Governance « TeacherLore

Intelligent Desire

What young people need are compelling visions of who they are, where they, what is worth believing, what is worth admiring, and what is worth choosing. They need an education in desire. . . . → Read More: Intelligent Desire

Teaching ignobility

It’s harder for teachers now than it once was to get students to consider what Odysseus turns his back upon and what he opens his heart toward. The classics teacher has always faced the intellectual docility of youth, but the work of revealing and naming the ideals that formed this civilization was once backed . . . → Read More: Teaching ignobility

Why things fall apart

If it is true that paper and pencil tests along with common educational research methods leave out much that should concern us because many important things are difficult to measure simply and efficiently and with high levels of validity and reliability, and if it is further true that our choices of what is in the curriculum is driven by what we test and measure, then it follows logically that the schools we are building will ignore much that should concern us. . . . → Read More: Why things fall apart

Truth and its envious imitators

I think an important question for teachers today is why intellectuals from the mid-twentieth century on have labored so hard to mystify and problematize truth. It’s a real question and I think there are true answers that are worth understanding. The answers are not immediately obvious though to those who have been subjected to years of ideological indoctrination. . . . → Read More: Truth and its envious imitators

The culture of public schools

Rather than our schools acting in the light of the best of our cultural and intellectual heritage, the schools themselves have been transformed into purveyers of pop culture. Pop psychology, cable news journalism, politically correct posturing, junk science and low-grade social activism provide the basis of much of the discourse in the hallways, the classrooms, and the board room. . . . → Read More: The culture of public schools

Could we restore a liberal education?

As we neglect the importance of the soul, our language becomes “more abstract and technical, using words like input when what is really meant is opinion. Language becomes less attuned to the personal longings of the being who loves, dies, and is open to truth about all things.” Without steady replenishment from the ancient writers, who were “all about the soul,” we become a people among whom “poetry, and philosophy will lose ground.” . . . → Read More: Could we restore a liberal education?

Teaching amid time, change and the invisible world

The most powerful education is not driven by markets or election cycles. Instead, it aims passing on cultural knowledge that has taken centuries to build and that will remain useful even after our business partners change and our transportation systems are re-invented. It’s okay that cultural mores and institutional practices change more slowly than markets. That’s their job. “Don’t hurry,” should be the motto inscribed over every schoolroom door. But also, “Don’t stop. Don’t waste time.” Schools should primarily be caretakers of the slow knowledge we call wisdom. . . . → Read More: Teaching amid time, change and the invisible world

I could not have imagined this

Young people, and not only they, “have studied and practiced a crippled eros that can no longer take wing, and does not contain within it the longing for eternity and the divination of one’s relatedness to being.” This eroticism is sated, sterile, lame, and “is not the divine madness that Socrates praised.” . . . → Read More: I could not have imagined this

Toward a New Story for Schooling

Any community that gathers and preserves its own stories is contributing, in the most fundamental way possible, to the world’s educational value, and students are learning how the world works, how things come into existence and how they pass away. The sense of historical inevitability so common in textbooks–that things turned out as they had to or as they were supposed to–is replaced by an understanding of the freedom of characters to act and react. They learn better how much our destiny is in our hands, which is, after all, why education matters. . . . → Read More: Toward a New Story for Schooling

Comparing V for Vendetta to 1984

McTeigue’s choice of state-run Christian fascism as the source of villainy seems itself more like propaganda than serious art. In brief, the main danger to freedom in Europe now is the same as it was when Orwell wrote: the drive of socialism to progressively increase the depth and breadth of its control. By making the danger out to be Christianity, McTeigue goes along with what the socialists have always said. . . . → Read More: Comparing V for Vendetta to 1984

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