Reviewing or Designing a Curriculum

Reflecting on the previous post, I thought that one great difference between Christian classical education and conventional metrics is that the former is personal and the latter is abstract. The root concept of Christian classical education is that there are wise men and women to whom we should listen and whom we should imitate. In [...]

On the Necessity For Long Sentences

We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so somber, and a rain so penetrating, that further outdoor exercise was now out of the question.

That is the [...]

The Death of Nature

The fundamental difference between the Christian classical tradition (one might call it The Western Tradition) and the modern mind (the Enlightenment and its unraveling in Romanticism and this twist on modernism that we call Postmodernism) is the concept of nature.
If you perceive this, you will see it everywhere. Here is a paragraph from Richard Weaver’s short [...]

Loving the Truth

For many, the quest to know the truth is a purely rational quest. Thus, for example, Rene Descartes resolution to begin by doubting everything - all that he was told, and everything he perceived with his senses. Only by reasoning could he come to know the truth.
It’s easy to see why we would think this [...]

Reflections on Progressive Education

For the Progressive theorist, education is one great, extended experiment for which society is bound to pay. Here in America the progressive experiments (it would not be just to call it a single experiment) have continued for nearly 100 years, during which the inevitable resistance and the internal contradictions of progressive theory have convinced many [...]

It’s Nothing Personal: It’s just business

Behold the marvels of the cosmos, the wondrous beauty of the stars, the awesome complexity of life in its marvelous diversity and adaptability, the world-creating power of the elements and atoms, the inexplicable forces of gravity, the stronger and weaker atomic forces, etc. etc.
 I’m not sure why.
Enlightenment science approaches the cosmos the way the Godfather [...]

Faith and Reason: Love or War?

Reflecting on the relation between science and faith, Marty McCarthy, an Episcopal priest and good friend, wrote to me:
“Revealed truth gives us the context for holding scientific (reasoned) truth for what it is.  Knowing how to relate these two is a delicate task, and must be discussed closely, and then spoken to clearly enough [...]

A Practical Problem With Pragmatism

In an earlier lengthy post, I pointed to an essay by Dewey as the fulcrum on which education has been moved. The Christian classical tradition, to summarize, is about embodied ideas and incarnate words. In Dewey, the idea is nothing. While the Christian classical tradition emphasized contemplation of ideas as embodied in great works of [...]

Science and Faith

This NY Times op-ed argues for some sort of theism, then chooses panentheism for some reason. I think it is because the writer, Paul Davies, a physicist, recognizes the need for a god, but doesn’t want that god to be free of the universe it made. Read it here, and comment here. I’m interested in [...]

How Dewey has overcome American Christianity and overthrown America

Not everybody should read the ancient pagan writers, only those who want to be educated.
 John Dewey has such a stranglehold on modern thought that most Christian schools don’t even realize the extent to which he rules over them. This is natural, because his strategy was to insist that philosophy/metaphysics is a waste of time. All [...]