Teaching at a time when civilization is in such obvious disarray and such marked decline imposes even more stringent and pressing obligations on the teacher. I have reached the conclusion that what American teachers must do is really very basic: Teach young men and women how to read and write, how to imagine beyond themselves, [...]
What’s “imaginative?” What’s “conservative?” And how does the adjective modify the noun and the noun support its adjective? My first and last care is not politics but education. Education seems to me inherently conservative, being the transmission, and thus the saving, of a tradition’s treasures of fiction and thought. But education is also inherently imaginative. [...]
Following the Way of Goodness and living in the Life that is true Beauty is absolutely essential. The deepest contemplation of great truths and even the Truth Himself is ultimately worth nothing if it does not issue in action and love. Congratulations, Trinity class of 2022! You are finishing something extraordinary. And when I say [...]
Nikole Hannah-Jones is right and wrong. Although the first slaves arrived in Jamestown in 1619, the year and the event carry less significance than she imagines. Although neither deceptive nor careless, she is uninterested in facts in a conventional sense. Her principal objective is not to understand the past but to rebuke the present and, [...]
Commencements always make us sentimental, but somehow this unexpected convergence of the meandering of a river and the perfection of the circle struck home to me almost as an allegory for our graduates. Last week, the 37 graduates of the Class of 2022 at Wyoming Catholic College walked across the stage at the Lander Community [...]
It has been through books that Americans have been infused with what loosely can be called a “common culture,” a common way of experiencing our world and our place in it. We can at least say that one sign of personal impoverishment is the inability to experience the emotional elevation that comes through reading “real [...]
Tradition! Tradition! Sing it like Tevye. We all know that not all traditions are healthy or good or right. Fiddler on the Roof, much as I find it entertaining, strikes me on every viewing as just a bit too much in the spirit of the 1960s in its glee at razing traditions sensible or no. [...]
A true, life-giving education is an education that recognizes and embraces a world filled with goodness, truth, and beauty. It is also an education that requires virtue from those who undertake it. Editor's Note: The following is an abridged version of the commencement address that Joseph Pearce gave to the graduating class of 2018 at [...]
Your world needs you; it needs your desire to understand it, your openness to what it has to teach you, your acceptance of its imperfections, and your sincere wish and best efforts to be useful to it because you care for it as it has cared for you, however unconscious that care may have been. [...]
My mother’s unrelenting message to me was: Keep your head, keep your feet planted on the ground, muster courage in the face of the ambiguous and the unknown, do what is in front of you, and by all means possible take care of your responsibilities. I’ve had more vaccinations for more virulent diseases than most [...]
Patriotism—the love of place, countrymen, and local traditions—lasted for millennia, until replaced by nationalism, which we believe is a natural outgrowth of tribal life, instead of an invention of Western Europe. I sat through elementary school not knowing that to guarantee new generations of virtuous and patriotic citizens, the French Revolution established the first comprehensive [...]
The “liberal” in “liberal arts” has traditionally and rightly been understood to refer to freedom in several ways. In a classical context the liberal arts rescue us from banal pursuits. In a religious context they deliver us from earthly bonds. And in a modern context they set us free from inherited prejudices. Editor’s Note: This [...]
When liberal education is forgotten, we grope our way into that antagonist world—if you will, from space to anti-space, into Milton’s “hollow dark.” Our term “liberal education” is far older than the use of the word “liberal” as a term of politics. What we now call “liberal studies” go back to classical times; while political [...]
Sherrard Billings, one of the three founders of Groton School—and the American Mr. Chips—did his part to develop good and wise habits among the “Grotties.” Through his own life of suffering, he taught them to how to live, pursue the truth, love the good, and pass on wisdom. The Groton School The New [...]