A Medical Excuse from prayer in schools

Psychologists tell us that the area of our brains that assists us in forming ethical choices doesn't begin to aggressively develop until we enter into our pubescent phase. They also tell us that the portions of the brain that evaluates facts as true, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, proves to be inconsistently developed in preadolescent brains.

The problem this presents for the teaching of religion in the schools is that the elementary educational system must, given the nature of the development of the human brain, be devoted to the introduction of and memorization of facts in evidence. You can teach a child that the sum of two twos is four, and you can teach them that in 2008 there were 228 million self-identified Christians reporting on the United States Census versus 9 million members of other religious faiths. You cannot, however, teach them that; there may be a religious trend in America based on the fact that a majority of the American population, reporting to their government, identified themselves as Christian. Our children are simply not physically able to assimilate the subtleties of this observation in a educationally significant and consistent manner.

Perhaps, one of the rights of passage into adulthood is the physical ability to distinguish between what one believes, and why one believes it.

citing:
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/population/religion.html (table 75)

Liu, D., Sabbagh, M., Gehring, W., & Wellman, H. (2009). Neural correlates of children's theory of mind development. Child Development, 80(2), 318-326. Retrieved from MEDLINE with Full Text database.

Do Atheists Care If Others View Them As Religious?

For Atheists who grapple more than academically with the question of atheism as a religion, the question is a matter of human rights. In this discussion I examined atheism as a religion, which, in my estimation does not seem to be terribly important to atheist except from the stand point of having the right not to be distracted by the question. Within this framework, the question of atheism as a religion is relegated to the realm of the legal as opposed to the theological, which may in turn be considered a branch of anthropology to the serious atheist.

As a question of legal precedence, Derek H. points out that the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the case of Kaufman v. McCaughtry (2005) that atheism is entitled to the same treatment that traditional religions receive under the Constitution of the United States of America.

This precedence introduces an interesting outline of the history of the "Right to Atheism" as outlined in a 2005 article from the Journal of Church and State, cited below.

For those who wish a quick feeling of numinous awe at the collected human genius of atheist minds, I offer the following URL:
http://brainz.org/50-most-brilliant-atheists-all-time/ perhaps if I eat a few more apples....


Derek H., D. (n.d). Is atheism a religion? Recent judicial perspectives on the constitutional meaning of "religion".(Kaufman v. McCaughtry). Journal of Church and State, 47(4), 707. Retrieved from Gale: Academic OneFile (PowerSearch) database.

Who Should Give Guidelines for the Community, Religion or Government?

In the United States, we live under a constitution that was carefully crafted to insure each of us the liberal freedom to worship as we choose. Our government is prohibited from dictating to us a set of religious rituals we must follow.

If the government is prohibited from dictating the set of religious beliefs I must observe, they are also prohibited from dictating that I engage in religious worship at all.

In her work on religion and liberal democracy, Mary Sullivan writes that "[T]he affirmative right to practice a specific religion implies the negative right to practice none." (Sullivan, M. 1992)

Churches can and do set boundaries on many aspects of life from keeping Kosher, the Sabbath, suicide, abortion and marriage. Religious communities, like any other special interest are welcome in our democracy to lobby for their causes. These communities, by virtue of not representing "We The People", may not, and should not, impose boundaries on all the citizens of the United States of America without due process of law.

Reference:
Kathleen M. Sullivan, Religion and Liberal Democracy, 59 U. CHI. L. REV. 195, 197 (1992).

On Altar Girls and Hints of Change.

Our discussion appears, at first blush, to belie the sentiments of Mollie Wilson O'Reilly. Her article, Passing On the Alb, My Career As An Altar Girl, makes the claim that "it is clear enough to most U.S. Catholics that, when the church blesses altar girls, they are in turn a blessing to the church." (O'Reilly, M. 2009)

In her article she notes that it was only recently that the Vatican declared that females serving the priest at Mass was not against canon law. She points out, however, that while wording does not disallow females in this role, it was less than affirming since it didn't explicitly say it was a good thing.

Her personal history as an altar girl is clearly a source of personal joy that revealed to her the junction at which the mundane aspects of her faith, hosts in baggies in the fridge, meet the mysterious body of christ on the table in the center aisle.

Personally, the moral of this tale is an affirmation that most generalizations by definition, deny the individual. It may be slow but the Catholic church is subject to growth and change just like the rest of us.

O'Reilly, M. (2009). Passing On the Alb. Commonweal, 136(15), 12. Retrieved from MasterFILE Premier database.

Katrina: The Buck Stopped There, Mr. President

Distilling the complexity of the inter-agency response to Hurricane Katrina into a few hundreds words is fundamentally an impossible task. There are some key facts that one might start with in making the attempt.

First, in the disaster plan for the City of New Orleans, the role of the Mayor is described as “the full spectrum of actions to prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover” from incidents involving all hazards (City of New Orleans, 2004, p. 1; DHS, 2004, p. 8).

The Governor of the State of Louisiana is described as being charged with management of state resources to “prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from incidents in an all-hazards context” (DHS, p.8).

Finally, the President of the United States is responsible for “responding effectively and ensuring the necessary resources are applied quickly and efficiently to all incidents of national significance”. (DHS, P.15.).

In Retrospect, Mayor Nagin should have been in the command seat in New Orleans and history demonstrates he was overwhelmed. On can, in hindsight name many decisions that he could have managed more effectively. I personally cannot imagine how difficult it must have been to be on the ground in this situation even if Mayor Nagin had been perfectly prepared. Mayor Nagin, however cannot be held responsible for the entire State.

Governor Blanco, according to accounts, deployed the national guard quickly, achieved national emergency declaration under the Stafford Act and mobilized busses statewide to assist in the evacuation. The Governor appears to have exhibited strong leadership with the possible exception of refusing joint task command that might have gotten more cooperation from the Federal Government. Governor Blanco, however, cannot be held responsible for the way the crisis unfolded in Biloxi Mississippi.

President Bush, according to his press secretary, and in the White House report to Congress states that;

On August 29, 2005, Katrina made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane. The White
House circulated an internal memo that a levee breach in New Orleans had occurred, while FEMA Director Michael Brown briefed the President of the potential devastation of Katrina at a morning a morning meeting. During that same day the President called DHS Secretary Chertoff to discuss immigration, shared a birthday cake and photo-op with Senator John McCain, traveled to California to a senior center to discuss the Medicare drug benefit (White House, 2006).

In attempting to answer this question, I am unable to put out of my mind the words of President Truman, "The buck stops here."

References:

City of New Orleans. (2004). Comprehensive emergency management plan. Retrieved
December 10, 2008, from www.cityofno.com/pg-46-18-general-evacuationguidelines.
aspx

U.S. Department of Homeland Security. (2004). National Response Plan. Retrieved
September 18, 2008, from www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/nrp_fulltest.pdf

White House. (2006). The federal response to Hurricane Katrina: Lessons learned.
Retrieved December 12, 2008, from WWW-
learned

Cotton, G. (n.d). Hurricane Katrina: An evaluation of governmental leadership and the disaster surrounding the city of New Orleans. Retrieved from ProQuest: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses database.

NCLB Misses the Target in Special Education

The ideal that NCLB would "shake out" teachers who are not qualified while rewarding teachers who are may fall short of the mark in the mainstream due to a lack of strength in underlying assumptions about the educational landscape. In the Special Education community, this core misunderstanding may miss the target altogether.

The NCLB solution to teacher turnover is to pull "highly qualified" teachers from the general pool of adults with bachelors degrees in required subject areas, supply them with professional development and plug them into the educational system at the point of perceived failure.

In the case of Special Education teachers we already have a smaller pool from which school administrators have already drawn heavily. We have a student population for whom the core subject area may not be the highest priority challenge to surmount. Additionally, the higher incidences of disability tend to be in areas where resources are thin, the poor and under privileges communities where disabilities due to language deficits, inadequate prenatal care, drug abuse and parental educational apathy are higher.

Given these conditions, it is unreasonable, in my opinion, to apply a single solution to the entire nation of pupils and their teachers.

Reference:
Brownell, M., Bishop, A., & Sindelar, P. (2005). NCLB and the Demand for Highly Qualified Teachers: Challenges and Solutions for Rural Schools. Rural Special Education Quarterly, 24(1), 9-15. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.

Grading the MCAS-Alt on a Scale

In the State of Massachusetts, children are subjected to the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) in accordance with federal No Child Left Behind mandates. Assuming that the MCAS tests are state of the art student evaluations, then by it's formulation, which includes exceptions to the rule, the MCAS already accepts that notion that standardized tests cannot adequately evaluate the entire spectrum of pupils. Within the MCAS specification is method for the evaluation of the profoundly disabled student known as the MCAS-Alt. My proposal is that if the bottom of the curve deserves a special method of evaluation, perhaps the top of the curve does as well. I would propose a specification called the MCAS-exception which allows educators to nominate exceptional or gifted children who may not adapt well to standard test environments to be tested according to a more subjective guideline and to provide a method by which students and their parents could apply for this more subjective form of evaluation within the standardized testing framework. Perhaps in "Race To The Top, Part Deux"?