Education & Liberal Learning 87
Whither the Liberal Arts College? Or, Why Bloom’s Critique Doesn’t Matter
One sees signs of dètente in the academic wars that were highlighted by Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind. At a more reflective level this can be seen in…
Life Under Compulsion
In 1940, when the Nazis attacked their supposed racial kinfolk in Norway and set up a puppet government under the odious Quisling, the novelist Sigrid Undset fled to the countryside…
A Footloose Spring Day
On a gorgeous April Wednesday I am filling in as substitute homeschool teacher. We do arithmetic; we do a language lesson about adverbs and Emily Dickinson. Then—did I mention the…
What Was High School For Anyway?
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Twenty-five years ago today (I think; my memory is far from perfect) I graduated from Central Valley High School in Spokane Valley (then "Veradale"), WA.…
Getting the Garden Going, One Baby-Step at a Time
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] This academic year Friends University found itself wondering what to do with a plot of land, directly beside and behind some student dormitories. Through a…
Childhood without a Harness
Just a few days back, I arrived home to find a mound of muddy clothes at my front entrance and the sounds of children scampering from bath to bedroom (all…
Against Great Books
I make available, below, the text of a lecture I delivered in November, 2011, at University of Texas at Austin. My thanks to the Jefferson Center and Tom and Lorraine…
Frat Boys and the Household
If you follow college "culture" at all, you'll find little new or surprising in the recent discussions of the abusive hazing rituals at Dartmouth, or that the college and its…
Homeschool Community
As a homeschooling parent I'm continually frustrated by the difficulty of talking about why we do what we do. Homeschooling is nearly always portrayed as a flight from something: bad…
A Burke for Our Times
Edmund Burke was the greatest master of the English language, not even excepting Shakespeare. It is no doubt a startling claim, but one that I think is highly defensible. The…
A Burke for Our Times
In a wonderful article published here at FPR a few weeks ago, Jason Peters argued that a proper education ought to provoke a kind of spiritual or intellectual crisis among…
Egalitarian Elites and the Academic Dilemma
It doesn't take an acquaintance with Tocqueville to spot the flaws in many American claims about equality. Just go to school. You soon learn that an A paper is not…
Paleoconservatism in Middle Schoolers: a Deeply Flawed Qualitative Study (sample size: n=1)
The Regents, New York's public school state tests, are coming up in May, and so some of the time I've been spending with S, the fifth grader I've been tutoring,…
Call an Assembly: The First Duty
In The Supper of the Lamb, a delightfully odd book, Robert Farrar Capon suggests as an exercise in reality an extended session with an onion. “Once you are seated,” he…
Education and the Way Home
Holland, MI The recent dispute between Joe Carter over at First Things and various occupants of the Porch has already received a good deal of attention, but also demonstrated a…