Selecting Books

As many of you know, the annual CiRCE conference was last week and was quite a success.  All in attendance enjoyed informative and challenging speakers, delicious food, and gracious hosting by all of the sponsors.  All in attendance also experienced a taste of what I would call “book glut.”
You know exactly what I mean.  At [...]

From Christian Love to Progressive Law

The reason for the growth of bureaucracy in American life is a loss of confidence in the spirit of God, al loss of confidence in human dignity, a turning to law from grace. This is a rather obvious historical development that can’t be discussed because we are now a secular nation.  

When grace and spirit are [...]

1901 – The Cat Escapes the Bag

From Diane Ravitch’s Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms (essential reading for anybody who wants to understand American education – and that must include teachers! Doesn’t it?):
In 1901, sociologist Edward A. Ross… explained that free public schooling was “an engine of soical control.” It was the job of schools, he wrote, “to collect [...]

Decline and Fall?

The decline of American education is directly correlated to the rise, expansion, and application of scientific management theory in education and the ever expanding controls placed on education by the “experts.”
Scientific management theory arises in the context of an economic utopianism that finds its clearest expression in education in progressive theories. This economic utopianism raises the [...]

How to prepare for a conference

The annual CiRCE Conference is coming up in just a couple of weeks (July 24-26) and every year many teachers, administrators, and homeschooling parents go to conferences, not just ours, in hopes of becoming better – better teachers, better mentors, better parents, better people.  But those kinds of lofty goals are not accomplished by attending [...]

Why conferences matter

I recently met a young man who has been involved in Christian classical education for a few years. One year his school decided not to attend a summer conference because it would not be cost effective. What happened, though, was that the teachers and leaders felt isolated.
 
He told me that summer without a conference took [...]

On Fear

My biggest fear is not failure but successful irrelevance.

Secular Saviors

David Wells, in his 1998 book Losing Our Virtue, suggested that
There now seems little doubt that our new healers are offering salvation on strictly secular terms, terms that may bypass moral issues entirely.
Here is a great deal to reflect on in a small space. Consider: if we approach our salvation “on strictly secular terms,” what [...]

Blessedness, Learning, and Purity of Heart

The lamp of the body is the eye. Therefore, when your eye is good, your whole body also is full of light. But when your eye is bad, your body also is full of darkness. Therefore, take heed that the light which is in you is not darkness. If then your whole body is full [...]

9/11 and Education

i read this today in the Wall Street Journal:

Ground Zero is a perfect storm of contemporary American politics. The report cites “19 different governmental entities from every level of government each laying claim to some component of the overall project.” And, “Each entity makes daily decisions about their individual projects, but no streamlined process or [...]