Welcome to this month’s Forward Thinking roundup! The general consensus of these diverse posts appears to be that public education should be about teaching content, teaching children how to learn, providing an equalizer that enables people to fulfill their potential, fulfilling the nation’s economic needs, and creating a common society bound by shared knowledge and shared experiences.
Recently, I’ve been devoting some time to writing about homeschooling here on the blog. So, when I started thinking about what my next Forward Thinking prompt should be, I immediately thought about public education. In today’s atmosphere of school choice and concerns about the quality of public schools, I don’t think it hurts to step back and ask ourselves about the purpose of public education.
Forward Thinking is a values development project created in collaboration with Dan Fincke of Camels with Hammers. Dan is introducing our next prompt today (head on over to see it!), but in this post I will pull together some of the responses to this month’s prompt: “What do is the purpose of marriage?” There was lively debate in the comments section of the original prompt, and nearly a dozen blog posts were written in response.
The Christian Right is constantly talking about the importance of “traditional marriage” while the recent focus of the LGBTQ rights movement has been on marriage equality. Every few months there is yet another article in a mainstream news outlet about the changing nature, relevance, and future of marriage. Without further ado, I give you this month’s Forward Thinking discussion question: What is the purpose of marriage?
Forward Thinking is a values development project created in collaboration with Dan Fincke of Camels with Hammers. Dan is introducing our next prompt today (head on over to see it!), but in this post I will pull together some of the responses to this month’s prompt: “What do we owe our parents?” A total of five bloggers wrote posts in response. Let’s take a look at what they had to say, shall we?
Given that one of the ten commandments orders children to honor their parents, Christianity seems to emphasize filial duty. Leaving Christianity means I no longer believe I have a divinely-mandated obligation to my parents. Further, my parents caused me a great deal of pain when I first started stepping out on my own and forging my own life, and that can’t help but affect our relationship. But they’re still my parents.
In this post I will pull together some of the responses to this month’s prompt: “What would you tell teenagers about sex?” Not only were there a large number of blog posts written on the topic, but there was also a great deal of discussion and input in the comments section of the post where the prompt was introduced. I am going to pick one thing from each person’s list and reproduce it here, with a link and attribution. Enjoy!
I spend a lot of time on this blog talking about the problems of the purity culture’s elevation of virginity. The evangelicalism I grew up in made abstinence before marriage a critical matter of faith, and did it’s utmost to persuade of scare teens out of having sex. Misinformation was rife. But like many similar blogs, I spend more time talking about how the purity culture “does it wrong” than about what it looks like to be doing it right.
How do we balance individual and community? To whom do we owe responsibility – our local community, our nation, or all of humanity? Two weeks ago I announced Forward Thinking, a values development project, and introduced the first prompt – what does civic responsibility mean to you? Dan is introducing our next prompt today, and in this post I will pull together posts from other bloggers to round off our discussion of civic responsibility.
Our first Forward Thinking prompt involves an issue that is, I think, too often left undiscussed. It is my suspicion that differing ideas about the nature of civic responsibility and what all it includes often underlie political differences in ways we do not always recognize. I believe that we as forward thinkers would benefit from bringing this issue out of the shadows and discussing it directly and enthusiastically
I am excited to announce the creation of a new blogging series: Forward Thinking: A Values Development Project, created in collaboration with fellow Patheos blogger Dan Fincke of Camels with Hammers. It is our hope that this series will serve as an invitation to readers and fellow bloggers big and small to participate in forming values and grappling with thorny questions.
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