Sitting in my little cozy chair with soft, cool breezes wafting all around me and so very, very grateful for this moment. God’s love and grace washed over me in unexpected moments today–

grateful for His leadership in my life. It was not necessarily what I would have given to me, but the results are oh so much better. How good He is, how much He wants to bring us to freedom and joy and a heart that values the eternal.

grateful that my children are, for the moment, walking with God.

grateful that He didn’t make their lives easy, but that He used the difficulties in their lives to make them strong.

grateful that I get to teach and speak and study His word. Can’t wait for this weekend–face to face with godly women, sharing in ideals and dreams and faith and Him over tea and food and candlelight and flowers and with great friends I have not seen for a while, but who have made my life rich.

Must off to finish the notebook and deadlines of other sorts, but wanted to share some great articles I have read where science validates what we know God designed us to do. Enjoy!

Motherly love does breed confidence

The Medium Is the Medium

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: July 8, 2010

Then the researchers, led by Richard Allington of the University of
Tennessee, looked at those students’ test scores. They found that the
students who brought the books home had significantly higher reading
scores than other students. These students were less affected by the
“summer slide” — the decline that especially afflicts lower-income
students during the vacation months. In fact, just having those 12
books seemed to have as much positive effect as attending summer
school.

This study, along with many others, illustrates the tremendous power of books. We already knew, from research in 27 countries,
that kids who grow up in a home with 500 books stay in school longer
and do better. This new study suggests that introducing books into
homes that may not have them also produces significant educational
gains.

Recently, Internet mavens got some bad news. Jacob Vigdor and Helen Ladd of Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy examined computer use
among a half-million 5th through 8th graders in North Carolina. They
found that the spread of home computers and high-speed Internet access
was associated with significant declines in math and reading scores.

This study, following up on others, finds that broadband access is not
necessarily good for kids and may be harmful to their academic
performance. And this study used data from 2000 to 2005 before Twitter
and Facebook took off.

These two studies feed into the debate that is now surrounding Nicholas Carr’s book,
“The Shallows.” Carr argues that the Internet is leading to a
short-attention-span culture. He cites a pile of research showing that
the multidistraction, hyperlink world degrades people’s abilities to
engage in deep thought or serious contemplation.

Carr’s argument has been challenged. His critics point to evidence that
suggests that playing computer games and performing Internet searches
actually improves a person’s ability to process information and focus
attention. The Internet, they say, is a boon to schooling, not a
threat.

But there was one interesting observation made by a philanthropist who
gives books to disadvantaged kids. It’s not the physical presence of
the books that produces the biggest impact, she suggested. It’s the
change in the way the students see themselves as they build a home
library. They see themselves as readers, as members of a different
group.

The Internet-versus-books debate is conducted on the supposition that
the medium is the message. But sometimes the medium is just the medium.
What matters is the way people think about themselves while engaged in
the two activities. A person who becomes a citizen of the literary
world enters a hierarchical universe. There are classic works of
literature at the top and beach reading at the bottom.

A person enters this world as a novice, and slowly studies the works of
great writers and scholars. Readers immerse themselves in deep,
alternative worlds and hope to gain some lasting wisdom. Respect is
paid to the writers who transmit that wisdom.

A citizen of the Internet has a very different experience. The Internet
smashes hierarchy and is not marked by deference. Maybe it would be
different if it had been invented in Victorian England, but Internet
culture is set in contemporary America. Internet culture is
egalitarian. The young are more accomplished than the old. The new
media is supposedly savvier than the old media. The dominant activity
is free-wheeling, disrespectful, antiauthority disputation.

These different cultures foster different types of learning. The great
essayist Joseph Epstein once distinguished between being well informed,
being hip and being cultivated. The Internet helps you become well
informed — knowledgeable about current events, the latest controversies
and important trends. The Internet also helps you become hip — to learn
about what’s going on, as Epstein writes, “in those lively waters
outside the boring mainstream.”

But the literary world is still better at helping you become
cultivated, mastering significant things of lasting import. To learn
these sorts of things, you have to defer to greater minds than your
own. You have to take the time to immerse yourself in a great writer’s
world. You have to respect the authority of the teacher.

Right now, the literary world is better at encouraging this kind of
identity. The Internet culture may produce better conversationalists,
but the literary culture still produces better students.

It’s better at distinguishing the important from the unimportant, and making the important more prestigious.

Perhaps that will change. Already, more “old-fashioned” outposts are
opening up across the Web. It could be that the real debate will not be
books versus the Internet but how to build an Internet counterculture
that will better attract people to serious learning.

A great article on the importance of reading! Paying attention!