Mikes

Good advice but

Reviewed: 09-17-24

mostly good advice, but I get tired of these types of books inserting a neo Darwinian evolutionary narrative into their book. I would skip the book if I knew that that was going to be included. If they can't get the essentials correct because they're too lazy to study themselves and recognize a correct worldview, then why would they be a trusted to get other things right. I get so tired of these lazy caveman type stories. check out what early man was accomplishing and the structures they built. About everyone 4,000 years ago started building massive edifices and everyone and their mother started writing.

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Too many hypotheticals, not enough how tos for us boots on the ground

Reviewed: 05-05-24

This books main format is the bullet point. There are a thousand lists in this book. This of course can be useful, especially as this book is good as a reference. However, they all start to blur together as the abstracts pile high, but the real life specifics and true examples are scant, even in the few case studies at the end. I read the whole book, but still haven't found answers to my own educational situation or my district's.

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Helpful and fascinating

Reviewed: 07-26-23

It was very meaningful having these Christian worldviews compared and contrasted. I also appreciated the overall respectful tone of the book. I myself can get very fired up on such important topics, and I really appreciated the friendly tone of the writers, but also their frankness in their disagreements at points. I learned a fair amount and am now able to see the ideas much more clearly.

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1 person found this helpful

Very impressed

Reviewed: 04-05-23

This helped me to get to know more of the facts about DeSantis career. I'm much more able to to see who he's been as a values first leader. I also am impressed by how ethical he's been by not taking benefits from his positions that he could have, and impressed by his ability to make a difference each step of the way.

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2 people found this helpful

Encouraging Leadership

Reviewed: 03-11-23

I'm very encouraged by his conviction inspired action. Since reading it, I have been looking to find out more and more about the good work he has done. He follows his convictions and rather than just talking about the right thing, he does the right thing. The more I find out the more I'm impressed. This book has made me reflect on my own life and has inspired me to do more, and to want to have a good effect in our world.

DeSantis is not the son of wealth. He's earned his education and his stripes with hard work, service, going door to door, and sleeping on couches! He's done an incredible job of getting results against gross wacky leftists, and having a safe, free, and successful state. He's incredibly ethical, not taking benefits in Congress that he felt were corrupt.

DeSantis character and family values are in stark contrast to Trump who has been a serial philanderer (he bragged to Howard Stern that he's been with almost 200 women, and obviously the most recent thing where Trump was cheating on his wife with an adult film star and covered it up), tells lies frequently, slanders others continually, has participated in lots of unethical business practices, the January 6th fiasco, etc. And though Trump seems to pander to Christian voters, he has stated clearly that he does follow or practice Christianity in his own life.

DeSantis carries none of that baggage and seems to be a man of true values, heart and soul, intelligence, and action. I'm amazed by his character and tenacity, and he has my enthusiastic support.

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1 person found this helpful

"Just so" evolution stories

Reviewed: 01-22-23

Besides being over bloated with stories, there's one story that gets extraordinarily tiresome, which is the evolution story thrown in through out. It's completely pointless other than to pad his religious view of the world. The Neo Darwinian evolution process via mutations is a defunct idea, incapable of producing proteins, much less parts of our brain.

I'm putting this slow moving caveman habits book, and I'm looking for a quicker more efficient human habits book.

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Heavy on superlatives, light on data

Reviewed: 01-19-23

When a book proclaims that it should be a must read in all schools, it really should be better put together than this.

Much of the book is making sweeping statements that aren't backed by a statistic, percentage, or helpful research. Instead it zooms into the realm of always, never, every, all, etc when it should be measured, conditioned, and qualified. Like where it says, "Because to Billy, any change equals disaster" and "Billy can't distinguish between good transitions and bad and so all are bad." Surely not ANY change or transition. What type of trauma? What type of changes? What percentage of students? What type of conditions?

In this unqualified unspecified manner, educators can easily pass up a measured response, and become the proverbial helicopter parents that are on way too high alert.

The biggest danger I see in this over compensation is that, packaged as helping and loving Billy, there is a Trojan horse that leads to enabling these students to traumatize and bully other students. Experiencing trauma shouldn't excuse Billy becoming a bully.

The book also seems to glorify teachers bearing the brunt of these students' anger and frustration. While love and compassion should be the first tools in a teachers toolbox, it should not come at the expense of what are acceptable behavior expectations, or a teacher's ability to enforce said rules. These rules are for EVERYONE'S benefit, and for the safety of staff and students in every situation. A teacher does no one a favor by being a punching bag. We need to be examples for students. I don't think students need to take abuse. Neither should teachers. No abuse should be given or taken by any party ever.

At one point, she says it's all about the students. I disagree. I think every single person at school should be valued. Students should be taught to value every person in the building.

Students expect us to protect them, and in the data I have collected, which shows it is their number one concern in the classroom and school, for it to be quiet, respectful, civil, and not chaotic, I consider their number one request as a mandate. I enforce rules to keep kids safe.

This book seems to allow Billy to traumatize and bully others. That doesn't help Billy or anyone else. Yes to love, yes to compassion, but also yes to enforcing rules meant for the safety and well being of everyone. Billy especially needs this kind of structure if it doesn't exist elsewhere.

There are good things that can be gleaned from this book I suppose, but read with caution.

A good educator should have as many tools in their toolbox that fit into a loving and ethical system. We should not be trying to go "beyond consequences". There's no such thing. Everything in the world carries consequences. It's important to show students these important life facts.

As far as reaching Billies, I would say yes to spending more time, effort, energy, care, money, resources, etc on students who have experienced trauma and need help. We should teach them meta cognitive skills, have classes that actually spend time on social emotional learning, rather than being an after thought and pushed aside for the "important" curriculum. We should give them our wrapped attention.

But none of that should not at all be at the expense of the safety and well being of and students or staff.

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In tears

Reviewed: 12-28-22

I loved hearing every single word of this. Levar is a wonderful reader. I'm a white man, and MLK is my personal hero and I want to follow in his footsteps of being used by God to show love in this world. I pray for the same boldness and deep spirit that MLK had. So thankful for him.

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Pathetic negative reviews

Reviewed: 12-11-22

This was a great overview of many complex topics. I'm not certain that I agree with every single point, but overall, this is a good representation of creationism and how bankrupt evolution is.

What prompted me to write is the swath of negative reviewers--particularly the one who wrote his own little booklet here! What's annoying is that none of them gave any real indication of reading this book. They just proceed straight into their old tired clap trap.

If you have a problem with the book, why don't you be specific?

For me, I wasn't the biggest fan of the inclusion of some of the supernatural stories at the end, like being saved from a car crash. I also thought the reasons for not believing in the big bang were interesting, and I hadn't heard them before. Particularly the assertion that the background radiation is just the temperature of the universe based on stars and galaxies.

There. Notice how I was particular--as if I actually read the book?! I could go on about those particulars above, but what you won't see me do is pull out some beads and start doing some religious chanting (sorry, that's the protestant in me speaking), which is what his little story time of all the basics of evolutionary bedtime stories. The formation of an eye. Thinking that copying sections of DNA could result in gaining many many new co-opted proteins--no! Going through the evolutionary timeline. And then of course invoking Dawkins!

I've read Dawkins, and I wasn't impressed. He's repetitive, aggressive, and close minded. He greatly misrepresents those who disagree with him, and his logic is flawed in many fundamental instances, such as his objection to there being a God because it would make the equation more complex (more complex than imagining a singularity, multiple universes, spontaneous generation, or alien panspermia apparently). What I think is so flawed in his assertion about God being so improbable is how could he possibly give such a value judgment on Someone/Something that is outside of the universe? On what basis can Dawkins say that? But he says it with such conviction! But multiverses? Sure, why not. Panspermia--could be!

But looking in the mirror at ourselves, 40 trillion cells working in concert, each as complex as a New York City, and us having more machines in the tip of our finger (not even the whole finger, just the tip) we have more machines than all the machines that human beings have made in all of history. We are astoundingly complex. We're the best technology in the universe that we're aware of--but life formed together by chance? No. No no no no. The rest of the universe that is dead, and even our beautiful planet, the laws of chemistry and physics would not allow our complexity and functionality (any of it) to form by chance.

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such an amazing story

Reviewed: 09-11-22

I read this in college, and it affected me so greatly. This is a true hero story. The parts that stick out the most are the hypocrisies of the southern so called religious, contrasted with the true Christianity of the abolitionists and his own. This is a story everyone should read, and it was read so well--first rate!

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