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
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 Comments are closed  Character, Community-Centered, Desire, Family, Governance, Schools, Transcendence, What is worth choosing?  Education, Modernity, Philosophy, Transcendence Calypso’s island is a familiar place to most people. Many of us reached some island of relative peace and pleasure, compared to other places we’ve experienced. It isn’t what we set out for, but it’s better than it might have been, and who knows if there can be any more? One could settle. . . . → Read More: The enchanted cave, part 1 Comments are closed Character, Community-Centered, Desire, Family, Metaphor, Place, What is worth choosing? Education, narrative story, Transcendence 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 Comments are closed Ask, Character, Community-Centered, Desire, Explore, Governance, Narrative Environment, Readings, Transcendence Evil, Modernity, narrative story, Transcendence, Truth 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 Comments are closed Ask, Community-Centered, Desire, Essential Questions, Family, Governance, Narrative Environment, Transcendence, What is worth believing? Education, Transcendence, Truth 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 One comment - (Comments are closed) Ask, Community-Centered, Essential Questions, Explore, Listen, Narrative Environment, Place, Reflect, Research, Schools, Teaching, Tell Education, Honesty, narrative story, Truth The experience of the young is, increasingly, that every human attachment is basically voluntary. Life is all about designing oneself according to an ever-expanding menu of choices provided by an increasingly free, prosperous, and globalizing society. A choice, they’ve been told, is nothing more or less than a preference, and nobody can tell an . . . → Read More: Constructing a point of view 2 comments - (Comments are closed) Character, Community-Centered, Miscellaneous, Teaching Modernity, Story Conor Williams at Front Page Republic offers a critique of progressivism at this historical moment that might be useful to English teachers. He argues that faith in centralized bureaucracy has overwhelmed the progressive ideals of strong, democratic communities. This insight should resonate with teachers buffeted by the frequent dopiness of No Child Left Behind . . . → Read More: Has progressivism lost the path home? |
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