Dorothy Sayers rightly mourned The Lost Tools of Learning and I share her sorrow. Fortunately a large classical school and college movement has arisen that is giving a new generation back those tools. Yet I see a greater problem than the one Sayers feared: the lost joy of learning. In twenty years of teaching honors college students, I saw many students with high standardized test scores, but who were missing some of the tools needed to learn. There were students... Read more
She is the woman at the well, who met Jesus who told her all she ever did. She began badly and ended well. We are odd in thinking the start is best. It is the end that is the measure of a person, what they have become, out of the accumulation of choices. A good start is valuable and we hope we gave this to our own children, but the end is better. The Greek sages were correct: call no... Read more
Every month or so, for twenty five years worth of months, I would reach for this book. I was a graduate student, much thinner, learning as much as I could and finding a book by A.E. Taylor was like Luke seeing holographic Leia. I was pointed toward a mentor, long dead, but in print. The commentary looked long, but was fascinating as Professor Taylor pulled apart Timaeus: a book that you must read to understand the history of science and... Read more
The news is alive with the Educrat: the autocrat of education. Secular schools have a problem with diversity that leads to administrative decisions that ignore half the nation’s views. These decisions can trample on free speech rights, academic freedom, and diversity of ideas. Things that seem “crazy” or worth “no platforming” are different if conservative scholars are present. Religious schools can overreact to this situation by also trampling on free speech rights, academic freedoms within mission, and diversity of ideas. Because... Read more
Let us praise continuity and the leaders that provide it! In the marvelous television show Victoria and Albert, the Duke of Wellington confronts a complainer who hates the hard-work, competence, and stability being brought to the court by Albert. “He is not fun.” The Duke turns on the complainer and says gruffly: “He may not be your idea of fun or my idea of fun, but if he buys the monarchy another hundred years, then I say, ‘God save Prince... Read more
Bottom Line: Professor Chediak has written an instruction manual for college as we know it. Buy it. May 1 was the day most students have decided on the college or university they will attend. The market for higher education is changing rapidly, the kids of these students will not have the same options. There will be fewer liberal arts colleges, but more unusual choices! This is great news if you are at the college program CSMonitor called “the most revolutionary.”... Read more
The happy human is betwixt looking up to the stars yet with feet on good earth. The miracle of human life is that we have eternity in our hearts, but are lovely animals. We deal with the eternal reality of immaterial objects (eg. number) and the changing world around us. Our souls need bodies to be fully human and our bodies need souls to live. A danger sign is when either reality is denied.* Some people look to the stars so... Read more
There is a medicine for what is making us sick politically: A good dose of Dante is some of what Americans need just now. This is not because American politics is hell, since Dante wrote about purgatory and paradise as well, though most uses of Dante (Games! Comics! Movies!) have forgotten all but Inferno. Instead we need Dante exactly because his contemporary politics are not relevant. We are gorged on relevant details and so have lost health. Some Obviousness: Dante cannot... Read more
If over forty percent of Americans support the President*, why wouldn’t we anticipate a large number of celebrities to cater to them? Wouldn’t this be particularly true in comedy which is often done by one person in front of an audience? This is a column about who gets to be a comedian, a star, and what they are allowed to say. This is not about Trump, could be about most comics, was inspired by the White House Correspondence dinner, though it is... Read more
I need more Christina and less Dante Rossetti. Both are (nearly) forgotten, so nobody should be too ashamed to ask “who?” Google will help, so let me simply say that these two siblings both were poets, one a very good poet (Christina) and one a very good painter (Dante). Both were deeply influenced by serious Christianity. Dante Rossetti’s early paintings revive the Middle Ages, but with a Victorian touch. They say “no” to the worst of modernity by reviving the best... Read more
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