In late January, the San Francisco Board of Education declared that schools named after such people as Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin Roosevelt, and even Dianne Feinstein would be renamed. They said that such people were problematic and had ties to a variety of racist incidents. […]
Simply speaking, literature works with the mode of thought most natural to the human mind—that is, thinking in images, comparisons, characters, speeches, and actions. Every household of parents and children has a cast of distinct characters whose various performances become stories in the family. Our five-year-old grandson Andrew, for example, though a domestic terrorist by [...]
In the current battle for the classroom between traditional literature and overt propaganda, #DisruptTexts and its allies attack Shakespeare for hate speech. But is Shakespeare promulgating hateful rhetoric? Or is he thinking deeply into the dramatic situation of racial and religious conflict in the Mediterranean world to reveal the human heart in conflict with itself? [...]
“The Heart of Culture” traces the success of Western education, rooted in the very nature of Western civilization as a historical “clash and combination” of Greek culture and Judeo-Christian religion. It is the perfect book for parents, teachers, and administrators who are dissatisfied with modern education but don’t know why. The Heart of Culture: A [...]
The anti-religious spirit of modernity is so antagonistic to the idea of a unifying truth that it prefers a meaningless education to an education informed by the underlying meaning inherent in the truth-claims of religion or philosophy. And this, according to G.K. Chesterton, is not really education at all. “It is typical of our time,” [...]
The “woke” crowd is now intent on tossing out Homer’s “Odyssey” and challenging classical literary tradition. They want to inculcate a Jacobin uniformity of belief in the minds of future generations. How much easier will it be to recast history in the rigid terms of oppressor and oppressed, of exploiter and exploited, when no one [...]
John Dewey believed that education is synonymous with instilling progressive ideas into the consciousness of the child, and that the purpose of schools is to indoctrinate the young and construct a communist society. These are the foundations for disaster. For a hundred years the American education system has been married to the philosophy of John [...]
Joseph Epstein’s life and writing exemplify the ideal essay writer’s tendency to be a humane generalist rather than an academic specialist. Aiming at well-roundedness, the essayist also becomes freed from vogue words and jargon, a bad influence against which Mr. Epstein campaigns vigorously and wittily in “Gallimaufry: A Collection of Essays, Reviews, Bits.” Gallimaufry: A [...]
Samuel Johnson unfolds his thoughts not on dry philosophical subjects but on practical themes: the common virtues needful in everyday living and learning and behaving. His words are both honorable and useful, and he is a valuable companion on the undergraduate journey. The following is an advising memorandum addressed to undergraduate students. Perplexed and undecided: the [...]
Latin, as the primary historical language of erudition and learning in the West, is the sole gateway into the halls of Western thought and humanistic learning. Without the use of this language, we can hardly know ourselves, and certainly not the road that brought us to the modern day. As the old year ends and [...]
“Education is the movement from darkness to light” –Allan Bloom The city was empty, cold, and dark, yet at one point I sensed it was beautiful. It rose in the distance like a mighty mountain. Its presence was cold. I do not mean cold. I mean cold. Every building in the city was a faded [...]
As St. John Henry Newman explains in his book “The Idea of a University,” education is the process by which a mind is formed not just to learn facts and ideas but to be able to think about how they are connected. And when Newman gives an image for that process, he points toward a [...]
Radicals believe schools are instruments of power, but such schooling is false and a corruption of the thing itself. Radical schools are not bad schools; they are ideological shams pretending to be schools. Genuine schooling is oriented toward truth and cultivates wisdom and virtue. According to Russell Kirk, “to the radical—communist, or fascist, or socialist, [...]
There are certain tools that can help in the writing process. Think of a keyboard, for example, as the equivalent of a rock musician’s guitar. Just as a musician would only want to perform before an audience with a quality guitar, a professional or serious writer will definitely want to invest in a good keyboard. [...]