About Gary W. Houchens

Gary W. Houchens, PhD, is Professor of Education Administration in the School of Leadership and Professional Studies at Western Kentucky University. A former teacher, principal, and school district administrator, he served on the Kentucky Board of Education from 2016-2019.

Educating for Wisdom

By |2023-08-31T19:08:38-05:00August 31st, 2023|Categories: Beauty, Books, Education, Truth|

David M. Steiner argues that American education needs a clear and organized focus on ethics, beauty, and academic rigor to achieve its core purpose of preparing students to seek what Aristotle called eudaimonia, or human flourishing. A Nation at Thought: Restoring Wisdom in America’s Schools by David M. Steiner (224 pages, Rowman & Littlefield, 2023) [...]

Conservatives, Liberals, & the Purpose of Education

By |2023-03-01T17:27:29-06:00March 1st, 2023|Categories: Books, Conservatism|

In "Conservatism: A Rediscovery," Yoram Hazony emphasizes the importance of living a conservative life: one in which duty, honor, and a deep respect for family, faith, tradition, and nation are the highest values. The classical purpose of education is about forming young people to be just such kinds of adults. Political philosopher Yoram Hazony’s latest [...]

The Divine Teacher

By |2022-10-30T08:16:04-05:00October 29th, 2022|Categories: Catholicism, Education|

Pope Pius XI’s "Divini Illius Magistri" is a manifesto for modern parents seeking to reclaim their rights as the primary educators of their children. Families and educators alike would do well to study and heed the pontiff's timeless wisdom. As far back as 1961, English historian Christopher Dawson was diagnosing a “crisis in Western education.”1 [...]

Is it Time for “Nationalist” Education?

By |2020-11-09T00:11:38-06:00November 8th, 2020|Categories: American Republic, Education, History, Liberal Learning, Nationalism, Patriotism|

Advocates of patriotic education would do well to embrace the nationalist elements of such an approach to learning. Doing so is fraught with challenges given the negative connotations of the word, but Yoram Hazony’s book, “The Virtue of Nationalism,” may be a useful resource for educators, policymakers, and historians. In response to historical revisionism and [...]

What Is Patriotic Education?

By |2020-10-12T09:07:17-05:00October 11th, 2020|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Education, History, Liberal Learning, Patriotism|

Patriotic education is less about the specific curricular concepts that are featured in American history classes, and more about a philosophical stance that informs our approach, one full of explicit values and assumptions. It involves an audacious faith in America and tells the whole story of our past, which includes the bad with the good. [...]

Is Critical Race Theory Racist?

By |2020-09-30T15:38:27-05:00September 30th, 2020|Categories: Community, Education, Equality, Ethnicity|

Critical theory bulldozes all the complexities of history, education, and communities into a world of good guys and bad guys, oppressors and oppressed. And in doing so, it makes it nearly impossible to deal with the actual issues of denied opportunities, prejudiced expectations, and instances of real racism that need to be addressed. Most Americans [...]

Memory & Hope: Restoring the Teaching of American History

By |2020-08-31T16:56:46-05:00August 31st, 2020|Categories: American Republic, Conservatism, Education, History, Hope, Liberalism, Progressivism|

The currently pervading approach to American history presents America in the worst possible light, distorting the full truth of our past and damaging our political health. Our K-12 schools need a restoration of temporal continuity, the key to revitalizing history and civics education that forms young people who both appreciate the gifts of the past [...]

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