THE STANDARD READER
The Standard Reader Books in Brief The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn by Diane Ravitch (Knopf, 243pp., $24). Education historian Diane Ravitch laments the fact...
...In this how-to guide, Hugh Hewitt offers a succinct strategy for young Christians in their journey to become influential...
...Bryan gives us glimpses into his supposed masterpiece—including cut and altered scenes—as he gets at the real reason for writing...
...The Deity Next Door exists only in the mind of the author, as a metafictional springboard...
...As Hewitt puts it, "mere Christians" need to "get up from the ground, shake off the dust, and get back into the game...
...Sara Henary In, But Not Of: A Guide to Christian Ambition by Hugh Hewitt (Thomas Nelson, 208 pp., $17.99...
...The plot of his phantom novel revolves around the emergence of a modern deity named Blaine, who performs miracles, like Christ, but who also senses this messiah thing might not be his bag...
...Ravitch's work is an attempt to secure for children a sound education by educating the interested adult population...
...move to New York, not Fargo...
...Education historian Diane Ravitch laments the fact that the Department of Education, state boards, textbook publishers, and standardized testing companies do not defend free inquiry and broad exposure to books...
...Status matters...
...form relations with powerful people...
...So how might young Christians be wise as serpents and harmless as doves in today's world...
...Mike Bryan's new book is an afterword to his novel The Deity Next Door, which broke "three records on the New York Times fiction list...
...You shouldn't try to remember this book...
...Bryan came away still a skeptic with a respect for Christianity...
...Her recommended history textbooks and appendix of classic works for students serve as excellent guidelines for those concerned with intellectually honest accounts of history as well as literature that is sometimes religious, uplifting, atrocious, curious, or sinister...
...But the worm has burrowed deeper in the decade separating the two books...
...As a result of such conscientious pruning, students encounter an uncomplicated, sterilized version of history—free of imperial conquests, religious wars, and other disturbing realities...
...In talking about his masterpiece, Bryan is really meditating on the nature of belief in our present dispensation...
...The attacks on America on September 11—and the failure of many to confront the antiWest, anti-Christian hatred unveiled in those attacks—make clear that Christians need to be worrying about more than what color roses should adorn the chapel...
...In Chapter and Verse, he recounted his time spent at the fundamentalist Criswell College...
...Jeremy Lott...
...In English class, students can rest assured they will rarely be traumatized by bias in literature or textbook images of women preparing meals...
...The author's agony is much more interesting than his character's...
...Work hard, master your talents, order your finances, keep your work in perspective, choose a church, ask questions, refuse to be easily offended, and practice encouragement...
...His ideas include assembling the right credentials: Go to Yale, not Bob Jones...
...In, But Not Of also delivers a simple, stark message: Christians are called to defend the Church, and that means playing politics...
...Know where you came from, where you want to go, and who can help you get there...
...Most important, cultivate the virtue of humility...
...Melissa Seckora The Afterword by Mike Bryan (Pantheon, 195 pp., $16...
...become knowledgeable about history and current events...
...Turns out The Afterword actually is a follow-up to a previous work, Chapter and Verse: A Skeptic Revisits Christianity, which was published in the early 1990s...
...In an effort to preempt criticism from moral purists on the right and the politically correct on the left, the education establishment has adopted self-censorship: Anything remotely controversial or offensive is quietly omitted from tests and books, never to challenge the impressionable minds of American schoolchildren...
Vol. 8 • June 2003 • No. 37
