Education & Liberal Learning

Accreditation to the Rescue (for real?)

Hillsdale, Michigan. I am a little late to the surge of 1s and 0s in response to Peter Conn's less than tepid essay about...

Public Schools, Local Schools, Family Schools

Yesterday was the final day of the school year at Peterson Elementary School, the public school which three of our four daughters have attended....

There’s Equality, and There’s Equality

In one of my favorite movies, John Ford's How Green Was My Valley, a family of coal miners is faced with the prospect of...

The Liberal Arts and the Educational Technology of Language

THE PRESIDENT HAS AN ASSIGNMENT FOR YOU: This is what the bold text on the whitehouse.gov website tells us as it proudly heralds a new...

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...

Community among Academics: An Economist’s Retrospective

Two weeks ago I spoke to an orientation program for new faculty at Pepperdine. I shared with them what I had been told at...

On Killing (Chickens)

Hidden Springs Lane. Last weekend the deed was done. Having acquired 25 chicks in the spring (they were free) it soon became clear that...

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...

Everywhere at Once, Nowhere at All

“Right now, the main thing I’m taking from this conference is that PowerPoint is destroying the educational process.” The conference, organized around the theme of...

Life Under Compulsion: Play and No Play

In East Bangor, Pennsylvania (pop. 800), there’s a little diner named for the trolley that used to take people to the once bustling steel...