The final list of books in my top 50 books on Classical Christian Education focuses on the practice of implementing and administering a classical education.
Educational Polemics: What’s Wrong with Education Today
Here are my top ten polemic reads on modern education, books that challenge the status quo by dissecting it’s motivations and methods.
Further Up and Further In: Expanding and Deepening Your Philosophy of Education
This is the next installment of My Top Fifty Books For Families And Teachers New To Classical Christian Education. In this post, I’ll share 10 works that will expand, as well as deepen, your educational philosophy. Idea of a University by Cardinal John Henry Newman. This work is actually a collection of two books, primarily […]
The Liberating Arts: A Book of Poignant Reminders
I meant to include The Liberating Arts: Why We Need Liberal Arts Education in yesterday’s list but as I was reorganizing my stacks, I set it in a wrong pile and missed it. So, I decided to give it it’s own post—along with a brief review (sort of). When Jesse Jackson marched with a large […]
Top 10 Books About The Liberal Arts in Classical Christian Education
This is the third post in my series on the 50 most important books on Classical Christian Education. I have tried to order my lists with some measure of thoughtfulness as it pertains to stages of need and interest. The first post in the series was a list of primers (five in all) that are […]
Ten More Books For Families And Teachers New To Classical Christian Education
In my first post in this series, I shared five books I believe are thorough and accessible enough to help anyone unfamiliar with Classical Christian Education navigate the landscape fairly successfully. Building on the first five, here are the next 10 books I would recommend reading if you are interested in expanding your understanding of […]
My Top Five Books for Families and Teachers New to Classical Christian Education
The number of people (teachers and parents) migrating to Classical Christian Education (CCE) is astounding—and joyfully so! Talking recently with a colleague, he pointed out how the crowds at homeschooling conferences are drastically different than the families who attended the conferences before COVID. What he was observing was a new wave of families who have […]
Trigger Warning: The Post You are About To Read Contains Viewpoints That May Create Emotional Discomfort for Cult Practitioners of Safetyism
In this post, I’m going to get right to the point. We’ve all seen those articles, videos, and other media that begin with a trigger warning similar to the one in the title of this post. Perhaps you just assumed some well-meaning do-gooders at the executive level thought it would be helpful to warn their […]
A Primer for Becoming a Lifelong Learner
The Great Conversation is a spirit of inquiry applied to the Great Books—the best that has been thought and written in the Western tradition.
Book Review: Uprooted by Grace Olmstead
Uprooted, is foremost a memoir about homesickness…a deep and personal exploration of that “ache for presences past, for the souls that animated and embodied our most beloved memories of homes.
The Three R’s: The Essentials of an Educated Person
I want to use whatever good I learned as a boy— I can speak and write, read and count—and I want these things to be used to serve you. – St. Augustine of Hippo
To Whom Will We Pay Our Respects?
The struggle for who controls the educational worldview of the next generation is at the heart of the culture war in every generation. For example, in the early twentieth century, Adolf Hitler notably focused on the education of the German youth in his attempt to create the Aryan man who would populate and propagate his […]
J. R. R. Tolkien’s First Car
In a previous post, I noted that Tolkien had a particularly adversarial disposition toward Machines. In his book, J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography, Humphrey Carpenter recounts a humorous anecdote about J. R. R. Tolkien’s personal relationship with one kind of Machine, the automobile.
J. R. R. Tolkien: Modernity, Magic, and Machines
Anyone who has spent much time reading Tolkien’s fiction knows he struggled to reconcile with modernity and the resultant effects of technological progress on the human condition. Having served in WWI as a Battalion Signalling Officer at the Battle of the Somme until a severe illness took him out of the trenches, he witnessed firsthand the brutality of modern killing Machines.
Holy Saturday: The Day Jesus Went to Hell
Over the Weekend, I published a two-part series called Holy Saturday: The Day Jesus Went to Hell on my Substack. You can read both posts using these links.
Two Methods for Overcoming Writer’s Block
There is no legitimate reason for writer’s block. Hemingway said, “All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Nevertheless, the phenomenon is real.
The Art of Stretching: What Do You Have in Your Hands Right Now?
The American Dream carves out a very narrow path to well-being. It sets expectations and shapes behaviors in ways that convince people to chase after things they might not need or want, while overlooking the costs of this pursuit.
Unstupiding Ourselves: The Truth About the High Calling of a Classical Christian Education
In 2022, esteemed Psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, made the case that a particular change in the way social media worked made the past 10 years of American life uniquely stupid. Drawing from the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, Haidt accurately describes a nation that is suddenly disoriented and unable to speak the same language […]
Clues That We’ve Been Schooled
For more than a century now, Americans have been unwittingly shaped by the American public education system. But wait, you might be saying! We’re a homeschooling family. Our children have never been in a public school. How is it possible we have been shaped by a system in which we have never participated? That’s a […]
What Grading Trends Reveal About Failing State of Modern Education
The A-F grading scale has been the most commonly used system for teachers for more than 100 years. It came into widespread use because it was considered a “scientific” approach to grading. In an article written for the Washington Post in 2003, Stuart Rojstaczer, a Duke University professor, provided a distressing report which showed that up […]
The Price of Leisure
In Zena Hitz’s essay, “What is Time For?,” she makes the case that leisure requires something of us. In a Substack post last year, where I reflected on Josef Pieper’s Only the Lover Sings, I treated the idea of leisure and the important role it plays in our lives—it is that for which we do […]
The American Dream: A Commonplace Idea
The American dream that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of merely material plenty, though that has doubtless counted heavily. It has been much more than that. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as […]
G. K. Chesterton on Artificial Intelligence
G. K. Chesterton, a prominent figure in Christian humanism and a profound thinker of the early 20th century, was known for his insightful observations on various aspects of human existence. While Chesterton did not directly comment on artificial intelligence, his philosophical and theological perspectives offer valuable insights into what he might say about AI if […]
Is Bitcoin Evil?
Bitcoin will ultimately fail for the same reason our paper money is currently failing. Both are a pseudo-currency and neither are founded on work—which is what made the gold standard a viable economic foundation. The US dollar is little more than free-floating, fiat money with a strong proclivity toward inflation. It’s been in that condition […]
Preliminary Thoughts on School Choice
What I have to say here are by no means my final thoughts on the subject of school choice initiatives. As a matter of fact, I’m not sure what I’m sharing here could even be considered “complete thoughts” because they’re still brewing. Perhaps, you can just think of this post as being akin to the […]
Happy New Year 2024
The New Year excites the emotions of most people, but for different and various reasons. For many, it’s the excitement of the New Year’s party. One poll conducted back in 2019, surveying more than 2000 participants, concluded average working Americans between ages 23-38 were willing to spend more than $220 for an evening of partying […]
The Meaning of Christian Humanism
Since most readers immediately associate “humanism” with secular or atheism, I suppose this wildly incorrect assumption needs some unpacking. No matter how commonplace the modern understanding of humanism has become, I would contend that the secularism or atheism so many associate with humanism is “cut-flower”—the blossom of humanism plucked from its organic stem, Christianity. After […]
Prufrock: Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?
As we continue our journey unpacking The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, you may enjoy listening to Anthony Hopkins read Eliot’s poem. As was seen in the last post about the poem, time is a central issue for Prufrock. It is only in the last five lines where he is contemplating having time to […]
Good Teachers Need to Become Good at Teaching
There is a troubling irony in education. Teachers who are adept at stimulating thoughtfulness and creating learning opportunities for students in the classroom frequently struggle to use those same skills to teach the public at large. For the teacher who immediately responded to this assertion by saying to him or herself, “Yeah, but who am […]
Prufrock: A Time for Everything Under the Sun
The first three lines of the next stanza connect it with the previous one by use of the feline-like yellow fog reference: And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; Like the feline imagery of the previous stanza, this one is entirely […]
Prufrock: Yellow Feline Fog
In case you’re just tuning in, I’m on a short quest to slowly unpack T. S. Eliot’s “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and see if we can’t gain some access—even if basement-level access—into his poetic corpus. Why, you might ask? Because according to Russel Kirk, Eliot was the principle champion of the moral imagination […]
Is Prufrock a Bottom Feeder in the Underworld?
Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent These lines imply they are in a part of the city where the monotonous streets subtly lead one deeper into the abyss of debauchery. The import of imagery seems characteristic of the Vieux Carre, in New Orleans, or of Greenwich Village, in New York City. […]
The Uneasiness of Modern City Life: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, the muttering retreats The lines “Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,” indicates the narrator has moved from prompting his companion to go with him, to guiding his companion to a certain end. There seems to be echoes of Dante’s Virgil who let him through the nine concentric […]
A Melancholy Meditation: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Let us go then you and I. When the evening is spread out against the sky. Like a patient etherized upon a table; In case you’re new to our merry band, and have only recently subscribed, I’m writing a short series of posts on T. S. Eliot’s, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” in […]
An Impotent Messenger from the Underworld: The Epigraph of J. Alfred Prufrock
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero, Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo. If I believed my reply were to one that was ever to return to the world, this flame, […]
What’s With This Title: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
In a previous post, I introduced T.S. Eliot’s poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and promised to try and pry a basement window open and provide some low-level access to the poem’s meaning. In this post, we’ll simply investigate the poem’s title. There are two primary aspects worthy of consideration in this initial […]
Basement Window Access into T. S. Eliot’s Poetry: An Analysis of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an abandoned house in possession of notoriety for being haunted, must be in want of young boys seeking adventure. So, in kind, is the poetry of T. S. Eliot. It continues to attract curious intruders more than a century later. Many literary adventurers are brave enough to scale […]
The Year of the Dragon: An Homage to Southern Gothic and Flannery O’Connor
It was during the 2011 release of their fourth full-length studio album, The Reckoning, when I discovered the music of NEEDTOBREATHE. They had just finished a two-year tour promoting their 2009 album, The Outsiders, and were coming into their own as an Americana-style rock ‘n’ roll band. At the expense of being weirdly personal, I […]
Words Make Us What We Are in the World
Ultimately through our own use of words, we come to be what we are in the world, for good or bad… Through the concert of heart and mind tuned by true words, we may move beyond our individual, separate aspirations and become aware that we hold humanity in common; so then we have a common—that […]
Skills Pay the Bills
It is not uncommon to hear someone condemn liberal education as being a financial bust, an exercise in futility toward the goal of gainful employment. After all, skills pay the bills—literature and poetry don’t. Cartoonist, Steve Breen, epitomizes this modern cynicism toward the liberal arts and humanities in a 2012 frame for San Diego’s Union […]
Another Primer on Christian Humanism
One of the failures of thought among some of the modern Reformed is the tendency of that some to absolutize the biblical vision for God’s glory. That is, this school of thought asserts the drama of world redemption was played out for God’s glory alone. Understood rightly, this is absolutely true. However, the redemption of […]
The Sound of Sputum
The voices have reached a fever pitch. They’re no longer just faint static or the hum of a radio left playing in the background; they’ve grown from that to indistinguishable murmurings fading in an out of earshot to the constant dull roar which now occupies the foreground of every facet of life. Whispered and shouted—and […]
On Modern Health and Fitness Culture
Nothing can make you believe we harbor nostalgia for factory work but a modern gym. —Mark Greif I’m writing this post on Labor Day even though you won’t be reading my words until long after the sun has set on the Central Labor Union’s annual national festival for affirming the glories of factory work and […]
Don’t Smile Until Christmas
To heed or not to heed the old adage, “Don’t Smile Until Christmas!” That is the question. Likely, you’ve heard this familiar advice sometime in your teaching career and wondered if it was sound or even possible. You may be asking yourself, Should I really hide my human side and keep things “all business” until the first […]
My Hope for Exploring and Teaching Christian Humanism
My hope for exploring and teaching Christian humanism is that it will revive an interest in the humanities amongst contemporary Christians and transform our understanding of the significant influence Christian humanism has had on Western society. In the modern world, it is often purported that there is a conflict between the Church and the Academy. […]
Human Beings First
In a recent podcast interview I was asked to explain the difference between Christian Humanism and “straight up” Christianity. I don’t recall exactly how I answered the host, but in short, I asserted that true humanism stems from Christianity, particularly as it is expressed in the incarnation. This is because the incarnation was a miraculous […]
Don Quixote and His Agreeable Delusions for Chivalry
Like many books that already I should have read, Don Quixote had been neglected for far too long—Tsundoku and everything. I am now reading Cervante’s hilarious novel for the first time and am immediately tickled by the Jared and Jerusha Hess comedic style (Nacho Libre and Napoleon Dynamite definitely come to mind). Lines such as […]
Probing Identity
Contemplating place, as I did recently, also conjures thinking about identity. What do they have to do with each other? We know humans are sacred in that we have been created in the image of God, imago dei. But we also know we have been desecrated by sin. But if, as a Christian, our sins […]
Pound the Stone
While serving as Police Commissioner of NYC, Theodore Roosevelt once called Jacob Riis “the most useful citizen of New York.” Riis was a police reporter for the New York Tribune, where he photographed and wrote about NYC’s worst slums; as a result, he became a prominent social reform advocate. His success in producing substantial, albeit […]
For Contemplation: Sacred and Desecrated Places
The second stanza of Wendell Berry’s poem, “How to be a Poet,” says, Breathe with unconditional breath the unconditioned air. Shun electric wire. Communicate slowly. a three-dimensioned life; stay away from screens. Stay away from anything that obscures the place it is in. There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated […]