The Nihil Rule

"Beer is objective. It has value and power apart from me. Drinking beer is subjective. It's the way I get the beer" - Klemet Preus, The Fire and the Staff , pg 70.

An excellent article from Dr. Allen and Mrs. Julie Quist on the dangers of Social Emotional Learning (SEL). Dr. Quist is a former professor at Bethany Lutheran College (ELS, in fellowship with WELS) This is extremely timely (for me) as the next Woke in the WELS will be dealing with SEL. Social and Emotional Learning and the Christian School – Christian News (christiannewsmissouri.com) They rightly point out the Marxist basis for SEL and the connections to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and how it feeds into a global citizenship. The punchline (from the full .pdf paper linked in the Christian News article): "Is it possible to have a Christian form of Social and Emotional Learning? No. Christian schools are being misled. SEL and Christianity are opposites. All schools that are using SEL are being misled. Cultural Marxists are skilled in manipulation. Cultural Marxists believe there is no morality, no right or wrong, no Ten Commandments. Don’t expect them to tell the truth a

 

  The above excerpt came from Page 34 of Martin Luther College's InFocus magazine, Fall 2020 edition. You can find it online here . This magazine is distributed widely within the WELS including to local congregations. Professor Schwartz is part of MLC's Cultural Engagement Center . The excerpt proudly enumerates a number of presentations by Prof. Schwartz, two of which are troublesome: - "Brain Facts and Parenting Tips - Social-Emotional Learning and Executive Functions" - "Getting Educated on Anti-Racism and Breaking the Silence," published in Chinese on WeChat. We will save Social-Emotional Learning for a future post.  I wonder if anyone at MLC actually took the time to read what Prof. Schwartz wrote about anti-racism. If they did; did they agree with it, or did they think being in a foreign language it would slide under the radar? If they didn't read it, why did they mention it in a publication shared widely across the synod? Let's dig in. The or

  The picture above was provided by way of a student at Martin Luther College (MLC), the worker-training school of the WELS. This bulletin board was posted on campus in anticipation of MLK Day 2023, featuring a black power fist.  Besides the use of the black power fist, the panel left-center reads "culturally responsive teaching session" - the "other CRT" peddled by Gloria Ladson-Billings  - a repackaging a Paulo Friere's generative-themes model and cousin to Social-Emotional Learning, of which I have much to say, and hard to explain, for MLC has bought into woke education models... But we'll save SEL for a future installment.

Heisenberg's other uncertainty.... "When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." -Heisenberg (or, possibly, Horace Lamb) (As an aerospace engineer whose career has centered around turbulence... this rings true.)