An optimistic look at today's popular culture

I just finished reading Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making us Smarter, by Steven Johnson. Johnson argues that today's consumers are ingesting more and more complexity than ever before. Examples are the multiple threading in shows like 24 and The Sopranos (in contrast with the half an hour closed plots in the shows of yesteryear); and the myriads of cultural allusions and self-referencing allusions in The Simpsons and Seinfeld. The book's chapter on all the probing, problem-solving and decision-making that occurs during video games was revealing to me, as was the assertion that blogging about your junior high love life is intellectually more healthy than watching a soap opera.

Children, teens, and adults are now interacting with technology in ways that allow them to problem-solve and create in ways equally or even more complex than a doing a math problem or a story writing project.

Aside from the book being merely interesting, I think this book has a major ramification for me as a teacher. I underestimate my students' potential. Every family has a running joke about how their seven-year old can program the VCR when their parent cannot. But does anyone stop to consider the problem-solving abilities that that fact infers? That child did not merely learn the steps to work one machine; he has internalized overriding principles about how to probe a new system and find out how it works.

So yesterday in second grade music we somehow ended up talking about Tom and Jerry, which apparently is experiencing a renaissance on Cartoon Network. I have one learning disabled student who has, for two years, been singing monotone but experienced a very obvious breakthrough in her singing just this week. During the Tom and Jerry conversation, I sat back, enjoyed that student's very specific, multiple-step instructions about how to find Tom and Jerry On Demand, and thought about the vast potential that she has.

I am reminded of one of my graduate professors favorite pedagogy images - that of constantly working to keep the students' heads barely above water - not submerged and overwhelmed, not wading in shallow water and bored. In this respect I could take a cue from the gaming, cinema and television industries and keep my kids' brains engaged.

Next on my reading list to get the other side of the coin: Endangered Minds: Why Children Don't Think and What We Can Do about It by Jane Healy.

Readers are leaders, or "An operational definition of education in its most fundamental civilized sense"

Close reading of tough-minded writing is still the best, cheapest, and quickest method known for learning to think for yourself... Reading, and rigorous discussion of that reading in a way that obliges you to formulate a position and support it against objections, is an operational definition of education in its most fundamental civilized sense... Reading, analysis and discussion is the way we develop reliable judgment, the principal way we come to penetrate covert movements behind the facade of public appearances.

-John Taylor Gatto

quoted in So Much More by Anna Sofia Botkin and Elizabeth Botkin

Tim Keller on "how could a good God allow suffering"

I have some posts waiting in draft, and I want to make some changes to Lahai-roi's layout, but I'm just going to throw this quote up here because it's too serious for facebook.

Last week (I'll spare details) I was able to have a very honest, open conversation with a complete stranger about God, religion, first causes, etc. My new friend said he was pretty content with the theory that God created the world but then allowed it run on its own. He wanted to know how I could reconcile my belief in a personal, good God with an event like 9/11. We hear the stories about the people who avoided death on that day. But we also know that there are countless stories of people who did go to work, who got on that flight, who 'happened' to be in the area, and who never came back.

I don't know if a Christian reading this post will think less of me, but I admit I don't know the answer to "why does a good God allow suffering." (Suffering is a result of sin, yes, but that begs another question.) I simply know that God will fulfill his purpose and I submit to that. But I'm going to honestly say that that is really hard to explain to others. I tried. And then I recommended Tim Keller's The Reason for God. There is a chapter I remember reading titled "How could a good God allow suffering."

So I went back and read that chapter last night. I'm still glad I recommended it; but first I have a quick disclaimer. The chapter ends this way:

Just after the climax of the trilogy The Lord of the Rings, Sam Gamgee discovers that his friend Gandalf was not dead (as he thought) but alive. He cries, "I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself! Is everything sad going to come untrue?"

The answer of Christianity is -
yes.

Keller elaborates, and the chapter ends with two other joyful quotes from Dostoevsky and C.S. Lewis. I love it when Keller references Tolkien. (I heard him do it once in a sermon and it definitely makes me want to quit eating/sleeping/lesson planning to read LOTR. Ok maybe not eating...) Anyway although I'm pumped about Tolkien references, I think the statement "everything sad is going to come untrue" is a little glib and perhaps even incomplete in the light of eternal wrath...

That disclaimer aside, I want to share this other quote because it is Biblical. In fact it is the gospel. Keller takes a few pages to describe Christ's non-physical suffering and his explanation is, I feel, worth getting the book. After describing the 'inferno of abandonment' Christ experienced, Keller says this:

Let's see where this has brought us. If we ask the question: "Why does God allow evil and suffering to continue?" and we look at the cross of Jesus, we still do not know what the answer is. However, we now know what the answer isn't. It can't be that he doesn't love us. (emphasis mine) It can't be that he is indifferent or detached from our condition. God takes our misery and suffering so seriously that he was willing to take it on himself.

John 3:16.

Greed is not a flattering word.

This quote just in from a sermon podcast I was listening to:

The reality is there isn’t any difference between the greed that we read about on the front pages of the newspaper or on the news websites...  there’s nothing different about the greed that has destroyed our financial institutions and the greed that motivates our daily little decisions.  There’s not. They just have more resources so it affects more. - Scott Mehl

Thank you for teaching me to love life.

Most of my interests are directly inherited from my dad.  I've been realizing that recently. Thanks Dad, for teaching me to love life. You were passionate about what you did and about enjoying life, and that's why I am following in your footsteps. You taught me to love

-history

-self education, research, and obsessive buying of books and videos on any topic that I feel the need to know about

-children's and adult choirs

-a good bass line in the above

-The Pilgrim Academy

-spending more time with the fam than probably any other family on the East Coast

-apologetics

-my mom's marinara sauce

-Egg Harbor City

-adopting liturgical or ethnic traditions that are not necessarily ours and in a somewhat sloppy fashion, just because it makes us feel more connected to history.  I will spare you anecdotes but someday I will dress up on St. Lucia's day.

-jogging

-outdoors

-the Egg Harbor lake and Batsto

-the field of education

-the history of last names

-goal-setting

-smart men (now let me just pause here to say my dad did NOT like men, but I do; and I have definitely crushed on a 50 year old balding gay man before, thanks to the fact that my dad made me think smart was hot)

-visiting historic sites on vacation

-Renaissance/ancient music

-landscapes and the colors blue and green

-Calvinists ("ists" not "ism") My dad liked Machen, Rushdoony, Witherspoon, and Kuyper to name a few; and though I still have to read those guys I know I can partly blame my Calvinist-love on my dad.  By the way don't ask because I don't know.

-self-help (yes, my mom is not rid of diet books lying around and health food sitting in the refrigerator anytime soon)

-Leadbelly and a little bit of opera (yeah just throwing those in to make ya'll think, remember the days of Goodnight Irene, or the days of listening to Jose Carreras on the way back from swimming?)

-Francis Schaeffer, C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Arthur Custance, and I'll just stick Garrison Keillor into this list for fun even though he doesn't go with the apologist theme.

-this is not a passion for me now, but I hope to follow in his footsteps and someday garden

This list may come across as being somewhat nerdy, but I want to add the disclaimer that I am in no way defining Robert A. Peterson Jr.  My brothers could each come up with their own lists of the passions that were handed down to them.  But I think that this list, though not all-inclusive, is long enough that I can safely say I am my father's daughter.

Songs about world peace and let me boast about God for a minute here

I am thinking about writing a book (being creative!) called "God has the corner on pretty much everything cool in the world" and writing little meditations on how God doesn't just give us a primarily sacred book, but that the Bible is the first to use certain folk tale literary devices or the first to record a party with music and food... 

But for now here's an example to show that "God has the corner on pretty much everything cool in the world."  

Song lyrics.

I was listening to a choir concert today and on one of the tracks the artist was talking about the vision of world peace.  I am all for world peace (which by the way will not happen until the earth is filled with the knowing of God, see here), but I think I am just a little bit spoiled and I will tell you how.  

I am privileged to sing about the multi-faceted aspects of God's glory and the meaningful ways in which God has chosen to connect with man.  This is huge and examples would not do it justice. Being in music education I am constantly reminded of how hard it would be to pick good choir music while leaving God out of the mix.  

I have to say that there are thousands of great songs on secular subjects.  In fact, my school spring concerts are mostly secular this year because I am trying to educate Christian school kids in art and folk music.  But in general for those with the more existential personality, a personality that is constantly looking for purpose and wants to sing about that, abandoning God means you are left composing songs about two subjects: world peace and recycling.  

Here is an example.  At a music educator's workshop recently someone shared a song with lyrics as follows:

1. I don't know your name, we speak different languages; We may not be the same, but I reach out my hand to you and I say... (then sing chorus line one)

2. ...we have different points of view... (then sing chorus line 2)

3. ...we cut different kinds of food... (then sing chorus line 3)

4. ...we have different holidays... (then sing chorus, all 3 lines together

etc.

Chorus: "Hello" in English, Spanish, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese-Mandarin, Italian, Swahili etc.

After being raised singing about God, singing about diversity just doesn't cut it for me.  

And it doesn't cut it for others, either.  Composers used to be forced to write for church, but there are plenty of non-Christian composers that choose Biblical texts for the mere fact that those texts are the best ones. And I haven't met a single public school teacher that likes the fact that they aren't allowed to sing sacred music.  (Well actually now that I think of it I did meet one last month. She was explaining why it was ok to use a certain song about children singing to Muhammad. That song was historical narrative whereas she warned us never to use songs of worship in school. For some reason "songs to Jesus" was the example she used of what not to do.  Makes sense. Great workshop on eastern music, seriously.)  At any rate I know it is often hard for my friends that are under certain politically correct regulations to find good choir music and I hope it is not presumptuous for me to say so in this article.

It's bad writing to finish off by saying: "well... you know what I mean, right?" But I'm going to do it anyway.  

If you are a Christian, and you don't know what I mean, you need to pick up a hymnal AND you need to bone up a little on your music history because it is part of your Christian heritage.  If you are not a Christian, you may not know what I mean.  I want you to know that I care a lot about world peace, and I'm a big fan of diversity. Maybe we should talk sometime so I can explain myself further because I am not going to make this post any longer.

Creativity quotes

I think the Lord might be answering my prayer for creativity. I will write an update on that soon. Until then, here are some of the quotes that got me started on this whole thing.

The invention of the phonograph is the end of culture as we know it.

-Thomas Edison

We have changed from a society of music makers to a society of music consumers.

-John Feierebend