President’s Report: LTW and the practical benefits of classical composition and the Opportunity of the Decade

It’s that time of year when I write my president’s report so I’ve been reflecting on the last year lately. In the spirit of openness and for the sake of thinking out loud, it seems like it might be valuable to write some thoughts here.
We’re a young organization, so every year is a big deal, [...]

Rabbit Trails

They are a vital element of effective teaching, especially because they are the only times when you can be highly confident your students are paying attention. But wandering takes a deep command of your subject matter, at least of the ideas being discussed, if not the details that make up the idea.
At Hope Academy in [...]

Why we need to be attentive to attention

In an earlier post, The Joy of Learning, I began to describe the importance of perception in teaching that cultivates that joy. There I tried to show that all learning begins with perception and that the degree to which a perception impacts us is the determined by how much attention we give to that perception.
Here [...]

Education in Christ

The easiest thing to forget and the first thing we notice about the Christian life is that everything turns on being in Christ. In Colossians, Paul puts it this way:
As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk IN HIM,
rooted and built up IN HIM and established in the faith, as you have [...]

Angelina on classical education

Angelina in Louisiana maintains one of the most interesting, thought provoking, and helpful blogs for a classical educator, especially a home schooler, which is, of course, where the freedom to experiment and explore hides out. Take a look at her Permanent Things.

Can’t we all just get along?

This week, across this marvelous country of ours that is eternally stuck in the world as it actually is, many Christian schools were surprised by a tension they should have been prepared for. The reactionary and apocalyptic nature of much Christian education and culture has so convinced Christian kids that the Obama election was a disaster [...]

A World for Saving

I’m introducing a new feature at the Quiddity blog. I want Presdient-elect Obama to succeed and I fear that his friends might make it a whole lot harder for him. So I’m keeping an eye out for Messianic language and exagerrated claims or expectations that he can’t possibly live up to. The flip side is [...]

Acceptance speech

Great speech by President-elect Obama.

His habit of clipping the last word in each sentence bothers me, but the vision he expresses reminds me of Reagan and Clinton. How we got the tongue tied Bushes in this stream of rhetoricians amazes me. I guess we get tired of speaking skills.
Change has come [...]

Concession speech

I hope you have seen the acceptance and concession speeches. McCain’s made me teary eyed with appreciation. Both of them are excellent speeches. We really are sitting on the edge of history, one way or the other.

This guy must have have had a boring childhood

Visiting professor, Phil Busse, has resigned from St. Olaf’s college after stealing McCain signs off people’s lawns, boasting about it in the locker room, er, I mean his blog, and getting caught by the administration. Apparently, he can’t tell the difference between an adolescent thrill and a political act. Yes, I’m nervous about America.
“Yanking out the [...]