Topic(s): Humor

Below is a compilation of actual student bloopers collected by teachers from 8th grade through college.

• Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock. After his death, his career suffered a dramatic decline.
• Nero was a cruel tyranny who would torture his subjects by playing the fiddle to them.
• Writing at the same time as Shakespeare was Miguel Cervantes. He wrote Donkey Hote. The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.
• One of the causes of the Revolutionary War was the English put tacks in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their parcels through the post without stamps. Finally the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis.
• Delegates from the original 13 states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin discovered electricity by rubbing two cats backwards and declared, “A horse divided against itself cannot stand.” Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.
• Abraham Lincoln became America’s greatest Precedent. Lincoln’s mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves by signing the Emasculation Proclamation. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposingly insane actor. This ruined Booth’s career.
• Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltaire invented electricity and also wrote a book called Candy. Gravity was invented by Issac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the autumn when the apples are falling off the trees.
• Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.

A Scientist With A Song

Topic(s): Nature of Man, Science

Many years ago, I taught at a small Christian college in Florida. The school was small, and the faculty was young and inexperienced. It was a great inspiration, therefore, when the distinguished Christian scientist, Dr. A.W. Dicus joined our number to serve as academic dean and give intellectual leadership to our faculty.

Dr. Dicus had already had an impressive career as the head of the department of physics at Tennessee Tech University. He was a distinguished scientist and renowned physics teacher. During the dark days of World War II when the developmental work was being done on the atomic bomb, Dr. Dicus is said to have sent more physicists into the Oak Ridge Laboratories than any other physics teacher in America.

However, Dr. Dicus did not find complete satisfaction in his work in the state university and decided to devote part of his life to Christian education. Though he had not yet reached the normal retirement age, he took an early retirement from Tennessee Tech and came to Florida on a modest salary to serve as academic dean at the small, struggling Christian college.

Through the years that I worked under Dr. Dicus, he was a great source of strength and inspiration. As a young teacher, I could go to him for counsel and encouragement. But I remember brother Dicus as more than a distinguished physicist turned college dean. I remember him as a disciple of Christ, a man of deep faith, and a man that expressed that faith in song. For it was brother Dicus, who wrote both the words and music for the song that is so popular in churches:

There is beyond the azure blue, a God concealed from human sight,
He tinted skies with heavenly hue, and framed the world with His great might.
There was a long, long time ago, a God whose voice the prophets heard;
He is the God that we should know, who speaks from His inspired Word.
Our God whose Son upon a tree, a life was willing there to give,
That He from sin might set men free, and evermore with Him could live.

Whenever I hear a congregation singing these words today, and especially a group of young people, I think of brother Dicus and a lump comes in my throat. It is a source of spiritual strength to me to know that these great words of faith were written by a distinguished scientist. It is also a gentle reminder of the great debt of gratitude that every generation owes to those who have gone before. Brother Dicus died at about 90 years of age. But even though he is gone, he still lives on when we sing, “There is a God.”
                                                          —Parkview Proclaimer, Odessa, TX

Every Good Gift

Topic(s): Blessings, God's Mercy

A oor man was given a loaf of bread. He thanked the baker, but the baker said, “Don’t thank me. Thank the miller who made the flour.” So he thanked the miller, but the miller said, “Don’t thank me. Thank the farmer who planted the wheat.” So he thanked the farmer. But the farmer said, “Don’t thank me. Thank the Lord. He gave the sunshine, rain, and fertility to the soil, and that’s why you have bread to eat.” Regardless of how sophisticated, how advanced we may be scientifically, we still can’t create, we still can’t make a kernel of wheat. That has to come from God. God gives us the things we need in order to live on this planet. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights...” (James 1:17; Acts 17:24).