It Is Back to School Time

Today the United States Congress will begin deliberations on the nuclear arms agreement recently signed between the P5+1 and Iran.  (It is interesting that this is an agreement and not a treaty, thereby skirting the constitutional requirement that all treaties pass by a 2/3 vote in the Senate.)  President Obama has been able to get the required 34 votes from senators that would prevent any over-riding of his threatened veto of a congressional declaration against this agreement.  In reality, any vote of the Congress would have little effect on the agreement as President Obama side-stepped the Congress and took this agreement directly to the United Nations Security Council where it was approved overwhelmingly. 


What will the impact of this agreement mean?  I read an interesting article this past weekend written by one of my favorite editorialists.  Her name is Caroline Glick.  She published this on September 3 in The Jerusalem Post.  She writes in part, "Sometimes you have to fight battles you cannot win because fighting - regardless of the outcome - advances a larger cause.  Israel's fight against the nuclear deal the major powers, led by US President Barack Obama concluded with Iran was such a battle.  The battle's futility became clear on July 20, just six days after it was concluded in Vienna.  On July 20, the US administration anchored the deal - which paves the way for Iran to become a nuclear power and enriches the terrorism-sponsoring ayatollahs to the tune of $150 billion - in a binding UN Security Council resolution.  Once the resolution passed, the deal became unstoppable.  Most of the frozen funds that comprise the $150b would have been released regardless of congressional action.  And the nonproliferation regime the US developed over the past 70 years was upended the moment the deal was concluded in Vienna.  The fight in Congress itself probably couldn't have succeeded even if the administration hadn't made an end run around the lawmakers at the Security Council.  After Sen. Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, passed the law obligating Obama to secure the support of a mere third of the members of either House to implement his nuclear deal, its implementation was a foregone conclusion.  The US Constitution gives sole power to approve international treaties to the Senate and requires a minimum of two-thirds approval for passage.  Corker turned the Constitution on its head when he went forward with his bill. Far from curbing Obama's executive outreach, Corker gave Obama unprecedented power to enact his radical, reckless nuclear agenda."


Ms. Glick then asks the question of why Israel fought so hard against this agreement.  She writes, "By fighting Obama's nuclear deal, Israel seeks to advance two larger efforts.  First, it uses the battle to expand its capacity to act without the US to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.  Second, it is shaping its relations with the US both for the duration of Obama's presidency and for the day after he leaves office."  I would encourage each one to read this fascinating article.  You can find it posted on The Jerusalem Post website: www.jpost.com.


A second article that I highly recommend was one written by Marvin Olasky and published on the Townhall.com website: www.townhall.com/columnists/marvinolasky/2015/09/03e--r3wcgn-n2047355.  He begins the article by stating, "E=mc2 is a simple equation compared to the mystery of what goes into good education. But I'll take a shot at proposing an education equation."  That equation he proposed is E=R3WCG.  The three Rs are: reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic.  The W is "wonder."  He writes, "If children don't develop a sense of wonder about this astounding, God-created world, they'll miss a lifetime of excitement.  Music, art, history, science, foreign langauges, and more should all make school wonder-full.  Our new testing regime doesn't have much time for wonder, and educators pay attention to the W only if they answer accurately a basic question: Who are my students?  Are they animals with above-average intelligence (compared to horses and caterpillars, but maybe not dolphins)?  Are they low-grade computers with below-average memory and above-average weight (compared to a MacBook Air)?  Or are they human beings created in the image of a God of wonder?"


He then describes C, which stands for specifically Christian education, "for only in Christ do all things hold together.  If students don't understand that God created us, they are likely to become practical atheists.  If they don't understand that God gives history meaning, they are likely to become nihilists.  Schools cannot give kids faith in Christ - only God can - but they can help students recognize their need, yearn for meaning, and not be content with wasting their lives.  If teachers want to be educators rather than prison wardens, it's vital for them to think Christianly about their students.  If they see students as bucking broncos, they'll think the job of schools is to break them.  if they see students as fleshly computers, they'll want to perform an information dump.  But if they understand that students are God's children and have souls that never die, they'll understand that just teaching to the test fails the biggest tests."


Finally, there is the letter G, "the four-letter word that more than any other determines educational and occupational success: grit."  He states that "part of grit involves fighting the desire for immediate gratification, an impulse measurable at age 4 via the marshmallow test, which starts with a small child in a room with a marshmallow and an adult. The adult tells the child he's leaving the room to run a short errand.  During that time the child is free to eat the marshmallow - but if he waits until the adult comes back, he can then eat not only that marshmallow but a second one as well."  He then cites a study done by Stanford psychology professor Walter Mischel, the inventor of the test.  A decade after administering the test, he looked in on those 4-year olds.  "He found the impatient eaters had 'lower SAT scores, higher body mass indexes, problems with drugs and trouble paying attention. ... The seconds of time preschool children were willing to delay for a preferred outcome predicted their cognitive and social competence and coping as adolescents.'"  Who would have thought that "grit" would impact education, but it does.


The writer then closes his article with these words: "But don't take school formulas too seriously: Kids are individuals and flexibility is important.  Please do take Christian education seriously: No other work is more important.  May God bless all those who make large sacrifices to bless other parents and children." 


A great article with some great thoughts to begin another school year.