What are the soul sucking creatures in Harry Potter called?

I attended possibly the most mind-numbing and dull workshop of my entire life today. The premise was good, hinging on Biblical worldviews in teaching. There were so many things wrong though I hardly know where to start.

First, they used the term "integrating Biblical truth into curriculum." Sorry, but it's not a question of integrating. Integrating implies that there is neutral material, just waiting for the Bible to be applied to it. Already we were off to a bad start. My colleagues were more patient, but by noon we were all bored to death. The presenter had also asked whether or not any of us had taken a course about Biblical worldview in teaching, and the only people to raise thier hands in the auditorium of maybe 200 people were about 12 people from my school.

So this guy told us all why we need to have a Biblical worldview, then proceede to introduce us to a 2 page planning document that will help us to integrate our Biblical worldview into curriculum. Not a terrible idea....but, there are about 8 or 9 steps you have to go through, and it's all very artificial...there were five categories of Biblical truth you could choose to connect your curriculum to: God, mankind, creation, purpose, and this nebulous category called "moral order." Apparantly, truth is equal to moral order. I never quite figured out what it meant, but it somehow included all the fundamentalist stuff.

My mind shut down after about 4 hours of his droning on, but there was one interesting moment. He was showing us an example of how to do a lesson using his planning document, and one of the questions he thought was a good example of integration was "Does the Bible teach that we should use 2-step equations for good instead of evil?" People laughed out loud, and the guy actually said "What? Is there something funny about that?"

My colleagues and I were sure it was a joke setting us up for the examples of how NOT to do integration. It wasn't a joke.

I picked up one good quote too. We had to watch these horribly produced video clips (jumpy transitions, distorted sound, etc.), and on one there was a Pre-K teacher doing a lesson on plants. She had this weird felt-covered apron on which she could stick pictures of the story. Kind of like a wearable felt-board from Sunday school. Anyway, as she put it on, she said "This is my story smock and I like it because it fits me." Hilarious.

There was something so life-sucking about the workshop, as if the man and his methods had sucked all color out of the world. I was trying to think of the name of the creatures in Harry Potter who suck out your life so that you'll never feel happiness again...that's exactly what I felt like when I left today.

I wish I had a Petronus.