My brother Daniel and I sometimes would ask for toys specifically for building our spaceship (all pre-Star Wars) in the basement. The subterranean level of a house is an odd choice for a space craft, but we could do whatever we wished in the basement (flamethrowers! inventing rubber!) and did not have access to the attic. An old vacuum cleaner, metal with a tube shape, makes an excellent engine. We had no real computers then (that was a legendary Christmas yet... Read more
What is education? Education has no rules, because it is personal. There is a Person to love who is wise, virtuous, joyful. There is a Word that undergirds the cosmos: Mind that makes my feeble mind possible. I tire, the Word does not tire. I will die, the Word lives and so there is hope for life beyond death. I hate, fail, become confused, but the Word is love, power, and clarity. This is good. Education begins in wonder, powered by... Read more
From Richard Dawkins’ Twitter feed: Surprised by common reverence for Plato. Alexandrians like Eratosthenes made superb progress. But what did Plato say that was actually right? And didn’t he mislead generations of theologians & philosophers into thinking you could find truth by making stuff up in an armchair? I am not surprised by the common respect for Plato, philosophers do not revere philosophers, because Plato introduced most of the great questions of philosophy and proposed several solutions that remain viable... Read more
As a boy, if it was my turn to do the Bible reading in devotions, I dreaded the “son of” sections. There were names I did not know that are challenging to sound out for anyone, but given my difficulty pronouncing vowels, a constant embarrassment, the reading was hard. This is not, perhaps, the most serious childhood problem, but it was not fun, at all. All evils produce goods, given the deep beauty of God’s cosmos, and one good that... Read more
Aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport that the world affords. Most excellent friends in California shocked me today by sending a bronze art piece (1920!) of Theodore Roosevelt, a president I much admire, for The School. This gift was wonderfully timed. These are weary times in education where wearisome bureaucrats, often decent folk with limited imaginations, labor to dismantle education in the name of pragmatism while simultaneously embracing the ideology of the spirit of our age. Thus, in... Read more
God never dreams, He is all do. Humans, created in God’s image, begin in hope, grow in faith, act and so create. Hope suggests what desires might be good. Faith gives hope rational and experiential substance and when we act in this rational faith, inspired by God’s empowering love, we create something wonderful and new. At least some of the problems of our time come from the passage of the revolutionary, progressive, excited generation that believes to the managers, administrators, time servers, wage earners... Read more
That Hideous Strength In his prophetic novel on culture, particularly on the state of education, CS Lewis describes the fall of a young academic, Mark Studdock. His decay is his fault, he longs for “the inner ring,” acceptance with the in-group. His first job is at Bracton College and the “progressive element” of faculty and administrators is determined to change things: more administrators, less scholars, fewer teachers, greater leftist ideology*. The focus of any planning is on size, power, and money. To... Read more
“Aunt Tilley is coming,” he said and laughed. “Time to roll out the Christian stuff to keep that bequest coming.”* What did he mean? He meant that there were some old folks, people who did not “get it,” and did not wish to let “Christian U” find the future. The administrators wanted Aunt Tilley’s money, but knew if Aunt Tilley (“bless her heart”) knew what they were doing, then . . . . No. They told Aunt Tilley what she... Read more
To: President Al Cibiades RE: Need to sell “Bragdon Wood” From: Acting President Currey (New Edgestow University) Thank you for writing. . . the rebuilding of the University is going wonderfully well. While the loss of the NICE is unfortunate, the benefit of starting all the colleges from “scratch” has been an exciting opportunity to finally get to where the University needed to go. And after all, our colleagues at the NICE were a mixed lot, some not understanding the... Read more
Packer fans can be demanding. If you do not care about sports, wait a bit, as the Packers reminded me of a human trait that is terrible when found in leadership. If you have a friend who cannot enjoy winning, that is hard, if the Boss is never happy: may the Lord God have mercy on your soul. On Winning, But Not By Enough My team, and as an owner of a Packer share, they are one five millionth my team, the... Read more
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