OM EAST produces a new booklet that brings a message of hope to women working in prostitution.

Baker’s Delight

Sunday, April 19, 2020.

During the present crisis, many more of us are turning to Grow Your Own. This lets us enjoy much fresher and tastier veg than from a weekly shop, especially if that languishes in the fridge for days. And we won’t be relying on imports that could become less accessible.

Low-cost European carrier Wizz Air has announced plans to resume some flights from Luton Airport on May 1.

Sharing moments of levity and hope from the education world amid the mass disruption of schooling and life from the coronavirus.

MSPs have penned a letter to the head of the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) - highlighting “deep unease” by teachers at plans to overhaul exams amid the lockdown.

The annual issue, now in its eighth year, highlights the work of district leaders who are deploying new ideas to make a difference for their staff and students.

Keira Knightley plays a feminist activist who disrupts the Miss World contest in 1970 in the new film Misbehaviour.

Moonlight, Film 4, Wednesday, 9pm

IN THE five days since Scotland and the rest of the UK effectively went into lockdown, it is heartening to see the ways in which the vast majority of the population has responded, not merely with compliance and resilience, but with a community spirit and a great many acts of personal service and sacrifice.

With more than 130,000 black ELLs in public schools, White House and U.S. Department of Education officials will develop tools for educators.

Previous studies show beneficial effects of cycled lighting in neonatal care on infant day–night activity, sleep behavior, and postnatal growth. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommend neonatal care under cycled lighting conditions.

This study found that cycled lighting during neonatal care reduces infant’s fussing and crying behavior at 5 and 11 weeks’ corrected age and improves growth during neonatal period. These findings support the introduction of cycled lighting in neonatal care practice. (Read the full article)

Phototherapy effectively treats unconjugated hyperbilirubinemia. However, in resource-poor settings, functional phototherapy devices are often unavailable due to financial constraints or erratic electrical power availability.

Filtered-sunlight phototherapy could be a cost-effective option in resource-poor settings with abundant sunlight. (Read the full article)

Light and intermittent smoking are harmful, but increasingly common, smoking patterns. It is unknown how adolescents perceive these smoking patterns, and whether these views differ by sociodemographic characteristics, and exposure to and use of tobacco.

US adolescents perceive light and intermittent smoking as significantly less dangerous than heavier smoking. One in 4 adolescents believes intermittent smoking causes little to no harm. Perceptions of relative safety were common among smokers. (Read the full article)

Advocates for increased federal funding for special education cheered Thursday when the issue was raised on the Democratic presidential debate stage in Los Angeles.

The story of how Germany won their seventh title, beating debut finalists the Netherlands..

Sharing moments of levity and hope from the education world amid the mass disruption of schooling and life from the coronavirus.

See all the results and highlights from UEFA Futsal EURO 2018 at Ljubljana's Stožice Arena.

Watch highlights of the action in Finland following Portugal's victory in the final against Italy.

See all the results and highlights from the first final tournament to be held in Armenia as Spain triumphed.

A larger screen and waterproof casing are being offered to encourage sales for 'worry-free summer reading.' Will you be willing to pay $199 for it, though?

Barnes & Noble's Nook GlowLight Plus ebook reader has great hardware for the price, but its software and services are limited and buggy.

Twenty-four projects can be viewed online at newkensington.psu.edu/virtual-research-expo.

A record 78 goals were scored in 21 games as Spain won their fifth U21 title: watch them all now.

Goals from Casemiro and Isco helped Real Madrid successfully defend their title but Manchester United gave the European champions a scare after Romelu Lukaku pulled one back.

Adobe's Photoshop Lightroom remains the gold standard in pro photo workflow software. It's a complete package, with top-notch organization tools, state of-the-art adjustments, and all the output and printing options you'd want.

An OM outreach participant shares the gospel with another group of hikers during a walk down a mountain in France.

Watch highlights from all the action at the Under-17 Euro in England, including the Netherlands' dramatic final triumph against Italy.

The Netherlands came out on top after a busy fortnight of action in the Republic of Ireland.

All the results and highights from Switzerland as Spain won the Women's U19 title for the second year in a row.

France beat Germany 2-1 in Paisley to win the trophy: see all the results from Scotland.

By Sr. Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J.

Matteo Ricci College (MRC) is one of eight schools and colleges that form part of Seattle University, a Catholic institution conducted by the Society of Jesus. 

With the Humanities as its core, MRC offers three degrees: a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities (BAH), a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities for Leadership (BAHL), and a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities for Teaching (BAHT). 

Mission of MRC

MRC educates teachers and leaders for a just and humane world. The study of Western culture is the surest place to begin. Pseudo-educators claim it’s a waste of time.   Yet, the facts don’t lie.  We are the beneficiaries of Greco-Roman culture preserved, reinterpreted, and handed down through the Catholic Church’s medieval monastic tradition and continued through the Italian Renaissance. To be human is to be in a story, and to forget one's story leaves a person without a present identity, without a past and without a future.  At MRC, cultural history is taught so that students can draw moral lessons from it.  Those who don’t learn from these lessons are condemned to repeat and relive them.    

With the small class size at MRC, professors can take a personal interest in each student.  In this environment conducive to learning, a close collaboration between student and professor is pursued.   This encourages greater participation in class. Shouldn’t MRC be the envy of most serious students?  You would think so. 

What’s in a Name? 

MRC is named after the 16th - century Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) who spent his adult life as an educator and missionary in China.  At that time, the doors of the Chinese empire were closed to foreigners from the West.   It was Ricci who brought Western civilization to China, and Chinese literati reciprocated by sharing with him their ancient and venerable culture.  For him, inculturation was a reality centuries before the term was invented. He founded the modern Chinese Catholic Church.  

Ricci astonished the Chinese because he loved them. An authority on so many subjects and disciplines—mathematics, astronomy, apologetics, literature, popular catechesis, poetry, art and music—he brought this treasury of gifts to his mission. His intellectual gifts were prodigious: a photographic memory, linguistic ability to speak flawless Chinese, ingenuity to write maps, assemble clocks, read the stars.  As if this weren’t enough, Ricci had a keen ear for music and reportedly sang with great sweetness.   This “wise man from the west” is recognized as “the most cultivated man of his time and one of the most remarkable and brilliant men of history.”  

Known throughout the realm as Li-Ma-T’ou, this missionary scholar remains the most respected and beloved foreign figure in Chinese culture. Some in the Chinese government view him as the “Second Founder of Modern China.”  

This is the man after whom MRC is named.  He is its model of a complete liberal arts education cast in the Jesuit mold.

Student Protest against the Curriculum of MRC

In May, some two hundred enrolled students at (MRC) staged a week-long sit-in objecting to the core curriculum: The focus on Western culture and values was declared irrelevant. Studies in Western Civilization had failed to serve the academic interests of these students. 

The students demanded of the administration that the classic core curriculum in the Humanities be discarded in favor of a new program of studies to reflect special interest groups of race, class, gender, and disability.  Additionally, they demanded that only qualified faculty be hired to teach courses that reflected their interest in identity group studies of race, class, gender, and disability. The Dean of the MRC was to be fired.

Student demands focused on “dissatisfaction, traumatization, and boredom,” that is, “the Humanities program as it exists today” which “ignores and erases the humanity of its students and of peoples around the globe.”  . . . “We are diverse, with many different life experiences, also shaped by colonization, U.S., and Western imperialist, neo-politics, and oppression under racist, sexist, classist, heteronormative and homophobic, transphobic, queerphobic, ableist, nationalistic, xenophobic systems which perpetuate conquest, genocide of indigenous peoples, and pervasive systemic inequities.”

Students spoke of oppression perpetrated by the Administration:  “The first manifest demand is a complete change in the curriculum from a Whiteness-dominated curriculum to a non-Eurocentric interdisciplinary curriculum.  If the (MRC) is unable to tackle these requirements, we demand that it be converted into a department so as to be accountable to another college.”   

What Students at MRC Seek

If MRC students are seeking social justice and equality for all, if they are to make sense of this complex world, they ought to study the Humanities. If they are curious about how other cultures have learned to develop feelings of compassion, tolerance, respect, empathy, they ought to study the Humanities. If they are curious about how creative other people can be, if students are determined to live in a democracy of free citizens, the Humanities should be studied. Without the Humanities, democracy would not exist.  

The Crisis of Higher Education

In this country, we are experiencing an intellectual crisis that has already affected our work force, our politics, and our culture.  Western civilization, the human culmination of centuries of learning is under attack by an identity-driven student population exemplified by the protesters at MRC.  Whereas many academic leaders fail to uphold the purpose of teaching Western civilization, the faculty at MRC values it.  Whereas academic leaders don’t believe that the Humanities have any fundamental influence on their students, the faculty at MRC is invested in it.  Shared values—this is what brings the world together.  

MRC is not alone in promoting a Humanities core curriculum. Many non-sectarian and private colleges proudly offer a core curriculum around which other subjects are framed. At least twenty-five colleges and universities in the United States offer the Great Books tradition to their undergraduates. These books are part of the great conversation about the universal ideas of cultures and civilizations, always related to ethical and religious values. 

Many educators believe that nearly half of college graduates show no measurable improvement in knowledge or critical thinking. They speak and write incorrectly; they do not read.  Their constant companions? Electronic devices with accompanying head sets. Weaker academic requirements, greater specialization in the departments, a rigid orthodoxy and doctrinaire views on liberalism are now part of the university’s politics and cultural life.  

Clash of Goals

If the demands of these special interest groups—race, class, gender, and disability, were met, MRC would cease to exist. A program of identity studies clashes with the raison d’être of a college named after Matteo Ricci, a name synonymous with the richest of classic studies.   

The student protesters are demanding to be extricated from the program that distinguishes itself in the pantheon of Catholic higher education.  

Who would be so foolish as to look down on, much less protest, such a rich curriculum that prompts the most influential employers to hire MRC’s crême de la crème? 

Let the disgruntled students go elsewhere with their partisan interests and narrow viewpoint.  They lose.

Ricci Speaks to College Students

Matteo Ricci has left us several proverbs that can inspire college students.  But not just college students:  

 “Man is a stranger in this world.”

 “The virtuous person speaks little.”

“Time past must be thought of as gone forever.  Don’t waste time.”

“True longevity is reckoned not by number of years but according to progress in virtue.  If the Lord of Heaven grants me one day more of life, He does so that I may correct yesterday’s faults; failures to do this would be a sign of great ingratitude.”

The canonization of Father Matteo Ricci, S.J. ranks high on the ‘to-do list’ of Pope Francis whose high regard and love for him are well known.  This is the Servant of God, Matteo Ricci, S.J.

Real Madrid last night edged past Krasnodar in the UEFA Youth League with a 3-0 win on penalties, falling just short of the record for lowest scoring shoot-outs. We look at the spot-kick records.

UEFA Youth League matches were streamed live on UEFA.com this season; check out the best of the action.

Watch the pick of the action from the sixth season of the UEFA Youth League.

OM Germany and a local church in Halle/Saale celebrate the opening of the Lighthouse, a café they hope will be a light in the city.

The Riverboat community sailed from port-to-port to mobilise believers into missions and share the Hope of God together. How is life after the Riverboat?

One of the easiest ways to dive into smart home technology is with smart light bulbs. Here's what you need to know to get started, along with reviews of the top Bluetooth and Wi-Fi LEDs we've tested.

Researchers in Penn State’s College of Engineering, College of Agricultural Sciences and College of Medicine say direct LTP treatment and plasma-activated media are effective treatments against bacteria found in liquid cultures and have devised a way to create plasma directly in liquids.

With the spread of COVID-19, Penn State’s Social Science Research Institute has launched a new website that provides resources for researchers, policy-makers and the general public to inform and to address impacts of the pandemic — with a focus on its broader implications for individuals, families, communities, and the commonwealth.

Who has time to check baggage anymore? Whether you're running to the conference room or catching a flight cross-country, you need the lightest laptop possible. We've tested, well, tons of them and have all the buying advice and recommendations you need to help you land the right one.

There is still no light at the end of the tunnel for small enterprises, according to the SMME Business Confidence Index for 2010.

An electricity cut offers an opportunity for a Central Asian believer to share stories from the Bible with her family, who normally wouldn’t listen.

Workers in Central Asia walk alongside local believers and share small bits of truth with those they live among.

Programs on Delaware's Lenape and Nanticoke Indian tribes to be featured.

The Delaware Public Service Commission yesterday approved a petition from the state’s Public Advocate to ensure that consumers will receive the benefits of any savings realized by regulated Delaware utilities under the federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.

Accreditation is the highest recognition afforded to museums in the United States.

Dover is unlocking the potential of its historic downtown with a new marketing campaign highlighting opportunities for small business owners ready to take their business dreams to the next level. State and local officials led by Gov. John Carney; Linda Parkowski, acting director of the Delaware Division of Small Business and Dover Mayor Robin Christiansen […]

Work will begin this spring and continue into the summer of 2018.