Richard Rodriguez: On Religion in America

Bill Moyers has a very interesting program called "Faith and Reason". You can catch the program on a PBS station. Richard Rodriguez was the most recent guest of the program. Here are a few of his quotes:

"You learn in America to speak two ways. You learn in public discourse not to be very specific about your religious life. Or, if we talk about it, we'll find a secular way of doing it that will not be offensive to people of non-belief. So, that you go through life with these alternate voices."
--Richard Rodriguez

For Rodriguez, who grew up in what he calls a "medieval village," a small town where the "only people [he] knew were Catholics," part of the appeal of Catholicism is the sense of certainty and belonging provided by what he sees as the Catholic community's almost tribal sense of mutual belief.

Rodriguez feels that Americans are "communal people" who hunger for a sense of "communal assurance" that is harder to find in a more complex world. But at the same time, he feels that we hunger for individuality.

Rodriguez made some interesting points about America's conflict in the use of language. For example, in the political world the United States language uses the pronoun "I". Yet when you go to a church the emphasis is on "We".

How do we balance our need for community and individuality?

Who is Lewis Terman??

I have been teaching and coaching in both public and private schools for over 17 years. During that time people have asked me what has made me so successful with students? As a teacher you tend to take those comments lightly knowing the question is loaded with just as many people who think you have no clue as to what to do with your child. Primarily because every student you teach has a different method of obtaining information or becoming motivated to learn your subject.

My focus is to try and get my students to become passionate about the subject. During my years of teaching there were an incredible number of students who were extremely smart and talented. For some reason you could see that there was no curiousity or passion except for the fact that if they could achieve a grade or reach the top 10% of their class they were honored with awards stating they were very bright or talented. You could also see the parents wanting the grade more than the student. For those of you stating: what is wrong with this?. There is nothing wrong!! In fact this can be a strong motivation because it will get them into a good school and maybe offer money in terms of scholarships. The only problem is they never really understood that the true meaning of learning is having a curiousity or passion to learn more about their subject.

This might be hard to beleive but maybe there were students who were not interested in my subject? It has always been my beleif that each subject you study can be applied to everyday life. The transfer of knowledge is a powerful tool!! We can wire our brain to learn many things in different ways. The strongest tool that I look for is trying to get my cynical students to see the practical side of learning a topic or subject to their interest.

At the top of this journal you will see a picture of Lewis Terman. He was the person responsible for coining the term Intelligence Quotient. This number has struck fear into the hearts of many students. Some students who know their score will announce it to their friends as if it gives you a free pass to learn because they are the chosen few who are labeled genius. Others will be intimidated by the score because maybe they do not feel smart knowing other scores are higher.

Does the score determine the fate of my students? No. Does it mean that all of my student have the ability to become brain surgeons?? No. It is time we move away from the old paradigms such as IQ to a new paradigm that can not be measure by a number.

On pages 303-4 of the latest edition of The World is Flat , Tom Friedman states:

For all these reasons, I have concluded that in a flat world, IQ — intelligence quotient — still matters, but CQ and PQ IQ — curiosity quotient and passion quotient IQ — matter even more. I live by the equation CQ + PQ > IQ. Give me a kid with a passion to learn and a curiousity to discover and I will take him over a less passionate kid with a high IQ every day of the week.

Amen