Posts about children

Fight for Fiction: The Formative Power of Story

Posted on March 12, 2014

(Image by Amanda Cleary Eastep--children's author)

The Common Core that many states have recently instituted in our schools is controversial. Along with many literature proponents, I am deeply concerned at the replacement of 50% of the fiction and poetry with technical and non-fiction reading. This other reading is non-fiction from science, math, etc. Already our students do not read enough literature, and since schools have been trying to attract children to reading by offering inferior literature that presents immediate pleasure, the body of great literature to which a student is exposed, has been steadily shrinking. Now it has just shrunk more.

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Endurance, Part II: Teaching our Children Endurance

Posted on February 17, 2014

Life can be hard; wouldn't it be better to give our children a childhood of leisure and then when they have to face deprivation or difficulty let them deal with it as it comes? After all, how could we ever prepare them for the kinds of trials they will face? People can never fully be ready for some of the tragedies life might have in store. True, much of the shaping from a trial is what happens when in the trial already, but we can prepare children with a capacity to handle hardship so that once they are in one, they have emotional resources to press in and discover God.

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