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Remembering Tiananmen Square with Cameron Blake

Student protesters stage a sit-in in Tiananmen Square

Today (5/4/18) is the 29th anniversary of the massacre in Tiananmen Square. For those too young to remember, Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China was ground zero for a massive pro-democracy, people’s movement that many hoped could become a Chinese Spring.

The Chinese government tolerated this youth movement for a time, but eventually decided that enough was enough.  On June 4, 1989 Chinese troops moved into the square.

Clean up after the June 4th massacre

According to one British diplomatic cable, at least 10,000 people were killed that day.  Many were run over by tanks. Others were bayoneted to death as they lay wounded in the streets.

Tanks pass victims swept to the side of the road

On the following day, as tanks returned to the scene, one brave man briefly captured the world’s attention. Now known as Tank Man or The Unknown Protester, with a shopping bag of groceries in each hand, he walked out and stood alone before the column of returning tanks, stopping their progress. Whenever the lead tank tried to maneuver around him, he moved over into its path, stopping it again and again.

Tank Man stops the tanks the day after the massacre

This anonymous individual, who almost certainly was executed soon afterwards, put his body between the remnant of surviving protesters and the killing machines of state repression.

He knew the price of his action.

Yet, he also knew that – at least, for him – inaction was unacceptable. So, he stood in front of the tanks fully aware that it was his final act.

Cameron Blake is a good friend of mine whose young imagination was captured by this unknown protester.  Cameron has grown into an extremely talented musician/singer/song-writer and just happens to be a huge fan of Bob Dylan, to boot.

Cameron’s latest CD, Fear Not, which I listen to regularly, includes an elegy to the slender Chinese hero who, if only for a moment, single-handedly stopped the tanks of a super-power.

You can watch and listen to Cameron’s newest music video, “Tiananmen Square,” below.  Then check out Cameron’s website and buy your own copy of the entire CD, Fear Not.  You won’t be disappointed.

Dispelling a Memorial Day Myth

I wrote this article in 2006. It was originally published in Perspectives Journal  (August 1 issue).  It is as relevant today as it was then.

The only difference for me is that my father died several weeks ago of war related health problems.

“I’m an Army brat, the proud son of a proud veteran who completed four tours of duty in two separate conflicts. I am immensely grateful that my father always returned home, at least physically. My mother was never forced to grieve at her husband’s graveside, but there is more than one way for a soldier to die. Often the man who comes home is not the same man who left for war.

“I remember my mother’s stories of how his hands would encircle her throat at night as she crept into his nightmares, the sleeping wife lying next to him fused with the Chinese enemy crawling under his tent flap. I vividly recall the continual depression, the emotional detachment, the explosions of anger. Our family eroded (internally, if not externally) and gradually fell apart like a sand castle trying to withstand an oncoming tide.

“There is more than one way for a soldier to die. Sometimes the family that waits behind gets back only a shell of the man they once knew. Somewhere overseas the soldier’s insides are emptied onto a battlefield, scooped out by bombs and artillery, sleepless nights and ‘collateral damage.’ The father I once knew had been replaced by someone new, a stranger haunted by guilt and riddled with sickness.

“What do my mother and siblings have to celebrate on Memorial Day?

“Please, don’t urge me to remember the veterans who gave their lives so that we could be free. It’s cold comfort because it’s not true. Aside from the clearly religious overtones of those words, something my Christianity finds deeply offensive, my father’s life was not ruined while defending American freedom. Were that the case, I might be able to celebrate. But with the possible exception of World War II, what modern war has this nation fought for such noble purposes? None. My father’s life was hollowed out for a discredited domino theory that preserved American freedom by only the most strained exercise in mental gymnastics. (If Southeast Asia falls, we’re next!) In the end, half the Korean peninsula and the whole of Vietnam were ‘lost.’ Yet, our freedoms were not diminished one iota.

“Let’s be honest in our celebrations. My father’s comrades-in-arms died believing that they were defending American freedom. They died because this nation’s political leaders had convinced themselves that the borders of American national interests extended into Southeast Asia. But the verdict is now inescapable. American freedom was never at risk in any of those conflicts.

“Soldiers gladly give their lives defending the buddies huddled beside them.

Wounded U.S. paratroopers are helped by fellow soldiers to a medical evacuation helicopter on Oct. 5, 1965 during the Vietnam War. Paratroopers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade’s First Battalion suffered many casualties in the clash with Viet Cong guerrillas in the jungle of South Vietnam’s “D” Zone, 25 miles Northeast of Saigon. (AP Photo)

Soldiers die because they obey their orders, no matter how dangerous. Many die because they are patriots. Sometimes they die in the conviction that they are defending someone else’s freedom. More die because they didn’t know what else to do after high school graduation. Soldiers die because they trust their leaders and believe the rallying cries of the commander-in-chief. But none of this necessarily has anything to do with the defense of American freedom. History demonstrates that our soldiers most often die as instruments of the ambition, naivete, stubbornness, ignorance, arrogance, and miscalculations of our nation’s leaders.

Washington DC, USA – June 18, 2016: The Memorial Wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC at dawn.

“It is far more accurate to say that Memorial Day commemorates those men and women who unwittingly gave their lives for the extension of America foreign, political, and economic interests. But that’s neither catchy nor comfortable to repeat.

“In 1775 Samuel Johnson characterized patriotism as the last refuge of the scoundrel. It is also the first refuge of the masses unwilling to face hard political realities. I’ll stand to memorialize the patriot soldiers who gave their lives protecting a buddy while carrying out dangerous commands. But don’t ask me to memorialize a lie. My family has suffered enough for patriotic delusions.”

Diane Ravitch on the Lunacy of Education Reform by Billionaires

Diane Ravitch is probably the most knowledgeable historian of education in the country.  I follow her blog daily.

Among her many accomplishments, Ms. Ravitch served in the first Bush administration and was an early advocate for the standardized testing that blights our public schools today.

But, unlike so many, Ravitch is a true scholar who is willing to admit her mistakes.  Today she is one of the most avid and effective critics of US education policy, including the disastrous appointment of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education.

For anyone interested or concerned about public education and its steady destruction in this country, I recommend Ms. Ravitch’s two most recent  books,  Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools and The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.

I am a product of public schools.  I am also a former college professor with first-hand experience in the bureaucratic control imposed by the federal government with its irrational insistence on management targets, treating the classroom as if it were just another production line, easily improved by more measurement, more standardized tests, more outcome assessments and  “evidence-based methods.”

But NOTHING mad me crazier than the blanket assumption that all responsibility for student performance lay ENTIRELY with the teacher.

Today, Ravitch provides this excerpt from an analysis by one of her friends at the blog Curmudgucation.

“A few nuggets of Peter-Greene-Wisdom:

Here are the areas they believe “require more exploration”

Evidence-based solutions for writing instruction, including mastery of the “spectrum of skills encompassing narrative, descriptive, expository and/or persuasive writing models,” a “spectrum” that I’ll argue endlessly is not an actual thing, but is a fake construct created as a crutch for folks who don’t know how to teach or assess writing.

New proficiency metrics. Can we have “consistent measures of student progress and proficiency”? I’m saying “probably not.” “Can we use technology to support new, valid, efficient, and reliable writing performance measures that are helpful for writing coaching?” No, we can’t.

Educator tools and support. Gates-Zuck correctly notes that “effective” writing instruction requires time and resources, so the hope here is, I don’t know– the invention of a time machine? Hiring administrative assistants for all teachers? Of course not– they want to create “tools” aka more technology trying to accomplish what it’s not very good at accomplishing.

Always looking for ways to get better. Kind of like every decent teacher on the planet. I swear– so much of this rich amateur hour baloney could be helped by having these guys shadow an actual teacher all day every day for a full year. At the very least, it would save these endless versions of “I imagine we could move things more easily if we used round discs attached to an axel. I call it… The Wheeble!”

They want your ideas about “Measuring and Improving Executive Function,” which Peter says should creep you out. It creeps me out!

This is personalized [sic] learning at its worst– a kind of Big Brother on Steroids attempt to take over the minds, hearts, and lives of children for God-knows-what nefarious schemes. Only two things make me feel just the slightest bit better about this.

First of all, I’m not sure that Gates-Zuck are evil mad scientist types, cackling wickedly in their darkened laboratory. I’m more inclined to see them as feckless-but-rich-and-powerful computer nerds, who still believe that education is just an engineering problem that can be solved by properly designed sufficiently powered software. They’re technocrats who think a bigger, better machine is the best way to fix human beings.

Second of all– well, wait a minute. The two guys who have bombarded education with enough money to make a small island and who do not have a single clear-cut success to point to– these guys think they’ve got it figured out this time? They have never yet figured out how to better educate the full range of ordinary students (nor ever figured out what “better educate” means) now think they can unlock the formula for better educating students with larger challenges?

This is like going to a circus and the announcer hollers that Evel Von Wheeble is going to jump his motorcycle over fifty buses, and you get very excited until you read the program and see that Von Wheeble previously attempted to jump over ten, twenty and twenty-five buses– and he failed every time.”

Who is David Crump and what is HumanityRenewed?

First, a bit about my life experience and educational background.

I finished high school in Seattle, WA where my father eventually retired after 23 years in the U.S. Army. I had long dreamed of becoming a research biologist, so I enrolled in the University of Montana (Missoula) in the hope that I might work with one of my childhood heroes, Dr. John Craighead.

Many of my youthful dreams were realized in those years, and I eventually graduated with a B.S degree in Wildlife Biology (’76).  My time in Missoula became a fertile field for my young Christian faith, largely through the influence of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship and my staff-leader, Marv

Anderson.  It was also where I met my wife, Terry.

 

It occurred to me that, while I was busy fulfilling my own plans for my life, I had never asked the Lord Jesus what He might want to do with me.

To make a long story short, I eventually sensed that Christ was calling me into Christian ministry.  After graduation, I joined Inter-Varsity staff and moved to Salt Lake City, UT.  Terry and I lived there for 4 years as I helped to develop communities of Christian students at the University of Utah and Brigham Young University.

In 1981 I began to study for my M.Div. degree (’85) at Regent College  in Vancouver, B.C., Canada. Living just south of the border in Blaine, WA, I commuted to my classes, became deeply involved in a local church, and developed lifetime friendships with several families that Terry and I continue to visit whenever we can.

As a life-long student and habitual bookworm, I believed the Lord was calling me to pursue doctoral work overseas.  God paved the way for my growing family to move to Aberdeen, Scotland where I completed my Ph.D. (’88) in New Testament at King’s College, University of Aberdeen. There it was a privilege for me to study with a man I greatly admired, Prof. I. H. Marshall.

While living in Scotland, I continued to explore ministry opportunities by preaching in local churches, volunteering for pastoral visitation in my local parish, and speaking at Inter-Varsity conferences throughout the country.

Much to my surprise, the Christian Reformed Church  we had attended years before in Salt Lake City, asked me to join their pastoral staff.  Eventually, I would become the pastor of this church (’88-’97), which would rename itself Mountain Springs Community Church.

In 1997 I was offered a teaching position in the Religion Department at Calvin College, a private liberal arts school in Grand Rapids, where I taught New Testament and Biblical Theology for 18 years.

Now retired,  I am enjoying my life in NW Montana where the Lord has blessed us with a log cabin in the woods.  I continue to write and research, while indulging my passions for falconry and riding my custom Harley-Davidson chopper as fast as the speed limit allows.

Why is my blog called HumanityRenewed?

As a Christian, I believe that all human beings — regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, religion, nationality, or skin color —  are created as the Image of God.

As a follower of Jesus Christ, I believe that the life, death, resurrection and exaltation of Jesus of Nazareth reveals, for all who are willing to watch, listen and learn, God’s original intentions for humanity: to live in intimacy and obedience with our Creator; to worship him and to fulfill his purposes for us as unique bearers of the Divine Image.

It is impossible for us to realize God’s plan for our existence apart from Jesus Christ. In Christ my humanity is redeemed, renewed and enabled to help others discover the renewing power of Jesus for themselves.