This book, and these guys, have a point. I teach 8th grade, and one of the hardest things to watch/see/endure are the students who consistently choose to not do their work, who choose to not pay attention (not that I have brilliant things to say), who choose to check out of the current moment because they would rather be video gaming or myspacing or smoking up or drinking. It's pretty awful to see kids waste their time in my class, not because it hurts my professional feelings, but because they are learning to hold back, not use their brains, not think, not do something that they can because they don't want to or because they've learned that they don't have to.
Somehow my students have learned, erroneously, that the standardized test is more important than passing 8th grade English. A lot of them were passing time before that test and now more of them have checked out. And somehow hey didn't "get" that if they passed my class, they would pass the test.
There are some students that are motivated to do well, and God bless 'em, they do their best to ignore the clowning and cutting up.
Alex and Brett are all about challenging teenagers. They write to instigate a teenage rebellion against low expectations and they have some good things to say.
"Where expectations are high, we tend to rise to meet them. Where expectations are low, we tend to drop to meet them. And yet this is the exact opposite of what we're told to do in 1 Corinthians 14:20: 'Brothers, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults.' Our culture says, 'Be mature in evil, but in your thinking and behavior be childish.' Of course, sometimes we like being able to do things we know we shouldn't do--or getting away with less than our best. We excuse our choices because that's what teens are supposed to do or by thinking, Well, I'm not as bad as some people I know. We go with the crowd. We do what comes easily: we certainly don't do hard things."
The authors coin a term--rebellution. They constantly use it to refer to the movement they see in teenagers to stop drifting through their young years and start "doing hard things." The term gets on my nerves. I'm not sure if it's because I'm an English teacher and I think you shouldn't go messing with the actual words of the English language or because it seems slick.
The book is OK, and I wish it had been great While they want to challenge teenagers, the book itself is not challenging. Like a lot of books I've seen in the genre of Christian self-improvement, you could speed through it in about an hour. Their "hard things" seem pretty simple. Maybe our pretty insulated Christian culture has classified hard things as impossible, and the really difficult things just take a little effort. Looks like we're still waiting for real challenge. Maybe all of us, older and younger, need to get out of our current head spaces and get about the business of challenging ourselves and changing our own expectations.
I'd love to think that another book would change Christian culture. But I don't think that another book that doesn't really make us think will change our thinking.
About the authors: Alex and Brett Harris founded TheRebelution.com in August 2005 and today at age 19 are the most popular Christian teen writers on the Web. The twins are frequent contributors to Focus on the Family’s Boundless webzine, serve as the main speakers for the Rebelution Tour conferences, and have been featured in WORLD magazine, Breakaway, The Old Schoolhouse, and the New York Daily News. Sons of homeschool pioneer Gregg Harris and younger brothers of best-selling author Joshua Harris (I Kissed Dating Goodbye), Alex and Brett live near Portland, Oregon.
"Mr. Hardie, you're skinny."
"Is that a compliment?"
"No, it ISN'T!"
I'm trying to imagine how it could come to this. How embarrassing.
Mr. Hardie does not have a hole punch. Even if you ask him four times he will still not have a hole punch. If he did have a hole punch he would not let you use it on your ID made of very sturdy plastic.
Mr. Hardie will not turn the lights out in his classroom without windows during movies.
Mr. Hardie loves movies, so he does show them when he can work them into his lesson plans.
Mr. Hardie doesn't talk about individual students to other students or about classes to other classes. That's why he doesn't respond to your accusations of favoritism.
Mr. Hardie will not talk to you about your grades while he is talking to the class.
Mr. Hardie will be happy to talk to you about your grades after class, during lunch, or during individual work.
Mr. Hardie wonders why some students are suddenly concerned about their grades at the end of the year.
"So much good is coming out of all of this," added Jeanne Elizardi, as we drove around looking at the building projects. "We just hope people don't forget that we still need everyone's help."
More than two million children worldwide were living with HIV/AIDS in 2007, according to a joint report released Thursday by UNICEF, UNAIDS and the World Health Organization, Reuters reports (Worsnip, Reuters, 4/3).
According to the report -- titled "Children and AIDS" -- most children living with HIV/AIDS acquired the virus through mother-to-child transmission. The report also found that 290,000 children under age 15 died last year of AIDS-related causes and that 12.1 million children in sub-Saharan Africa lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS (AFP/France 24, 4/3). In addition, the report found that young people ages 15 to 24 account for 40% of new HIV cases among people older than 15 (Deen, IPS/AllAfrica.com, 4/4).
"Today's children and young people have never known a world free of AIDS," UNICEF Executive Director Ann Veneman said, adding, "Children must be at the heart of the global AIDS agenda." Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, said "Much more needs to be done to prevent HIV amongst young people and adolescents if we are to make a major change in the direction of the epidemic" (IPS/AllAfrica.com, 4/4). Kevin DeCock, director of HIV/AIDS programs at WHO, added that "health systems and their most precious component, the health care work force, must be strengthened" to address HIV/AIDS in children (AFP/France 24, 4/3).
You can read more here and find a link to the entire report here.
you should listen to me, because the students always know what is best for the teacher."