Teaching What’s “Very Important” About Easter Holiday
8 04 2007Notice I use no question mark, because apparently this is a simple statement of fact, not a question — as quoted by the political bureau chief writing a Sunday news story in my capital city newspaper during a high-profile legislative session, about an official function at the Governor’s Mansion (the people’s house, not God’s house?) made by the popular governor of the third or fourth most populous state in the union.
I was educated in Florida’s public schools and at Florida’s flagship public university but I freely admit, I just can’t quite figure out what the heck this means.
“I think it’s a great experience for them,” Crist said as he surveyed the children scurrying around the lawn or sipping orange juice in the shade of the mansion porch. “I hope some of them are actually old enough to remember it. We’ve got a bunny rabbit here for them and Easter eggs all over the yard. It’s just a very important holiday and an opportunity to share with others.”
While the smallest kids flocked around the big rabbit, tugging its ears and its tail, Crist tossed a football with some first graders. He and the bunny posed for pictures with families, and Crist asked every child’s name - introducing himself as “Charlie.”
He also made a point of admiring each small visitor’s pastel bucketful of eggs.
Crist, long ago divorced with no children, said he enjoyed having youngsters around.
Very important how, very important why, and very important to whom? I have no doubt that it is important to him, not just the holiday but this observance of it in his new digs.
The Governor’s Mansion, with no political meaning? Bunny ears and lawn games on Easter weekend, with no religious meaning? What secular cultural sharing is so important on this particular holy day and how it is more important tradition to the people of Florida specifically, than is our state song for generations, “Old Folks at Home?
It makes no sense as any kind of critical thinking or affective academic lesson I can fathom, unless its real point is that nothing in religion OR politics is simple child’s play, and there are ALWAYS complex layers of meaning rational actors can think about and learn from? Hmmm, unlikely but a very important lesson indeed!
Or maybe JJ — there she goes again! — is just being troublesome, complicating what is nothing more than “whatever the people want” as he perceives it, being a personable and gracious southern gentleman not even trying to make any political, religious, academic or personal sense of anything?
(Should that make me feel BETTER about his leadership?)
Most political and religious folk don’t connect things the way I do but I see what I see: here’s another Easter news story, about what many people have wanted before and still seem to want. (It’s one of the most awaited tourist attractions according to the Associated Press!) The official state song of the people is old and offensive now, so the Governor must take a stand against it, I get that — but this is much older, and surely more graphic and offensive?
Ah, but this ATTRACTS tourists, and for a very important holiday! Florida is a tourist state. So can you blame the Governor (or a Thinking Parent like me) for asking, if enough people want it in Florida too, shall we host it on the lawn of the Mansion for kids and families to enjoy, one of these very important holidays soon?
Seven devotees were nailed to crosses on Good Friday in a northern Philippine village where the rites drew thousands of tourists and spectators.The Lenten ritual is opposed by religious leaders in the Philippines — Southeast Asia’s largest predominantly Roman Catholic nation. But it has persisted to become one of the country’s most-awaited summer attractions in San Fernando City’s San Pedro Cutud village.
The devotees’ palms and feet were attached to wooden crosses with 4-inch nails soaked in alcohol to prevent infection after a nearly mile-long walk to the mound, each carrying a wooden cross on their backs.
Among the yearly penitents in San Pedro Cutud was Ruben Enaje, a 46-year-old commercial sign maker who was nailed to the cross for the 21st time on Friday.
Earlier in the day in the same village, dozens of half-naked men hit their bloodied backs with bamboo sticks dangling from a rope in a flagellation rite meant to atone for sins.
More than 100 foreign tourists flocked to this year’s Good Friday rites, with many of them seated on a stage at the side of the mound.
“They take this religion to the extreme,” observed Gomas de Miguel, a tourist from Spain. “In Spain, we say we are Catholics but we don’t do this anymore I think.”
“It’s not my belief, but I know that they are sincere in what they are doing so I respect it,” said American tourist Dennis Smith.
Then there’s teaching what’s very important about LOGIC!
At Culture Kitchen just now, I saw a comment from a new poster, apparently an anti-abortion attack dog claiming most doctors are pro-life and want abortions to be illegal, and purporting to argue this point rationally, with numbers, facts, logic and political analysis.
When I finished reading it, the one thing I was sure of wasn’t the facts or logic, but that it was in fact “devoted actor” lunatic raving. Then I went to the commenter’s homesite and saw this, which reads like much of the “I Know Who’s a Homeschooler And You Don’t” political raving. . . .we can only hope (and pray to a merciful God if you are so inclined) that these aren’t the people Florida’s governor wants to give whatever they want.
Unlike homeschooling, here’s analysis Greg Laden understands well enough to be well worth reading, by homeschoolers and all Thinking Parents:
Homeschoolers trying to explain the differences between public programs and independent, autonomous alternatives could sure use this practical and scientific frame lesson, that is if they actually mean to get their message across and aren’t just enjoying the whole misunderstood martyr trip . . . and it’s not all up to them to change, says Professor Laden.
Black politician Armstrong Williams, billed as the “voice for conservative and Christian values in America’s public debate” writing on “What does Easter mean to you?”
So he draws the same general connection I saw, between secular outreach to kids and families with festive lawn games and bunny eggs at the Governor’s Mansion, and the modern day real-life corporal cruxifictions born of a belief system unimaginable to me in any era, never mind in my own third-millennium civilization. Did I say unimaginable?– but then, who could have imagined the way it all came together in the horrific media spectacle that became the shockingly public, and gruesome in SO many governmental and graphic ways, religious and political death of poor Terri Schiavo? With the Pope dying the same week, so anyone looking for cosmic schemes couldn’t help but find them? A little clarity and (even) artificial separation might be a good thing at that, now and then . . .
Just admit it: you are a car. You have tires. You are an elephant. You have a trunk.
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All my mind could keep thinking of while reading this crap was that cars have trunks, too.
Do some people who think they are arguing so well not understand that they trip themselves up and distract from their own argument when they try too hard?
Nance
Here is “Real Learning” for Easter by the award-winning homeschool mom blog of the same name. (Real Learning was also nominated for “Best Live What You Believe,” “New Homeschool Blog,” and “Best Curriculum/Business Blog.” I think it won two of the four, hmmm . . . so which is it?)
And is this what the Governor of Florida meant is very important as real curriculum learning for the businesses and children of Florida?
(Has School Taken over churching or has Church taken over schooling — and is it all Business now — or does it just not matter because they are all the same power of story?)
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