Craig O'Brien

Grateful! I enjoy my wife, family, church, & Vancouver.
Helping people & organizations fulfill their mission fascinates me.
Co-Founder: Education Mavericks.

[Craig O'Brien @craigobrien]

Try Praying. Here's the free 7 day guide.

https://t.co/Zfo6xDZhEz

[Craig O'Brien @craigobrien]

World Cup Fans. Ever wonder how to go about talking to God? Try praying.

Here's part of Valmir Soares' story.

Ambassadors Football.

Learn more and get your free guide in the link on the next post.

[Craig O'Brien @craigobrien]

@MattSmethurst @StevenBartlett Yes. That’s beautiful!

[Matt Smethurst @MattSmethurst]

Man, this is beautiful. A life adorning the gospel.

Listen to what @StevenBartlett—host of one of the world’s most popular podcasts—says to Christian apologist John Lennox.

[Craig O'Brien @craigobrien]

@Codie_Sanchez SMB

[Craig O'Brien @craigobrien]

reading in context -- Wow! It's her!

Enjoy!

https://t.co/An8c2XSDkJ

[Craig O'Brien @craigobrien]

I read a beautiful poem today by May Angelou. A line from "On the Pulse of Morning" was on the Fraser Academy grad dinner table folder. "The horizon leans forward, offering you space to place new steps of change." Outside of the poem the line didn't feel like her, but after

[Karen Vaites @karenvaites]

“We are admitting a cohort that cannot read at a college level and are pretending otherwise.”

Another college professor adds to the chorus of concern about student capacity.

In @chronicle:

“Six weeks into the term, I assigned my rhetoric and writing students a 20-page article. It was the same length I had assigned for five years and the same length I had read without complaint as an undergraduate a decade ago. Not one student finished it.

When I asked why, a student answered honestly: It was too long, and she kept losing track of what the paper was about. This was not a remedial class: These were students who had cleared the admissions process and written essays good enough to get them here. Yet a routine academic reading assignment had defeated them.

Every generation of professors has complained that their students cannot read. The lament is usually overblown, but data have caught up to anecdote, and what I am seeing in my classroom is no longer a hunch. There is a measurable, generational collapse in sustained reading and writing, and the academy is responding to it with improvisation and exhaustion rather than the structural overhaul it requires.

In February 2024, Adam Kotsko, who teaches in the Shimer Great Books School at North Central College, wrote in Slate that students who once handled 30 pages of reading per class meeting now seem “intimidated by anything over 10 pages and seem to walk away from readings of as little as 20 pages with no real understanding.” Crucially, he added that this is “not a matter of laziness on the part of the students” but of underlying skills they were never given a chance to build.

The Chronicle of Higher Education’s 2024 investigation found the same pattern across institutions as different as the Stevens Institute of Technology and Wellesley College, where the average SAT exceeds 1400. Nicholaus Gutierrez, an assistant professor at Wellesley, told The Chronicle that the baseline for what students consider a reasonable amount of work has dropped so noticeably that he has cut his readings accordingly; a 750-word essay now strikes many students as long. At Stevens, the science and technology studies associate professor Theresa MacPhail described following the mantra of “meet your students where they are” for so long that she has begun to feel “like a cruise director organizing games of shuffleboard.”

Worse, the national data tell the same story in colder language. On the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) writing assessment, which is the most recent comprehensive writing benchmark, only 24 percent of 12th graders reached the Proficient level, and just 3 percent reached Advanced; another 21 percent scored below Basic. The reading side of the ledger is worse, and getting worse fast: The 2024 NAEP results released in September 2025 show 12th-grade reading scores at the lowest level recorded since the assessment began in 1992. Thirty-two percent of 12th graders now score below NAEP Basic in reading, meaning that, in the assessment’s own language, they likely “cannot draw general conclusions based on concepts presented explicitly in a text.” And yet more than half of these same seniors reported being accepted to a four-year college. That last sentence is the whole problem in one line: We are admitting a cohort that cannot read at a college level and are pretending otherwise.”

[Craig O'Brien @craigobrien]

to hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church. The Word of God shall not be silenced, nor shall it return void.

“Your sons and daughters will prophesy.”

[Craig O'Brien @craigobrien]

It's the week after Pentecost Sunday. When Peter explained the meaning of 120 disciples in the streets of Jerusalem declaring the wonders of God, he went to the prophet Joel. "This" is "that!"

"In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons

[Craig O'Brien @craigobrien]

the way it is meant to continue.

Between Pentecost and Parousia both the sons and daughters, the servants -- both men and women -- will declare, preach, the Word of God.

So dear brothers treat the daughters of Eve as if she has been forgiven and restored. Let's open our ears