Gary Thomas Quotes

One of the most significant consequences of the proliferation of tests over the last decades of the 20th century and the first of the 21th has been this tendency of assessment to direct the curriculum. Like a huge magnet, assessment drags curriculum toward it. It should, of course, even if we accept the need for tests, be the other way round: the curriculum should be shaped independent of any consideration of tests: tests should be constructed and administered in another space, both literally and metaphorically, hermetically sealed not only form the teacher’s gaze but also – and even more importantly – from the teacher’s consideration. In practice, though, this never happens. It is inevitable that if you decide regularly to test children's performance on the curriculum, and if, furthermore, you make teacher’s careers and school’s futures depend on the result, the tests will very quickly come to dominate what is taught. Not only the content, but also the style and manner of the teaching will be influenced by the tests. Teaching will be about getting the right answer, irrespective of understanding.

Aside from the straightforwardly visible curriculum, there is the hidden curriculum. This exists in the wider set of beliefs and values pupils acquire because of the way that a school is run and its teaching organized. It is about the behaviour of the teachers, the textbooks chosen, the school rules.

Bruner discusses the need for teachers to understand that children should want to study for study's own sake, for learnings's sake, not for the sake of good grades or examination success. The curriculum should, in other words, be interesting. (Yes, it sounds too obvious even to say, but sometimes the emphasis on content has trumped all other considerations, including that of making learning interesting.)

We learn to love imperfect people by serving them out of reverence for a perfect God...

We are most happy when we are most focused on serving God together.

What is more likely to lead to true marital satisfaction-getting a fallen spouse to change his or her ways, or changing your own focus so that you draw affirmation from a God who never disappoints, never turns you away?

If we accept that the love of praise is a sin, that the lust to be known and appreciated by others is not just a fool's errand...but perhaps evidence of a heart focused on the wrong things, our marriages will be transformed.

Marriage isn't about rights as much as it is about revelation.