Friday, March 28, 2014

SDA base packages finally in pre-pub on Logos software

https://www.logos.com/sda?utm_source=mediakit&utm_medium=extwebads&utm_content=sdabp&utm_campaign=seventhdayadventist2014q1

Three new SDA base packages are now available for pre-pub preordering:

www.logos.com/SDAbp

You can pre-order at a 15% pre-pub discount!
Dynamic pricing in effect, so you won't have to double pay for what you already own.

enjoy!

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis Set – Revised Edition – Coming Soon!

see here: http://bbhchurchconnection.wordpress.com/2014/03/25/new-international-dictionary-of-new-testament-theology-and-exegesis-set-revised-edition-coming-soon/
NIDNTTE

Monday, March 24, 2014

Archaeology Confirms 50 Real People in the Bible by Lawrence Mykytiuk

50 People in the Bible Confirmed Archaeologically

A web-exclusive supplement to Lawrence Mykytiuk's “Archaeology Confirms 50 Real People in the Bible” feature in the March/April 2014 issue of BAR

Lawrence Mykytiuk • 03/03/2014

Sargon II, one of fifty Hebrew Bible figures identified in the archaeological record.

In “Archaeology Confirms 50 Real People in the Bible,” in the March/April 2014 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Purdue University scholar Lawrence Mykytiuk lists 50 figures from the Hebrew Bible that have been confirmed archaeologically. The 50-person chart in BAR includes Israelite kings and Mesopotamian monarchs as well as lesser-known figures. Mykytiuk writes that “at least 50 people mentioned in the Bible have been identified in the archaeological record. Their names appear in inscriptions written during the period described by the Bible and in most instances during or quite close to the lifetime of the person identified.” The extensive Biblical and archaeological documentation supporting the BAR study is published here in a web-exclusive collection of endnotes detailing the Biblical references and inscriptions referring to each of the 50 figures.

Guide to the Endnotes

50 Bible People Confirmed in Authentic Inscriptions Chart

50 Figures: The Biblical and Archaeological Evidence

“Almost Real” Box on p. 50: The Biblical and Archaeological Evidence

Symbols & Abbreviations

Date Sources

the rest can be read here: http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/people-cultures-in-the-bible/people-in-the-bible/50-people-in-the-bible-confirmed-archaeologically/#note05r

Saturday, March 22, 2014

Uncovered in Jerusalem, 9 tiny unopened Dead Sea Scrolls - By Ilan Ben Zion

found http://www.timesofisrael.com/nine-tiny-new-dead-sea-scrolls-come-to-light/

Researcher finds tantalizing tefillin parchments from Second Temple era, overlooked for decades and unread for 2,000 years

By Ilan Ben Zion March 12, 2014, 1:34 pm

An unrolled tefillin parchment from Qumran. 4Q135, Plate 212, Frag 2 (photo credit: Shai Halevi via Israel Antiquities Authority)

They’re not much larger than lentils, but size doesn’t minimize the potential significance of nine newfound Dead Sea Scrolls that have lain unopened for the better part of six decades.

An Israeli scholar turned up the previously unexamined parchments, which had escaped the notice of academics and archaeologists as they focused on their other extraordinary finds in the 1950s. Once opened, the minuscule phylactery parchments from Qumran, while unlikely to yield any shattering historic, linguistic or religious breakthroughs, could shed new light on the religious practices of Second Temple Judaism.

The Israel Antiquities Authority has been tasked with unraveling and preserving the new discoveries — an acutely sensitive process and one which the IAA says it will conduct painstakingly, and only after conducting considerable preparatory research.

Phylacteries, known in Judaism by the Hebrew term tefillin, are pairs of leather cases containing biblical passages from the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy. One case is bound by leather thongs to the head and one to the arm during morning prayers, as prescribed by rabbinic interpretation of the Bible. The case worn on the head contains four scrolls in individual compartments, while the arm phylactery holds one scroll.

The interior of the Shrine of the book, the home of the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Israel Museum. (photo credit: Flash90)

At least two dozen tefillin scroll fragments were known to have been found during excavations of the limestone caves overlooking the Dead Sea at Qumran in the 1950s (several phylactery boxes and straps were unearthed as well). They were among the world-famous cache of thousands of scrolls and scroll fragments containing biblical and sectarian texts from the Second Temple period. Since their discovery, the Qumran scrolls have been housed at the Israel Museum, and scholars have pored over the ancient documents and opened a window into ancient Jewish theology.

But these nine latest tiny scrolls had been overlooked — until now.

Dr. Yonatan Adler, a lecturer at Ariel University and a post-doctoral researcher on Qumran tefillin at Hebrew University, was searching through the Israel Antiquities Authority’s climate-controlled storerooms in the Har Hotzvim neighborhood of Jerusalem in May 2013. There he found a phylactery case from Qumran among the organic artifacts stored in climate-controlled warehouses. Suspecting the case could contain a heretofore undocumented scroll, he had it scanned by an CT at Shaare Zedek Hospital. The analysis suggested there might indeed be an unseen parchment inside.

While that analysis has yet to be confirmed, Adler was spurred on by the discovery, and in December visited the Dead Sea Scroll labs at the Israel Museum. There he found two tiny scrolls inside the compartments of a tefillin case that had been documented but then put aside some time after 1952. The scrolls were never photographed or examined, and so have remained bound inside the leather box for roughly 2,000 years.

Then, just last month, Adler told The Times of Israel he “found a number of fragments of tefillin cases from Qumran Cave 4, together with seven rolled-up tefillin slips” which had never been opened.

Dr. Yonatan Adler of Ariel University (photo credit: Devorah Adler)

“Either they didn’t realize that these were also scrolls, or they didn’t know how to open them,” Pnina Shor, curator and head of the IAA’s Dead Sea Scrolls Projects, explained.

Józef Tadeusz Milik, the most prolific publisher of the scrolls after their discovery last century, reported on the Cave 4 tefillin case finds but he “didn’t say why they didn’t open them, [and] he also didn’t say they were scrolls,” even though the parchments were identified as part of tefillin assemblage, she said.

Shor and her team have managed the painstaking task of preserving and maintaining the thousands of scroll fragments found in the Judean Desert caves, removing tehm from the glass cases in which they were entombed in the 1950s, treating them and storing them on acid-free boards in a climate-controlled vault. As part of an overall digitization project of the scrolls, each minute fragment is imaged with multi-spectral imaging. Each scroll fragment is imaged at 56 different exposures — 28 per side (as some scrolls have writing on both) — in 12 different wavelengths ranging as far as near infrared. The team will be tasked with a similar mission with the new scrolls once they’ve been opened.

Dead Sea Scroll expert Eibert Tigchelaar of the University of Leuven in Belgium said that the fact that these nine scrolls went undetected for so long should not come as a surprise, considering the scrolls’ complicated administrative history (which includes a change in sovereignty in 1967). ”Things physically remained somewhere, but administratively were forgotten,” Tigchelaar said.

Moreover, “confronted with 10,000 or more fragments from Cave 4, of which the last were only published a few years ago, there was little attention [paid] to those tefillin that might not be opened at all,” he said.

None of the phylacteries has been radiocarbon dated, but the cache of scrolls and religious objects from the caves at Qumran date from the second and first centuries BCE and first century CE — a critical time in the development of Judaism and early Christianity.

Like many of the finds at Qumran, some of the tefillin slips that have previously been opened have yielded astonishing differences from the standard Rabbinic text known as the Masoretic.

“Some tefillin use a spelling very close to the traditional one, [but] there are several tefillin that use an extreme form of divergent spelling that also occurs in many other scrolls,” such as additional letters in possessive suffixes, Tigchelaar said.

Seven recently rediscovered unopened tefillin scrolls from Qumran. (photo credit: Shai Halevi via Israel Antiquities Authority)

Professor Lawrence Schiffman, a vice provost at Yeshiva University and expert on Second Temple Judaism, explained that some of the tefillin texts from Qumran were identical to those used today, but others have the same text with additional passages, extended to include the Ten Commandments. He also pointed out that it would be interesting to see the order in which the scrolls were placed inside the tefillin compartments — a practice debated by rabbis for centuries.

“From my point of view, the most significant thing about all of this is that they actually have tefillin from 2,100 and plus years ago,” Schiffman said of the Dead Sea Scrolls generally. The continuity of phylactery traditions — over the centuries and across the various sects that comprised Second Temple Jewry — was something he found remarkable.

“We have to be prepared for surprises,” Professor Hindy Najman of Yale University said, of the new discoveries. “On the one hand there’s tremendous continuity between what we have found among the Dead Sea Scrolls — liturgically, ritually and textually — and contemporaneous and later forms of Judaism. But there’s also tremendous possibility for variegated practices and a complex constellation of different practices, different influences, different ways of thinking about tefillin.”

Tefillin cases from Qumran (photo credit: Clara Amit via Israel Antiquities Authority)

Schiffman, however, said he doesn’t expect any “bombshells” emerging from the new scrolls that will “overturn the concepts that we have.”

“Given the amount of research that’s been done… important discoveries like this don’t overturn previous ideas,” he said. “We’re going to be able to augment what we know about the tefillin already.”

Tigchelaar concurred, saying that the Dead Sea Scrolls in general, and these tefillin in particular, are important not because they would shed light on one particular sect during the Second Temple Era, but because they demonstrate that rabbinic practices had deeper roots.

“Whether one wants to emphasize the continuity, or the differences, is another thing,” he said.

Shor will be in charge of the project of meticulously unraveling the newfound scrolls and ensuring their preservation.

“We’re going to do it slowly, but we’ll first consult with all of our experts about how to go about this,” she said, reluctant to say when the process would commence. “We need to do a lot of research before we start doing this.”

A single tefillin scroll found in phylacteries at Qumran. (photo credit: Shai Halevi via Israel Antiquities Authority)

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Hebrew Poetry Bibliographies by F.W. Dobbs-Allsopp, Elaine T. James

from http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195393361/obo-9780195393361-0083.xml

Introduction

The poetry of the Hebrew Bible makes up a central part of the scriptural heritage of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and has been a foundational source for poetry throughout history, and especially for later traditions of Hebrew verse. Roughly a third of the Hebrew Bible is verse. This includes the books of Job, Proverbs, and Psalms, and the several festival songs embedded in prose texts (Exodus 15, Deuteronomy 32, Judges 5, 2 Samuel 22); Lamentations and Song of Songs; and other poems or fragments embedded within blocks of prose (e.g., Genesis 4:23–24). These were largely recognized as verse early on in the tradition; much later, Robert Lowth’s Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews (Lowth 1995b, cited under Robert Lowth) showed that much of the Latter Prophets are also verse. Briefly defined, biblical Hebrew poetry is a nonmetrical form of verse characterized above all by verbal inventiveness, a discernible poetic diction and texture, and concision. This particularly lean style is characterized by short lines, consisting of only two to six words per line, lending the impression of a heightened, dense form of discourse, achieved by bringing semantically important words together. As with other bodies of poetry, it routinely involves higher concentrations of words and phrases with rare meanings or usages, bold ellipses, sudden transitions, and other stylistic complexity. As poetry, it demands to be read within the larger discipline of literary studies.

General Overviews

There are a plethora of good, recent short treatments of biblical poetry, though many of the more substantive surveys are now several decades old. Alonso Schökel 1988 was a pioneering work, and Alonso Schökel’s treatment of the creative aspects of Hebrew poetry merits further engagement. Perhaps most notable among these general treatments are Kugel 1998 (originally published in 1981; see Parallelism) and Alter 1985, both of which monographs set the table for the contemporary discussion. In quite a different vein, although written at about the same time, O’Connor 1997 (originally published in 1980) presents a minute syntactic description of Hebrew poetry that has been met with mixed reviews, in part due to its demanding nature, though for the patient reader, the book contains many insights. Recent short introductory survey articles, such as Berlin 1996 and Dobbs-Allsopp 2009, offer concise evaluations of the current state of the conversation. Geller 1993, additionally, is an excellent resource. Watson 2005 (originally published in 1984) offers a catalogue of the techniques of biblical Hebrew poetry that is unmatched. The best starting point for beginners (and particularly students) is the introductory volume Petersen and Richards 1992. Fokkelman 2001 is also useful, although heavily indebted to structuralist analysis.

Alonso Schökel, Luis. A Manual of Hebrew Poetics. Translated by Adrian Graffy. Subsidia Biblica 11. Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1988.
This volume, adapted from a doctoral dissertation initially published in 1963 (Estudios de poética hebrea), pioneers a stylistic approach to Hebrew poetry and remains a significant contribution to biblical poetics. Emphasizes the need for sensitivity to and appreciation for poetic meaning: “Less classification is needed, and more analysis of style” (57). His chapters “Images” and “Figures of Speech” are particularly rich.
Alter, Robert. The Art of Biblical Poetry. New York: Basic Books, 1985.
Alter’s engagement with biblical poetry describes basic features and techniques, and also offers sensitive and creative readings of specific texts in his characteristically lucid style. He notes techniques at the micro-level (specification and heightening) as well as the macro-level (incipient narrative and structures of intensification). As these categories suggest, Alter describes some of the complex dynamics in the structures of parallelism.
Berlin, Adele. “Introduction to Hebrew Poetry” In The New Interpreter’s Bible. Vol. 4. Edited by Robert Doran, Carol A. Newsom, J. Clinton McCann, Adele Berlin, et al., 301–314. Nashville: Abingdon, 1996.
Berlin’s succinct article is a good starting place for the state of the discussion, as she offers a clear outline of scholarly history and the forms and features of biblical Hebrew poetry.
Dobbs-Allsopp, F. W. “Poetry, Hebrew.” In The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. Vol. 4, Me-R. Edited by Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, 550–558. Nashville: Abingdon, 2009.
This article outlines the state of the field of poetry studies, drawing on the history of the discussion in biblical studies, as well as in related fields (such as lyric studies).
Fokkelman, J. P. Reading Biblical Poetry: An Introductory Guide. Translated by Ineke Smit. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001.
Conceived as a companion volume to his Reading Biblical Narrative (1999); Fokkelman’s approach to poetry is characteristically attentive to detail and committed to structural and numerical analysis.
Geller, Stephen A. “Hebrew Prosody and Poetics: Biblical.” In The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Edited by Alex Preminger and T. V. F. Brogan, 509–511. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.
A brief, insightful, and accessible overview of biblical poetry and its informing prosody. The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (NPEPP) in general is a fabulous resource, not only on biblical Hebrew poetics and the like but for any topic related to poetry and poetics—the NPEPP offers the field’s consensus opinion on all such topics.
O’Connor, M. Hebrew Verse Structure. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1997.
O’Connor’s formidable analysis of the line in Hebrew verse, originally published in 1980, critiques the “standard description” of verse since Lowth, which focuses on the twofold analysis of contiguous lines (parallelism) and the lines themselves (meter). The key achievements of the book are the syntactic description of the line and its rich insights drawn from a broad knowledge of comparative poetics and linguistics.
Petersen, David L., and Kent Harold Richards. Interpreting Hebrew Poetry. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992.
This volume is ideal for beginners to Hebrew poetry, as it carefully and clearly delineates terminology and offers ample illustrations as well as modeling readings of particular poems. Perhaps the best contribution is in setting the discussion explicitly within the larger literary study of poetry, including poetry theory.
Watson, Wilfred G. E. Classical Hebrew Poetry: A Guide to its Techniques. Rev. ed. London: T&T Clark, 2005.
This volume, originally published in 1984, along with the more recent Traditional Techniques in Classical Hebrew Verse (Watson 1994, cited under Ugarit) together offer a compendious resource of poetic techniques, considered in light of comparative (especially Ugaritic and Akkadian) texts. A valuable reference work.

LAST MODIFIED: 03/23/2012

DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780195393361-0083

Saturday, March 8, 2014

A teacher for life...

Why would a teacher of a primary school since 1979, located in the isolated, mountainous and impoverished village of Dayadong in South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, made the headlines of his country? For the simple fact that he puts his students first in his life, even above his very own interests.

from http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2013-05/07/content_16482380.htm
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/life/2013-05/07/content_16482067.htm

A teacher for life

Updated: 2013-05-07 07:11

By Li Yang (China Daily)

Pan Shanji fills the students' bowls with rice during lunch. Apart from teaching, Pan also cooks lunch for the students every day. Photos by Deng Keyi / for China Daily

Pan Shanji teaches at Dayandong education point in Guzhai Mulam ethnic town in Liucheng of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

Pan Shanji was the first high school graduate from the remote Dayandong village, and has spent the past 34 years as a committed educator, passing on his knowledge to children who have few other opportunities for schooling. Li Yang reports from Liucheng county, the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

Pan Shanji has taught about 200 students over his 34-year teaching career, and although not one of them made it to college, he is very proud of all of them.

"My students are the first batch of people from three local villages who have dared to leave the mountains to look for jobs," Pan, 53, says.

Pan, a member of the Mulam ethnic group, is the only teacher for 12 students aged from 6 to 9 years old at the education point in the mountainous Dayandong village in Guzhai Mulam ethnic group town in Liucheng county, the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region. He teaches Chinese, math, sports, painting and music.

Education point refers to the grassroots education unit in villages.

The three villages, with about 70 families and 300 residents, are the most remote in Guzhai town. In the 1940s, their ancestors fled to the mountains to avoid the approaching Japanese invasion and settled there. The average annual income per family is less than 1,000 yuan ($159). They cultivate small patches of farmland in valleys and live a self-sufficient life.

Pan is the first high school graduate in Dayandong village, which makes him feel responsible for helping the illiterate villagers.

"I have four younger sisters who gave up their only chance of schooling for me. My father lost his chance to join the army because of illiteracy in the 1950s. He was so worried when he worked as a groom for a local production team in the 1960s because he could not even count. In the early 1970s, when he worked as temporary worker at local railway construction site, he often cried at night, silently, because he could not write home for three years and he was too shy to ask for help. So I tried my best at school."

Pan took corn and sweet potatoes with him to his high school in Luoya town where he was a boarder in 1977. He says his headmistress Mo Rongxuan encouraged his studies, telling him: "You are the student from the mountain. I hope you can focus all your energy on studying. Don't be distracted by other things."

The former village Party secretary convinced Pan to return to the mountains to teach after he graduated from high school.

But four years after Pan returned, the village Party secretary died, leaving his 8-year-old daughter and widow in miserable circumstances.

"I made up my mind that I must marry her (the daughter) when she grows up to take care of her. So I waited for that time and married her in 1988 when I was 28 years old, quite a late marriage age for men in the village."

His wife has been paralyzed by femoral head necrosis for 20 years. "We needed the money to take care of my sick father at that time. He died several years ago. Now my elderly mother is also ill in bed. My daughter and my son are very thoughtful. My older daughter works in Liuzhou after graduating from a vocational school. Her brother, now in junior middle school, has also decided to start working as soon as possible. I will try my best to take care of my wife. This is a promise I made to her when I married her," says Pan, beginning to get emotional.

"Let's talk about something happy." He changed the topic to his work. "When I hear the children say 'Good morning teacher' to me everyday, I forget all miseries of my life," he says, with a big smile on his face but with tears in his eyes.

Today, all of his 12 students are left-behind children. Their parents are former students of Pan's who now work in Guangdong as migrant workers.

Pan cooks the "free lunch" for the students at school every day, a project sponsored by the State that gives each student a 3-yuan lunch subsidy, making him more like a father than a teacher to the lonely kids.

Pan tries to inspire the students with awards, a pencil, a notebook or little snacks. "These children are very poor. I have to make up for their loss of family education and help them develop their character and sense of responsibility and teamwork," he says.

It takes the children an hour and a half to travel to school in the morning. Pan often returns home with them after school. To make sure they have enough strength to go home, Pan cooks porridge for them in the afternoon.

He refuses to be transferred to other schools, because the children in the three villages would have to go to the school in the center of town. It is too far to travel and too expensive for many of the children to board there. Pan says if he retires, some of these students will drop out of school.

"I never miss a class and will work here until the end of my life. This is a promise to my wife's father and my middle school headmaster. No soul deserves to be wasted."

In 2007, to avoid missing his classes and save money for his family, Pan treated his serious lumbar vertebrae hyperostosis with medicine, ignoring the doctor's advice to undergo an operation, resulting in serious damage to his right leg.

The interview is finished before noon. Pan hurriedly hobbled his way back home along the bumpy lane to feed his sick wife and mother.

Contact the writer at liyang@chinadaily.com.cn.

(China Daily 05/07/2013 page20)

Teacher in remote village cares for 12 students

Updated: 2012-09-07 16:26

( chinadaily.com.cn)

Teacher in remote village cares for 12 students

Pan Shanji, 52, teaches at a primary school in Dayandong village, in South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, Sept 6, 2012. Pan is the only teacher for the 12 students of the village, which lies in a mountainous area. Most of the young people have left town to make money. Pan has been a teacher since 1979. The school has only two grades since 2009, as students transfer out for further studies as they get older. [Photo/Xinhua]

Pan Shanji distributes books for students to read, Sept 5, 2012. [Photo/Xinhua]

Pan Shanji prepares lunch for students at Dayandong village, Guangxi province, Sept 6, 2012. [Photo/Xinhua]

Pan Shanji, a 52-year-old teacher at a remote village in Guangxi, cooks for students, Sept 6, 2012. [Photo/Xinhua]

Pan serves lunch, Sept 6, 2012. [Photo/Xinhua]

Pan takes students home after school, Sept 6, 2012. [Photo/Xinhua]

Friday, March 7, 2014

The disturbing transformation of kindergarten

found in http://tablet.olivesoftware.com/Olive/Tablet/GreenwichTime/SharedArticle.aspx?href=TGT%2F2014%2F02%2F23&id=Ar00907, March 07, 2014

WENDY LECKER

One of the most distressing characteristics of education reformers is that they are hyper-focused on how students perform, but they ignore how students learn. Nowhere is this misplaced emphasis more apparent, and more damaging, than in kindergarten.

A new University of Virginia study found that kindergarten changed in disturbing ways from 1999-2006. There was a marked decline in exposure to social studies, science, music, art and physical education and an increased emphasis on reading instruction. Teachers reported spending as much time on reading as all other subjects combined.

The time spent in child-selected activity dropped by more than one-third. Direct instruction and testing increased. Moreover, more teachers reported holding all children to the same standard.

Is this drastic shift in kindergarten the result of a transformation in the way children learn?

No. A 2011 nationwide study by the Gesell Institute for Child Development found that the ages at which children reach developmental milestones have not changed in 100 years.

For example, the average child cannot perceive an oblique line in a triangle until age 5 ½ . This skill is a prerequisite to recognizing, understanding and writing certain letters. The key to understanding concepts such as subtraction and addition is “number conservation.” A child may be able to count five objects separately but not understand that together they make the number five. The average child does not conserve enough numbers to understand subtraction and addition until 5 ½ or 6.

If we teach reading, writing, subtraction and addition before children are ready, they might memorize these skills, but will they will not learn or understand them. And it will not help their achievement later on.

Child development experts understand that children must learn what their brains are ready to absorb. Kindergarten is supposed to set the stage for learning academic content when they are older.

Play is essential in kindergarten. Through play, children build literacy skills they need to be successful readers. By speaking to each other in socio-dramatic play, children use the language they heard adults read to them or say. This process enables children to find the meaning in those words.

There is a wide range of acceptable developmental levels in kindergarten; so a fluid classroom enables teachers to observe where each child is and adjust the curriculum accordingly.

Two major studies confirmed the value of play vs. teaching reading skills to young children. Both compared children who learned to read at 5 with those who learned at 7 and spent their early years in play-based activities. Those who read at 5 had no advantage. Those who learned to read later had better comprehension by age 11, because their early play experiences improved their language development.

Yet current educational policy banishes play in favor of direct instruction of inappropriate academic content and testing; practices that are ineffective for young children.

The No Child Left Behind Law played a major role in changing kindergarten. Upper-grade curricula were pushed down in a mistaken belief that by learning reading skills earlier, children would fare better on standardized tests. Subjects not tested by NCLB were deemphasized. Lawmakers insisted that standardized tests assess reading at earlier ages, even though standardized tests are invalid for children under 8.

These changes have the harshest effect on our most vulnerable children. The UVA study found that in schools with the highest percentage of children of color and children eligible for free-and-reduced-priced lunch, teachers had the most demanding expectations for student performance.

To make matters worse, the drafters of the Common Core ignored the research on child development. In 2010, 500 child development experts warned the drafters that the standards called for exactly the kind of damaging practices that inhibit learning: direct instruction, inappropriate academic content and testing.

These warnings went unheeded.

Consequently, the Common Core exacerbates the developmentally inappropriate practices on the rise since NCLB. Teachers report having to post the standards in the room before every scripted lesson, as if 5-year-olds can read or care what they say. They time children adding and subtracting, and train them to ask formulaic questions about an “author’s message.” All children are trained in the exact same skill at the same time. One teacher lamented that “there is no more time for play.” Another wrote “these so-called educational leaders have no idea how children learn.”

It may satisfy politicians to see children perform inappropriately difficult tasks like trained circus animals. However, if we want our youngest to actually learn, we will demand the return of developmentally appropriate kindergarten.

Wendy Lecker is a columnist for Hearst Connecticut Media Group and is senior attorney for the Campaign for Fiscal Equity project at the Education Law Center.