschooling parents do so for moral or religious reasons. But education observers believe that is changing. You only have to go to a downtown Starbucks or art museum in the middle of a weekday to see that a once-unconventional choice “has become newly fashionable,” says Mitchell Stevens, a Stanford professor who wrote Kingdom of Children, a history of homeschooling. There are an estimated 300,000 homeschooled children in America’s cities, many of them children of secular, highly educated professionals who always figured they’d send their kids to school—until they came to think, Hey, maybe we could do better.
Why Being a Jack of All Trades Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up to Be:
Life is full of distractions. While there’s nothing wrong with the occasional diversion, you need to be very careful how you spend your time if you want it to count for something.
Those who make a difference have mastered the discipline of focus. They may have many interests and a good amount of luck, but the bottom line is this:
Life is not an accident for these people; they are living intentionally.
The Media’s Abortion Blinders:
Conservative complaints about media bias are sometimes overdrawn. But on the abortion issue, the press’s prejudices are often absolute, its biases blatant and its blinders impenetrable. In many newsrooms and television studios across the country, Planned Parenthood is regarded as the equivalent of, well, the Komen foundation: an apolitical, high-minded and humanitarian institution whose work no rational person — and certainly no self-respecting woman — could possibly question or oppose.
The Christian Origin of Hospitals:
Christians have been leaders in medicine and the building of hospitals because their founder, Jesus of Nazareth, healed the sick during his ministry on earth (see Matt. 9; 10:8; 25: 34-26). The early church not only endorsed medicine, but championed care for the sick.