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 [...]

The Book of Judges and American Life

In the middle of the main section of the book of Judges is the famous story of Gideon who defeated the Midianites with 300 soldiers. The layers of wisdom contained in this story call for repeated readings, but right now I want to focus on the aftermath to Gideon’s triumph.
What happens, in a word, is [...]

Freedom, Scale, and Education

Freedom, having been reduced to the right to do and say whatever you want - with the rapid and empty qualifier “as long as you don’t hurt anybody else” - has gone the same way everything else goes when its nature is changed. It is somewhere between imperiled and nonexistent.
If we reduce freedom to the vacuity [...]

The Value of Failure

Some research has revealed that man’s two greatest fears are public speaking and death, in that order.  This means, of course, that most people at a funeral would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy. 
Man does his best to overcome these fears.  Schools have rhetoric and public speaking courses and teachers require [...]

Can we be free without grace?

One thing stood out for me at our conference this year: that education without grace - that human society without grace, cannot be free or healthy.
If education excludes religious discourse, then it cannot include the grace of God as an energizing factor. Yet American education is trying to build a perfect society. Consider what this means:
My goal [...]

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 [...]

Is this a once in a lifetime opportunity?

I’m not altogether certain but it might be. How often do you get to spend a weekend with a translator of Dante, a founder of a Christian classical college, and a group of people driven to figure out what Christian classical education is and how to implement it?
I just attended the SCL conference in Charleston, [...]

Why History Class Must Die!

Currently, the Peanuts comic strip by the late Charles Shulz stands out as a source of great wisdom and insight in our culture. I say this with partial sarcasm, only partial.
One particular strip showed Sally in Sunday School class, her teacher before her. He began, “Today we are going to discuss Church history. What do you [...]