With the sessions of the Willow Creek Leadership Summit still ringing in my ear and having taken up Bill Hybels' call to read something of value at least 30 minutes every day, I seem to be in caught in a barrage of truth and catalysts. Tim Keller's talk on The Prodigal God and the book from which it came (and I just read) redefined not only the Prodigal Son parable (Luke 15:11), but have me starting to constantly evaluate whether I am skating by trying to follow the rules or serving at the pleasure of the Father. (More on the Prodigal God in a later post.)

The wrapping up of my church staff position, a podcast on equipping volunteers for ministry vs paying staff, and Harvey Carey's call to "get out of the huddle and play the game" have me looking seriously how I will serve as a member of the new church Karene and I are attending should be. If that didn't seem to be at least enough food for thought, I have the new book I'm reading and a conversation with a friend to go for the knock-out. The Hole in Our Gospel by Richard Stearns (the President of World Vision) talks about the propensity of Christians to look Kingdomward, and forget about God's call for us now, in the world. I'm 1/3rd of the way through the book at this point, so I'll have more thoughts on it later, but Stearns makes the following observation,

"The thing about truth that makes it most annoying is that it is true, making anything that contradicts it, false."

The conversation I had yesterday was moving all over the place about politics and religion, but after talking about my experience reading Keller's book and my friend's reasons for being disillusioned with the church, I had to confirm that his reasons were valid and... true. I wanted to say that I could prove them wrong, or undertake the responsibility of proving that with my actions. Pasts deeds will only serve to confirm his position, so what do I do from here? The last month has been a great huddle, now I have to go out and play the game.

For the second year in a row, I was asked to be a panel judge for presentations by seniors at the high school program that I volunteer with. As I evaluating was evaluating presentations based on the rubric I'd been handed, I realized I was also evaluating them on something different.

I couldn't help but scream in my mind, "Really?! This is a final project for graduating seniors?!"

Despite having seen this a year earlier and being fully prepared for what I was about to see, I was still unprepared for an overwhelming failure on the part of the City of Philadelphia public school system. For most of these students, this was the first time they'd even attempted a research paper, and they were thoroughly unprepared. I look back on my own experience in middle and high school, where I learned these same skills. I vividly remember admonitions about run-on sentences, supporting my assertions with MLA citations, and LOTS of red ink.

I am sorry to say that out of nearly 15 presentations, I heard 2 that were remotely worthy of passing. Those two, while certainly not perfect, were worthy of a college senior's effort and had indentifiable arguments that were properly addressed. Did teachers sink an inequitable amount of time into these students at the expense of others? No. Were these students helped? Absolutely - as they all should have been.

This school and numerous others are operating with students, graduating or not, who can't even properly read and write. These students were set up to fail, and with a few exceptions, fail they did. Teachers are hamstrung with nonsensical curriculum and an administrative staff who is more concerned about milking the brightest kids for grant dollars than making sure kids graduate with basic skills. 

It's time for someone to take responsibility and make a real change. There are plenty of teachers ready to train young minds, but they need the support of administration to make sure students are in school and able to get a curriculum that really makes sense. The budget isn't the only place for red ink in Philadelphia schools.