The Blackboard
A Dress Code for Democracy
How school uniforms foster a common life in an age of fragmentation.
More Articles in The Blackboard
My Father’s CV
Reading for the shape of a life can be medicinal, especially when we allow that life to diagnose and heal ourselves. And maybe then that understanding can encourage doctors of all kinds–but…
Dante’s Virgil as a Guide for College Professors: Insights from Inferno
Students sometimes come to us in crisis, but always they come from a world filled with challenges and are with us only for a season. We could do far worse as professors…
Nothing to F***ing Cheer About: Preserving Moral Authority in Public Education
Preserving moral authority in schools would truly be something to cheer about.
AI, Misinformation, and Manual Arts Training
It’s said that seeing is believing. And even sleight-of-hand may be caught in the act if you watch closely enough. But things began to change with the use of computers to produce…
Academic Joy
After years of research, I have developed a three-stage teaching method that breaks new ground in pedagogical theory: Stage 1: Pay attention. Stage 2: Be astonished. Stage 3: Tell about it.
Getting Our Feet Wet: Education from Down in the Creek Bed
The unspent beauty of nature that Hopkins saw has much to teach us even if we’re not always paying attention. But paying attention is always better.
Craft and Theology: The Reason
The frictionless existence we were promised, one that freed us from slavish obedience to place and tradition and family bonds, turns out to be one in which we amorphously float about in…
A Renaissance is Upon Us
In this piece, I turn from the abstract idea of the marriage between the outer world of work and the inner world of the spirit to centers of education that are midwifing…
Craft and Theology: The Renaissance
It almost feels heretical to say that at the center of our religion, indeed our existence, is a God that can be wounded and broken, but this is precisely the Christian claim.…
The Art(s) of Liberation
None of us gets to choose where we land. But if we cannot choose the times in which we live, we can choose how we live in the time we are given.…
The College Diploma Shakedown
The aim is to get young people, of all backgrounds and races, on their feet with as little fuss and expense as we can, regardless of whether their families can afford the…
An Empty Room of One’s Own
There are things that a full room can do for us. It can reassure us. It can offer comfort. It can offer luxury and pleasant distractions. A full room can be cozy…
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