Whither the Public Library?
Despite constant speculation about public libraries’ “relevan in the digital age,” and serious budget cuts caused by the recent recession, the American public library...
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...
The Uselessness of Liberal Education: An Apology
It is necessary for the perfection of human society that there should be men who devote their lives to contemplation.
--St. Thomas Aquinas
The trouble with...
Paleoconservatism in Middle Schoolers: a Deeply Flawed Qualitative Study (sample size:...
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,...
An Athenian Coup, or Slapstick Bedtime Story?
For tonight’s lesson, I said to my ten-year-old, tell me how the first democracy was created.
“Sure,” she said, remembering our lessons past. “It was...
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...
On Commencement Addresses
Holland, MI
It is graduation season. On campuses across the country graduates will be subject to the last compulsory and least remarkable rite of passage:...
Shared Governance and Mandatory Training: The New Incoherence
So long as gravity obtains, sawing off the branch you’re sitting on is never a good idea.
In Search of the Real Coolidge
Our interest in historical subjects says as much about our society as about the subjects themselves. The growing interest in the life, thought and...
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,...