SI N'OS HUVIERA MIRADO - Cristóbal de Morales (1500 - 1553)

Leaving for Arizona in a few hours; I'll be back beginning of next week. I didn't have time to finish some posts. Oh well.

Fr. Z: Fr. John Harvey of Courage, R.I.P.

Dr. Gabor Maté on the stress-disease connection, addiction, attention deficit disorder and the destruction of American childhood
by Amy Goodman

(original)

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Maté, there’s a whole debate about education in the United States right now. How does this fit in?


DR. GABOR MATÉ: Well, you have to ask, how do children learn? How do children learn? And learning is an attachment dynamic, as well. You learn when you want to be like somebody. So you copy them, so you learn from them. You learn when you’re curious. And you learn when you’re willing to try something, and if it doesn’t work, you try something else.


Now, here’s what happens. Caring about something and being curious about something and recognizing that something doesn’t work, you have to have a certain degree of emotional security. You have to be able to be open and vulnerable. Children who become peer-oriented—because the peer world is so dangerous and so fraught with bullying and ostracization and dissing and exclusion and negative talk, how does a child protect himself or herself from all that negativity in the peer world? Because children are not committed to each others’ unconditional loving acceptance. Even adults have a hard time giving that. Children can’t do it. Those children become very insecure, and emotionally, to protect themselves, they shut down. They become hardened, so they become cool. Nothing matters. Cool is the ethic. You see that in the rock videos. It’s all about cool. It’s all about aggression and cool and no real emotion. Now, when that happens, curiosity goes, because curiosity is vulnerable, because you care about something and you’re admitting that you don’t know. You won’t try anything, because if you fail, again, your vulnerability is exposed. So, you’re not willing to have trial and error.


And in terms of who you’re learning from, as long as kids were attaching to adults, they were looking to the adults to be modeling themselves on, to learn from, and to get their cues from. Now, kids are still learning from the people they’re attached to, but now it’s other kids. So you have whole generations of kids that are looking to other kids now to be their main cue-givers. So teachers have an almost impossible problem on their hands. And unfortunately, in North America again, education is seen as a question of academic pedagogy, hence these terrible standardized tests. And the very teachers who work with the most difficult kids are the ones who are most penalized.


AMY GOODMAN: Because if they don’t have good test scores, standardized test scores, in their class—


DR. GABOR MATÉ: They’re seen as bad teachers.


AMY GOODMAN:—then they could be fired. They’re seen as bad teachers, which means they’re going to want to kick out any difficult kids.


DR. GABOR MATÉ: That’s exactly it. The difficult kids are kicked out, and teachers will be afraid to go into neighborhoods where, because of troubled family relationships, the kids are having difficulties, the kids are peer-oriented, the kids are not looking to the teachers. And this is seen as a reflection. So, actually, teachers are being slandered right now. Teachers are being slandered now because of the failure of the American society to produce the right environment for childhood development.


AMY GOODMAN: Because of the destruction of American childhood.


DR. GABOR MATÉ: That’s right. What the problem reflects is the loss of the community and the neighborhood. We have to recreate that. So, the schools have to become not just places of pedagogy, but places of emotional connection. The teachers should be in the emotional connection game before they attempt to be in the pedagogy game.

But do we want to give public schools, with their agenda, that much power over a child?

Acquiring knowledge by accident
Gene Logsdon, OrganicToBe.org
We learn our lessons more by chance than by deliberation. Or maybe it is more to the point to say that we learn by living. For sure, what we learn from experience sticks with us longer than what we think we learn in classrooms. I can’t remember how to do algebra problems involving two unknowns but I will never forget what happened when I was dumb enough to touch a frosty piece of iron with my tongue.


Plus:
The peak oil crisis: 2011 – a pivotal year?
Tom Whipple, Falls Church News-Press

It continues

Sandro Magister, Professor Rhonheimer Writes. And the Holy Office Agrees
Exclusive to www.chiesa, an open letter by the Swiss philosopher in defense of the "understanding and farsighted vision" of Benedict XVI on sexual morality. And to follow, the note released the same day by the congregation for the doctrine of the faith

Sandro Magister, Benedict XVI: Man of the Year. For His Homilies
They are the cornerstone of his ordinary magisterium. They narrate the adventure of God in the history of the world. They lift the veil on the "things that are above." A guide to reading the liturgical preaching of the current pope

More Marines: All-female U.S. Marine team in Afghanistan

Someone could make the case that the presence of some women is necessary because they are needed to search women in Muslim countries, etc., but we shouldn't have been occupying Iraq and Afghanistan in the first place. If we hadn't sent occupying forces over, would we need women in the USMC?

John Tierney remains a true believer

A Cornucopian Optimist...

Economic Optimism? Yes, I’ll Take That Bet
By JOHN TIERNEY

(via Steve Sailer)

Stanley Fish on True Grit

Narrative and the Grace of God: The New ‘True Grit’ (via Mere Comments)

A MV for Sarge

Maroons

Someone posted this on FB. I'll grant their uniforms look better.

Webpage for donating money for the documentary The Banjo Project.

Dr. Ralph Stanley Interview from The Banjo Project on Vimeo.

Rhiannon Laffan "Gonna Write Me a Letter" from The Banjo Project on Vimeo.

Vimeo.

City Journal: The Vandals in Retreat by Theodore Dalrymple
Britain redisovers its architectural heritage.

USA Today: U.S. special ops forces vital in Afghan war

Robert Hirsch interview

Robert Hirsch on "The Impending World Energy Mess"

EB

In his review of True Grit, Peter Lawler writes:

Sure, we're constantly reminded of the disrespect for human life of these ex-Confederates (the Bridges/Cogburn character rode with the notrious Captain Quantrill of Missouri--the state where all the rules of war vanished into bloodlust). But we're also constantly reminded of the strange sort of cultivation that made these manly men (and woman) more able to articulate who they are than we are. The language of the film echoes that of the novel, where basically unlettered men speak with a formal and precise pagan grace. There's something civilized and even lawful in the violently state-of-nature Indian territory. These men and especially the very young woman are in some ways more civilized than we are, although, of course, not in many ways.


The film shows us what's to be said for and against the virtue that animated the Confederacy and the postbellum southern frontier. It doesn't varnish the truth about honor, even as it displays the virtue it can become when ennobled by personal love.

Is this what the author of the original novel meant to depict? Or is this a generalization that can be applied to any genuine Western novel? I believe Professor Lawler is originally from the South, but what would other Southerners (e.g. Dr. Wilson) make of his description of the characters and his association of them with the Confederacy?

WT: Beyond the OODA Loop: Boyd’s Lost Principles

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn on Patriotism and Nationalism

Jeff Culbreath posts the following from Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn:

Patriotism, not nationalism, should inspire the citizen. The ethnic nationalist who wants a linguistically and culturally uniform nation is akin to the racist who is intolerant toward those who look (and behave) differently. The patriot is a 'diversitarian'; he is pleased, indeed proud of the variety within the borders of his country; he looks for loyalty from all citizens. And he looks up and down, not left and right.

There is a problem with the word nation -- taken to refer to a people or ethnic group, then it seems absurd for one particular ethnic group to be linguistically and culturally divided. How is it really an united ethnic group with out a common culture? But I assume he is talking about the modern nation-state (or a multi-ethnic federation/empire), one that is prone to suppressing the legitimate cultural aspirations and exercises of its constitutent communities and peoples. If he were talking about a smaller political community, an ancient Greek polis, for example, I'd say that he was wrong. But I do not think he intended for his remark to cover all polities of all sizes.

The common good the good of a community; can a single polity (as opposed to a federation or empire) have more than one people? If two peoples intentionally keep themselves separate from one another in all affairs except trading, do they really constitute one community? It seems not.

A tribute by Fr. Rutler to the professor.

Midnight Mass at the Monastery of Saint Benedict in Norcia, Italy (via Rorate Caeli)



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Katherine Jenkins talks about the Doctor Who Christmas Special

Katherine Jenkins

The Energy Bulletin staff makes predictions about 2011

Predictions

Plus, Top 10 peak oil books of 2010 by Erik Curren

I've been listening to the words of "The Highwayman", and I can't help but wonder if the poem doesn't present a bad-boy fantasy (suited for the Romantic period?). Tim is not quite a jealous beta, since he's not really a provider.

First Principles Journal: A discussion of liberty by Mark T. Mitchell and Joseph Stromberg.

One filmmaker confronts modernity

An AICN columnist gives brief reviews of seven of Ozu's movies. (The reviews are towards the end.)