We need more mothers in education for one simple reason: Education is for people and not programs. In the next few weeks, millions of students will go to college and school in the United States of America. The very best schools will center on people serving people. Education only needs a great teacher and a willing student . . . everything else is support. That’s why no school should be centered on administrators, empire building, the multiplication of degrees and debt,... Read more
We had a cat named Solomon, who could open doors and play pool in the middle of the night, but most amazingly this creature of tiny brain could sense when I was writing a paper without saving early and often and may, perhaps, have known when my writing was particularly bad. Once when finishing a paper due the next day, I looked over and saw him staring at me. He was smiling his cat smile and then he leaped into... Read more
When I was a little boy, Mom would read books to me. Even when I learned to read, the sound of her voice was better and so she kept reading to the family until I left home. After she read, she would talk with us about what we had heard and ask us questions and so during the reading we would wonder about the book. Mom helped us see that a book was not just a static text, but an interaction... Read more
Brunhilde Pomsel worked for a man who was very nice in the office. If you heard him speak, however, he would act as if he were angry and bad. You had to know him to see what a clean, upstanding man he really was. There were two of him: the man with the manicured hands and the man who played a part in order to do good for his people. His manicured hands helped kill millions of people and bring... Read more
Suppose you have the choice of the lunatic John C. Fremont, the pro-slavery incompetent James Buchanan, and Millard Fillmore running on the nativist Know Nothing Party. Generally, Christian ethics would say: “Do not vote for the person who has disqualified themselves.” There are many reasons for this position. Perhaps, the best is that if you vote for a bad man, then you have done an evil and the best you can hope is that good will come of it. There... Read more
Discussions: You have to have them, but you ought to do them well and not badly. Sadly, almost nobody teaches you how to do it and one bad discussion class at some point in school can make you avoid them for the rest of your natural life. You know the bad discussion well: one person talks and nobody else does or the teacher asks leading questions and gives a lecture with periodic interruptions or everyone sits and stares in uncomfortable silence.... Read more
You could give money to one of our Presidential candidates or you could cut to the root cause of this dispiriting election and begin to educate the next generation to do better. If you don’t like the Boomer candidates we have, let’s stop educating our children and young adults as we educated the Boomers. This must start with a total rejection of the secularization of government schools which has led to a decline in the human things. We must also reject most... Read more
“We’re number one!” That can either be a celebration or a boast. It can also be a lie. If it is hard to be a good loser, then it is (at least) as hard to be a good winner. The classless taunting and flaunting now common in sports is a bad cultural sign. The humble spirit of some American Olympians in 2016, quick to praise coaches, parents, and God, is encouraging. I have seen schools do all three: pretending to... Read more
William Blake wrote: To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour. If we can achieve this vision of Blake’s, then we will be happy in this life and the life that is to come. Sand, wild flowers, and hands are freely available to most of us . . . and any natural object contains the world, every beautiful thing... Read more
We are told that the Emperor Nero won quite a few Olympic prizes, including one for a chariot race he did not finish. Unlike Michael Phelps, Nero’s laurels were challenged on the grounds he bribed officials. Winning, if you cheat, is not everything. Unlike Phelps, the Emperor never “lost” a race, but unlike Phelps, Nero never won a race either. Your mom was right: cheaters never win, even when proclaimed the victor. History sometimes doesn’t know the truth, cheaters are... Read more
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