All posts in category ICYMI

I Love You but You Didn’t Do the Reading

Hello 2019! We’re starting strong with a full week of culture-war contention. Here are some of the stories that caught our eye this week:

How evangelicals can embrace evolution, at CT.

And for the rest of us, the value of indifference, here at ILYBYGTH.

You probably heard Jerry Falwell Jr.’s odd Trumpist speech. What does it mean? One analysis at WaPo:

Like many heretics, Falwell and his fellow evangelical Trump apologists are on their way to founding a new religion, one in direct conflict with the old.

It’s not easy to be an anti-racist evangelical these days. A portrait of non-white activists in The New Yorker.

What are educational conservatives saying these days? A new speaker series hopes to restore the conservative glory days of the 1990s.

Why it won’t succeed, here at ILYBYGTH.

Do young-earth creationists have any answer to geocentric critics? RA says…still no.

Inclusive campuses for everyone—even Nazis. At IHE.

Do Nazis deserve manners?

Stalker or romantic? At KCStar.

Will the USA extradite Fethullah Gulen? At RNS.

Update: anti-porn students find allies, at IHE.

How does the anti-porn campaign fulfill the “fundamentalist dream?” Here at ILYBYGTH.

Bad news for Trumpists: China’s Great Wall didn’t keep out invaders, at NG.

Michael Petrilli: School discipline needs to make sense, not just culture-war nonsense. At Flypaper.

Sure, but punishment has always been a loaded culture-war issue, at ILYBYGTH.

Leave a comment

by Adam Laats on January 7, 2019 • Permalink

Posted in ICYMI

Tagged Creationism, Educational Conservatism, evangelicalism, Fordham Institute, Gulen, Hoover Institution, Jerry Falwell Jr., Liberty University, Michael Petrilli, Young earth creationism

Posted by Adam Laats on January 7, 2019

https://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2019/01/07/i-love-you-but-you-didnt-do-the-reading-103/

The Year in ILYBYGTH

I wasn’t going to do it. I was going to try awkwardly to maintain my dignity and refrain from any sort of year-end top-ten list. But then a couple of enforcers from the WordPress goon squad showed up and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.

So here it is: The eleven most popular posts of 2018:

What is Life Like at Evangelical Colleges? Reflections from alumni of “Fundamentalist U.” What was it like to attend different schools in different decades? How did evangelical higher ed shape these students’ lives?
Billy Graham and Bob Jones From the archives, a look at the tempestuous and angry relationship between teacher and former student.
RIP Billy Graham, here preaching to the multitudes in London, 1954.
Crisis at Moody Bible Institute From way back in January 2018, a look at the ways the history of fundamentalist higher ed in the early 1900s set the pattern for the recent leadership shake-up at Chicago’s storied Bible school.
The Dilemma of the Fundamentalist Intellectual An ugly story of resume inflation is par for the course in the world of fundamentalist academic life. Why?
The Myth of Evangelical Political History Just Won’t Die: It doesn’t seem to matter that historians have punctured this story completely. Journalists still love it, probably because a lot of evangelicals love it.
Christians Don’t Know Christianity: Are Christians supposed to actually believe Christian doctrine? Or only hold it as a personal preference?
Where Were You Radicalized? A simple question on Tweeter gets people thinking, but there’s one place no one seemed to be talking about.
Evangelical Colleges Aren’t Teaching Christianity A professor complains that her students don’t know Christian orthodoxy. I lay out the historical case that this is nothing new in evangelical higher education.
Bad News for Creationists Science just makes young-earth creationism harder and harder to believe. What will YECs do? I have a guess…
Because…Darwin?
How Did Christian Colleges Become Racist? I made the case for an under-suspected culprit behind the racism of white evangelicals: mainstream higher education.
Is Creationism Hate Speech? Can–SHOULD–mainstream universities ban radical young-earth creationism because it is hateful to non-heterosexuals?

Leave a comment

by Adam Laats on December 31, 2018 • Permalink

Posted in ICYMI, Required Reading

Tagged Billy Graham, Bob Jones, Christian Colleges, Creationism, evangelical higher education, evangelicalism, Moody Bible Institute, Young earth creationism

Posted by Adam Laats on December 31, 2018

https://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2018/12/31/the-year-in-ilybygth/

I Love You but You Didn’t Do the Reading

Even in the holiday week, stuff kept happening. Here are a few stories that caught our eye:

ILYBYGTH Prize for Hilarious Hack: Florida billboard’s cute puppy delivers Satanic blessing, at FA.

The past and present of Liberty football, from Paul Putz. It’s about more than prostitutes:

Will protests and activism follow? Will risk-averse administrators at major college programs decide that a game against Liberty is not worth the trouble? Will elite black high school athletes decide they don’t want to play for Trump University?

What is it about fundamentalists and football? The long history here at ILYBYGTH.

Other People’s Children: Walmart heirs push charters for African American students, at AP.

What happens to teachers’ unions after the Janus decision? At EWA.

Christmas 1924: When the Klan marched in Fort Worth, at ST.

Do young-earth creationists have any rebuttal for their flat-earth critics? RA says no.

Zoiks: Legislation to keep teachers from talking politics, at Curmudgucation.

Should teachers exhort their students to vote for a particular candidate? No. Do teachers have the right to discuss controversial political issues in their classroom, without being forced to present opposing views? Of course they do– imagine a class a teacher must explain how Nazis and slave owners had valid points of their own.

Why all the worry about teachers’ politics? Here at ILYBYGTH.

Leave a comment

by Adam Laats on December 31, 2018 • Permalink

Posted in ICYMI

Tagged Charter Schools, Flat earth, football, geocentrism, Ku Klux Klan, Teachers Unions, Walton Foundation, Young earth creationism

Posted by Adam Laats on December 31, 2018

https://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2018/12/31/i-love-you-but-you-didnt-do-the-reading-102/

I Love You but You Didn’t Do the Reading

Here it is at last: ILYBYDDTR, Christmas Steve edition! If you need a little extra ed stuff to read over the holidays, here are a few of the stories that caught our attention this week:

Hi there…

Will Stancil looks at a scam school and asks two smart questions: 1.) Why did they get away with it for so long, and 2.) What does this story tell us about elite college admissions. At The Atlantic.

Success stories suggest that, even among the poor children of color who face pervasive societal burdens, the truly deserving can prevail in the end. When inequality is defeatable, it stops feeling so much like injustice.

Even worse, this is the oldest story in the school-reform book. Here at ILYBYGTH.

Earn more, marry less: The effects of going to a selective college for women, at IHE.

Even Gandhi? University removes statue due to Gandhi’s racist comments, at the Guardian.

Hey hey! Ho ho! This…erm…anti-imperialist ascetic has got to go!

Why is school reform so hard? At Hechinger.

…and how is it like Keto dieting? Here at ILYBYGTH.

White supremacist Silent Sam statue disappears at UNC: Jonathan Zimmerman says that’s bad, at CHE.

From Righting America: Campus bombings from the KKK in the 1920s.

Campus bombings, 1920s style…

So there’s this: Jerry Falwell Jr. had a special “friendly relationship” with a good-looking young man, at BF.

Leave a comment

by Adam Laats on December 24, 2018 • Permalink

Posted in ICYMI

Tagged Gandhi, Jerry Falwell Jr., Ku Klux Klan, school reform, Silent Sam, T.M. Landry, University of Dayton

Posted by Adam Laats on December 24, 2018

https://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2018/12/24/i-love-you-but-you-didnt-do-the-reading-101/

I Love You but You Didn’t Do the Reading

The jingle bells are getting louder, but we are still hard at work here in the offices of ILYBYGTH International, scouring the interwebs for stories of interest. Here are a few:

Are our brains really hard-wired to deny the facts if they disprove our biases? A review of the literature at The Economist.

What do these studies have to do with the durability and popularity of young-earth creationism? Here at ILYBYGTH.

Among white voters, only the evangelicals are still solid for Trump, at CNN.

Red Votes

Where did all the white evangelical voters go? Trump tower. Here at ILYBYGTH.
And Trump 2016 didn’t have the support of 80% of white evangelicals anyway, says Justin Taylor at TGC.

When a prophet came to office hours, at Righting America.

From the “do-we-really-care-about-this” department: A defense of “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” at TS.

The dangers of authority in fundamentalist institutions…

The saddest part of all might be the fact that it comes as no surprise: Rampant sexual abuse and assault at independent fundamental Baptist churches, at ST.

For decades, women and children have faced rampant sexual abuse while worshiping at independent fundamental Baptist churches around the country. The network of churches and schools has often covered up the crimes and helped relocate the offenders, an eight-month Star-Telegram investigation has found. More than 200 people — current or former church members, across generations — shared their stories of rape, assault, humiliation and fear in churches where male leadership cannot be questioned.

The long, ugly history of sex abuse at “Fundamentalist U,” here at ILYBYGTH.

James Fallows on the shouting match in the Oval Office, at The Atlantic.

Secretary Zinke presides over a “monumental disaster” as leader of the Department of the Interior, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. At LAT.

Among the up-is-down, night-is-day practices of the Trump administration, one of the most dangerous and disturbing is its habit of turning America’s leading science agencies into hives of anti-science policymaking.

The Southern Baptist Seminary acknowledges its slave-owning history, at NYT.

“The moral burden of history requires a more direct and far more candid acknowledgment of the legacy of this school in the horrifying realities of American slavery, Jim Crow segregation, racism, and even the avowal of white racial supremacy,” wrote R. Albert Mohler Jr., the president of the seminary, which is now in Louisville, Ky.

Steve Bannon: “I’m still a thing!” at USAT.

Why not spend more on vocational ed? At NYT.

Because voke ed is too often code for unequal opportunity, here at ILYBYGTH.

Leave a comment

by Adam Laats on December 17, 2018 • Permalink

Posted in ICYMI

Tagged evangelicalism, Ryan Zinke, sexual abuse, Southern Baptist Seminary, Trump, Vocational education

Posted by Adam Laats on December 17, 2018

https://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2018/12/17/i-love-you-but-you-didnt-do-the-reading-100/

I Love You but You Didn’t Do the Reading

A chock-full week in evangelical higher ed with a heavy dose of teachers’ strikes. Thanks to everyone who sent in stories and tips:

Our lead story: The Master’s University struggles with the worst legacy of Fundamentalist U: The personality cult. At CHE.

a group of reviewers acknowledged that Master’s is doing some important things right. Under MacArthur, they said, the institution has engendered deep loyalty from faculty, students, and donors. At the same time, the report depicted Master’s as an accreditor’s nightmare: an insular and oppressive institution where loyalty to the president and his church has sometimes trumped both academic and financial concerns.

Not quirk, not an idiosyncrasy. TMUS’s problems are part of the long legacy of the dilemma of evangelical higher ed. Here at ILYBYGTH.

Get thee behind me, accreditors.

How does a “Bible Belt Ivy” thrive? College of the Ozarks wows the number-crunchers at Forbes.

From former CofO faculty at Righting America: What makes the College of the Ozarks unique among evangelical institutions? “…the degree to which its Christian commitments are subsumed in a militaristic patriotism.”
How do hard-line institutions like CofO survive? Not in spite of their extremism, but because of it. Here at ILYBYGTH.
What was CofO like before it went down the “Christian Nationalist” road? At RA.

In remembrance of Pearl Harbor:

Are college faculty really as radical as conservatives think? Ed Burmila says not even close, at UW. HT: MM.

The American right is so heavily invested in the fantasy of radical leftist professors that no evidence can convince them otherwise. . . . If you have considerable time on your hands and wish to see just what kind of leftists run universities, go to the graduate school and propose unionizing Research Assistants, Teaching Assistants, and other itinerant quasi-employees. You’ll discover quickly that senior faculty — the same ones who can’t wait to show you their picture with Tom Hayden or some other talisman of progressive cred — turn into staunch capitalists in a hurry.

Not funny. Columbia students shut down comedian, at IHE.

Bolsonaro’s educational culture war in Brazil, at the Economist.

A new wrinkle: Culture war via Facebook. Here at ILYBYGTH.

Tech and reform: Why does every generation think its old ideas are new? By Larry Cuban.

The first teacher strike at a charter school. What will it portend? At NYT.

…the wheel of “reform” spins back around…

Liberty U loves Trump, and hires a football coach with a record of hiring prostitutes, at ESPN.

The key to de-segregation? Minnesota’s new reform at Slate. HT: CC.

single-family zoning proved as effective at segregating northern neighborhoods (and their schools) as Jim Crow laws had in the South.

The author of one of the best books about the 1920s KKK explains the complicated history at NPR.

How can we teach about painful historical topics? How about one person’s story at a time, at The Atlantic.

Leave a comment

by Adam Laats on December 10, 2018 • Permalink

Posted in ICYMI

Tagged Bolsonaro, College of the Ozarks, evangelical higher education, History education, Ku Klux Klan, Liberty University, Pearl Harbor, Segregation, Teacher strikes, The Masters University

Posted by Adam Laats on December 10, 2018

https://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2018/12/10/i-love-you-but-you-didnt-do-the-reading-99/

I Love You but You Didn’t Do the Reading

Happy December! The ILYBYGTH International offices moved this week to the Situation Room to monitor the “War on Christmas.” But we still had time to gather these stories we thought you might like:

“Education is a business.” Libertarian abandons public schools, at Reason. HT: MM.

History majors keep declining, at AHA.

Does this mean history is becoming a plaything of the elite? Here at ILYBYGTH.

Background on the missionary-killing Sentinelese at NYT.

Creationism? Evolution? Glenn Branch looks at fifty years of struggle for better evolution education at SA.

How Berkeley students are freeing speech, at IHE.

Can they teach us how to really win culture-war shouting matches? Here at ILYBYGTH.

Oh, wow. The weird, wild scam history of evangelical Olivet University, at NYT. HT: MG.

Tennessee study: Big boost for students who have an African American teacher, at NBER.

What does this tell us about big-picture school reform? Here at ILYBYGTH.

Is education a civil right? Students in RI sue for theirs, at the Atlantic.How to avoid solving educational problems, c. 1942, from Larry Cuban.

When I think of (and listen to) current debates about problems like inequality, racism, and poverty as they influence what teachers do, how schools operate, and effects on students, I recall many times when I heard and saw school board members, superintendents, principals, teachers, and parents engage in what Diederich [described in 1942].

Creationism, eh? New poll about evolution and teaching creationism in Canada, at NCSE.

Leave a comment

by Adam Laats on December 3, 2018 • Permalink

Posted in ICYMI

Tagged Campus free speech, Creationism, Larry Cuban, Libertarianism, Olivet Universsity, school reform

Posted by Adam Laats on December 3, 2018

https://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2018/12/03/i-love-you-but-you-didnt-do-the-reading-98/

I Love You but You Didn’t Do the Reading

The ILYBYGTH International offices shut down last week for the Thanksgiving holiday, but the rest of the world kept spinning. Here are some of the stories that we missed:

Something new, nothing blue: Daniel K. Williams on the fact that rural white voters nationwide have united behind the GOP, at HNN.

Progressive women: Want to convince Trump voters to see things your way? It’s harder than you think, at The Nation.

Just as you don’t want to be the obedient wife of some porn-addicted Christian bully, they don’t want to be a slutty baby-killer like you.

Neighborhoods integrate, but schools stay segregated. Why? At Chalkbeat.

What is life like in a Chinese re-education camp? At NPR.

What do evangelicals need to read Revelation right? Imagination, says Scot McKnight.

This Book of Revelation sets afire the imagination and should be turning us off to literal pictures. . . . Revelation was written for imaginations not for sketch artists.

Lessons from Watergate: Does a Blue House spell the end of Trumpism? At the Atlantic.

In one respect, Trump’s position may now be even more precarious than Nixon’s.

Schools on a mission…

Missionary killed on remote island. Hero? “Terrorist?” Or “self-important, arrogant, deluded, foolish, and a pest”?

What role do evangelical colleges play in training suicidal missionaries? Here at ILYBYGTH.

Worth it? Post-9/11 wars have cost the USA $5.9 Trillion, at the Nation.

Leave a comment

by Adam Laats on November 26, 2018 • Permalink

Posted in ICYMI, Uncategorized

Tagged Daniel K. Williams, Democratic Party, evangelicalism, John Allen Chau, Republican Party, Segregation, Trump, Watergate

Posted by Adam Laats on November 26, 2018

https://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2018/11/26/i-love-you-but-you-didnt-do-the-reading-97/

I Love You but You Didn’t Do the Reading

It’s been a busy week here in the offices of ILYBYGTH International! Here are some of the stories that came across our desk that we thought you might find interesting:

Trump’s proclamation for Education Week.

The usual conservative buzzwords, but some from the other side, too, at ILYBYGTH.

What was the “city on a hill” really about? Not what Reagan thought, at WaPo.

Two insufficient ways schools teach WWI. At TC.

This WILL be on the test!

School privatization takes a hit in the mid-term elections, at T74.

Freaking out yet about the Asia Bibi case? At the Guardian.

Here at ILYBYGTH we ask: Are these right-wing mobs scarier than their left-wing counterparts?

What do you do if you support teacher strikes but lose your bid for Congress? Run for President, at Politico.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9lWuZ7f-oA&feature=youtu.be

More swings than a school playground: Hillary Clinton is back IN the Texas history standards, at DMN.

Are evangelicals cracking up? Eric Miller interviews Paul Djupe at R&P.

we can foresee almost no circumstances at this point that would intervene in the mutual love affair—the equally yoked relationship—between white evangelicals and Trump. But, that necessarily entails a crackup of evangelicalism.

More than double-secret probation on the line: Dartmouth sued for allowing “Animal House” antics by three well-funded professors, at IHE.

Are the real anti-Semites on the Left? At Spectator.

What can conservatives and progressives agree on? Deriding tax breaks for Amazon, at the Federalist.

Jill Lepore on her new non-textbook textbook, at CHE.

A former school superintendent describes his disillusion with testing at Chalkbeat.

We’re not playing the long game for our kids.

Rutgers changes its mind: It’s okay if a white professor is anti-white, at FIRE.

The background here at ILYBYGTH.
The worrisome potential of this decision at ILYBYGTH.
What does it have to do with the “White Student Union” at Yale?

Yale White Student Union_1542397045372.jpg_62387087_ver1.0_640_360

This isn’t what he wanted…

Money-laundering Bible college busted, at CT.

Will the real populist please stand up? R.R. Reno at TAM.

When the ruling class ignores or derides the unsettled populace (as is happening today — deplorables, takers, and so forth), the restlessness jells into an adversarial mood. A populist is anyone who gains political power on the strength of this adversarial stance.

1 Comment

by Adam Laats on November 19, 2018 • Permalink

Posted in ICYMI, Uncategorized

Tagged American Legion, Anti Semitism, Asia Bibi, Education Week, evangelicalism, High-stakes Testing, olivet college, Populism, R.R. Reno, Richard Ojeda, Rutgers, Teacher strikes, Trump, White Students Union, World War I

Posted by Adam Laats on November 19, 2018

https://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2018/11/19/i-love-you-but-you-didnt-do-the-reading-96/

I Love You but You Didn’t Do the Reading

Armistice Day, a century later. Subterranean rivers of ecstasy and violence, a generation later. This week saw a lot of remembrance and few new shockers:

Fart jokes land a professor in hot water at CHE.

Ha ha ha…you’re fired.

How many people go to Ark Encounter? Parsing the attendance numbers at FA.

We’ve been here before: Andrew Bacevich’s lessons from the Sixties at AC.

Once more the subterranean river has unleashed the forces of ecstasy and violence. . . . And as in 1968, little evidence exists to suggest that the nation’s political class has the capacity to comprehend what is occurring, much less the wit and courage needed to address the problem. . . . [Yet] the center will ultimately hold. The market for ecstasy and violence will once more prove to be limited and transitory.