Tesla_WTC_Solution
22nd October 2013, 20:08
“Where now are the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the harp on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the deadwood burning,
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?”
~JRR Tolkien
On The Importance of Teaching
It is difficult to introduce this topic with adequate respect and maturity, having come from the system where many decent teachers have been pressured or forced out of their roles as mentors for the gifted young.
The cruelest tragedy of being human is our tendency toward brief encounters. What is ideal rarely corresponds to what happens to us. Sadly, there is no place where this is more true than in the educational system.
Gone are the days of the master and the apprentice, wisdom and patience and practice; students in our day are funneled like so much grain through a gauntlet of largely uncaring adult supervisors, held back from real participation in life and learning. Like woeful cattle, students peer out from stalls of educational mediocrity at the light and shadows of freedom lost.
Students are left in a prison of boredom and hopelessness, understanding that each year that passes while the broken system endures lessens their chances that the education received will help in any way toward securing a good career. It is only by chance encounters, brief moments, that such students catch any glimpse of the past or future.
Education should not be an accident. Teachers cannot provide everything, but lately, too many of them provide next to nothing. How can a closed mind provide an opening or an opportunity for other minds? How can a culture of fear and restriction and intolerance of differences raise anything novel or strong in and of itself?
Teachers have a responsibility, like soldiers, to identify threats to education and put themselves between these threats and the students. I am not speaking of teachers who confront gunmen or avert physical tragedy. I am speaking about fighting the battles that rage in meeting rooms, behind closed doors with superiors and principals. Teachers must be prepared to confront the "Powers of the air, the principalities of the earth, the forces of spiritual wickedness in the heavenly places" (Paul the apostle).
Teachers have a responsibility to provide a working example of virtue in the classroom untouched by the degradation of culture and corrupt politics. They must hold themselves above childish and animal temptations, reserving the efforts of the mind for the work of tending the garden of the mind.
The most important job of the teacher, however, has little to do with peers or students. It is being able to teach while also continuing to learn. To provide a structure while at the same time maintaining an open mind. This is a difficult balance, but once achieved, the most comfortable and natural for the adult mind.
No one doubts the vastness of the ocean or the fury of the storm, but neither of these forces are powerful enough to stand against the Light. Like a blanket, a fog, a mantle, power is lifted from the shoulders of the aging and placed upon the shoulders of the young. It falls like rain, this power. Only in the willful darkness of the mind can this fundamentally ancient process be averted or ignored.
Each and every one of us has to choose to step out of the darkness and into the light of knowledge and responsibility. Teaching is one of the highest callings. Support it and love it when you see it practiced properly. Instill the meaning of it, foster the growth of it, and encourage the continuation of it. Without a tender, the garden cannot endure. We are the garden of Eden.
_____________________________________________
I had a teacher in high school, named Lynda Jordan. She pioneered the Horizon program for gifted and talented students at Del Valle High School, near Austin, TX. I was in her class for only six months. An instability in my home forced me to leave Texas and flee to Kentucky, into a nightmare of inferior education.
There was so much I did not know about this teacher. How much she cared, for starters. How much she had done for us behind closed doors. How many meetings, conferences, and lobbying efforts she must have attended, hoping to grab a bone for the children.
She believed in prophecy. She believed in herself. She believed in the potential of the young and the old and everyone in between. On her neck she wore a plastic lanyard woven in response to the Kennedy assassination. Hers was a voice that nothing but death could silence -- but Lynda did not believe that the influence of a good education ended at death.
Of all my teachers, she was the most mysterious and reserved. She was like a great white stone full of unknown power from unknown times. Her strength was the strength of temple pillars, her constant goodness the goodness of the faithful Sun that shines its warmth into the Abyss. She projected common sense upon us and by that faith we began to learn from her.
It was not without a struggle or without pain that she achieved and observed. Lynda was a champion of women's rights, and she spoke up regularly for the "invisible" adults in the system who do their best for the students. Her voice was not so much distinct from ours as it was a combination of ours. It was as if she knew without being told what needed to be done, and took upon herself the duty of seeing it done.
If only more teachers could rise to the challenge of looking out for the children -- not only as children, but as human beings with a history and a future. Teachers should also look out for one another, catching mistakes where they see them and preventing such disasters as they are able. They should be a source of renewal and inspiration, not an inconvenience or a bad experience.
The money is obviously beside the point, and if people are taking on the mantle of education for that paltry sum and no other reason, woe to America! Teaching is its own reward when done with care -- just like working in the garden. The farmer not only looks forward to the marketplace, but he looks forward to every flower, seed, and bud, every leaf and insect and tiny stalk -- the minutiae of life.
____________________________________________________
What is the end of a life?
Please consider reading the thesis "Risking Apollo's Kiss" by Lynda Jordan. it is available online for free reading and download.
Download File: jordand65289.pdf
Size: 918.0Kb
Format: application/pdf
http://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/bitstream/handle/2152/1789/jordand65289.pdf?sequence=2
Please also consider reading the Time Quartet novels, written by Madeleine L'Engle.
These documents and books provide a very clear look at the qualities and struggles encountered in the realm of special education. They provide inspiration to teachers on the verge of giving up. They open the eyes of children.
______________________________________________________
Lynda Rue Duerksen Jordan, Ph.D., passed away Sunday, June 5, 2011.
I never got to say goodbye to her when I was forced to leave her school in 2000.
Had she been in Europe, she would have shared the death date with Carl Jung.
She joins the ranks of those who watch over us from above, and from within.
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/statesman/obituary.aspx?n=lynda-rue-duerksen-jordan&pid=151654051
During her 25-year tenure at Del Valle, one of Lynda's greatest achievements was the creation of the Horizon Program, which she developed to meet the needs of academically gifted or talented students at both Del Valle's junior high and high school.
Upon retiring from teaching in 2001, Lynda provided independent education consulting services to teachers that taught academically gifted or talented students, taught writing courses at Austin Community College in Austin, TX and focused on writing her own poems, short stories, novels and memoirs. She was a member of Story Circle Network and Texas Writers' League.
Lynda earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Angelo State University in San Angelo, TX; a Master of Arts in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Texas at Austin and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin in Curriculum Studies. Her thesis, Risking Apollo's Kiss, explored the many reasons academically talented women enter the teaching profession.
Please also consider reading Lynda's contribution to the TEXAS ASSOCIATION FOR THE GIFTED AND TALENTED:
http://txgifted.org/wp-content/uploads/files2/tempo/2001-2.pdf
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the harp on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the deadwood burning,
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?”
~JRR Tolkien
On The Importance of Teaching
It is difficult to introduce this topic with adequate respect and maturity, having come from the system where many decent teachers have been pressured or forced out of their roles as mentors for the gifted young.
The cruelest tragedy of being human is our tendency toward brief encounters. What is ideal rarely corresponds to what happens to us. Sadly, there is no place where this is more true than in the educational system.
Gone are the days of the master and the apprentice, wisdom and patience and practice; students in our day are funneled like so much grain through a gauntlet of largely uncaring adult supervisors, held back from real participation in life and learning. Like woeful cattle, students peer out from stalls of educational mediocrity at the light and shadows of freedom lost.
Students are left in a prison of boredom and hopelessness, understanding that each year that passes while the broken system endures lessens their chances that the education received will help in any way toward securing a good career. It is only by chance encounters, brief moments, that such students catch any glimpse of the past or future.
Education should not be an accident. Teachers cannot provide everything, but lately, too many of them provide next to nothing. How can a closed mind provide an opening or an opportunity for other minds? How can a culture of fear and restriction and intolerance of differences raise anything novel or strong in and of itself?
Teachers have a responsibility, like soldiers, to identify threats to education and put themselves between these threats and the students. I am not speaking of teachers who confront gunmen or avert physical tragedy. I am speaking about fighting the battles that rage in meeting rooms, behind closed doors with superiors and principals. Teachers must be prepared to confront the "Powers of the air, the principalities of the earth, the forces of spiritual wickedness in the heavenly places" (Paul the apostle).
Teachers have a responsibility to provide a working example of virtue in the classroom untouched by the degradation of culture and corrupt politics. They must hold themselves above childish and animal temptations, reserving the efforts of the mind for the work of tending the garden of the mind.
The most important job of the teacher, however, has little to do with peers or students. It is being able to teach while also continuing to learn. To provide a structure while at the same time maintaining an open mind. This is a difficult balance, but once achieved, the most comfortable and natural for the adult mind.
No one doubts the vastness of the ocean or the fury of the storm, but neither of these forces are powerful enough to stand against the Light. Like a blanket, a fog, a mantle, power is lifted from the shoulders of the aging and placed upon the shoulders of the young. It falls like rain, this power. Only in the willful darkness of the mind can this fundamentally ancient process be averted or ignored.
Each and every one of us has to choose to step out of the darkness and into the light of knowledge and responsibility. Teaching is one of the highest callings. Support it and love it when you see it practiced properly. Instill the meaning of it, foster the growth of it, and encourage the continuation of it. Without a tender, the garden cannot endure. We are the garden of Eden.
_____________________________________________
I had a teacher in high school, named Lynda Jordan. She pioneered the Horizon program for gifted and talented students at Del Valle High School, near Austin, TX. I was in her class for only six months. An instability in my home forced me to leave Texas and flee to Kentucky, into a nightmare of inferior education.
There was so much I did not know about this teacher. How much she cared, for starters. How much she had done for us behind closed doors. How many meetings, conferences, and lobbying efforts she must have attended, hoping to grab a bone for the children.
She believed in prophecy. She believed in herself. She believed in the potential of the young and the old and everyone in between. On her neck she wore a plastic lanyard woven in response to the Kennedy assassination. Hers was a voice that nothing but death could silence -- but Lynda did not believe that the influence of a good education ended at death.
Of all my teachers, she was the most mysterious and reserved. She was like a great white stone full of unknown power from unknown times. Her strength was the strength of temple pillars, her constant goodness the goodness of the faithful Sun that shines its warmth into the Abyss. She projected common sense upon us and by that faith we began to learn from her.
It was not without a struggle or without pain that she achieved and observed. Lynda was a champion of women's rights, and she spoke up regularly for the "invisible" adults in the system who do their best for the students. Her voice was not so much distinct from ours as it was a combination of ours. It was as if she knew without being told what needed to be done, and took upon herself the duty of seeing it done.
If only more teachers could rise to the challenge of looking out for the children -- not only as children, but as human beings with a history and a future. Teachers should also look out for one another, catching mistakes where they see them and preventing such disasters as they are able. They should be a source of renewal and inspiration, not an inconvenience or a bad experience.
The money is obviously beside the point, and if people are taking on the mantle of education for that paltry sum and no other reason, woe to America! Teaching is its own reward when done with care -- just like working in the garden. The farmer not only looks forward to the marketplace, but he looks forward to every flower, seed, and bud, every leaf and insect and tiny stalk -- the minutiae of life.
____________________________________________________
What is the end of a life?
Please consider reading the thesis "Risking Apollo's Kiss" by Lynda Jordan. it is available online for free reading and download.
Download File: jordand65289.pdf
Size: 918.0Kb
Format: application/pdf
http://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/bitstream/handle/2152/1789/jordand65289.pdf?sequence=2
Please also consider reading the Time Quartet novels, written by Madeleine L'Engle.
These documents and books provide a very clear look at the qualities and struggles encountered in the realm of special education. They provide inspiration to teachers on the verge of giving up. They open the eyes of children.
______________________________________________________
Lynda Rue Duerksen Jordan, Ph.D., passed away Sunday, June 5, 2011.
I never got to say goodbye to her when I was forced to leave her school in 2000.
Had she been in Europe, she would have shared the death date with Carl Jung.
She joins the ranks of those who watch over us from above, and from within.
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/statesman/obituary.aspx?n=lynda-rue-duerksen-jordan&pid=151654051
During her 25-year tenure at Del Valle, one of Lynda's greatest achievements was the creation of the Horizon Program, which she developed to meet the needs of academically gifted or talented students at both Del Valle's junior high and high school.
Upon retiring from teaching in 2001, Lynda provided independent education consulting services to teachers that taught academically gifted or talented students, taught writing courses at Austin Community College in Austin, TX and focused on writing her own poems, short stories, novels and memoirs. She was a member of Story Circle Network and Texas Writers' League.
Lynda earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Angelo State University in San Angelo, TX; a Master of Arts in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Texas at Austin and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin in Curriculum Studies. Her thesis, Risking Apollo's Kiss, explored the many reasons academically talented women enter the teaching profession.
Please also consider reading Lynda's contribution to the TEXAS ASSOCIATION FOR THE GIFTED AND TALENTED:
http://txgifted.org/wp-content/uploads/files2/tempo/2001-2.pdf