Category Archives: CiRCE Links

“No doubt, you people have wondered why it’s necessary to tell me eight or nine times a week, ‘Trent, tuck in your shirt.’ You must complain about it in the breakroom. One of you probably says something like, ‘I had to remind Trent to tuck in his shirt again today,’ and then someone else says, ‘So didContinue reading “A High School Boy Explains Why He Keeps Untucking His Uniform Shirt”

Teaching Burke’s Reflections for the fifteenth time, the term “moral imagination” finally became clear to me. I’ve only begun to unravel the idea, but early sketches can be found in the latest episode of Proverbial.

“You attend a classical education conference this summer and, while perusing the speaker biographies in the conference program, you come across the following: “Harge Manning is the founder of the Diluvian Consortium, a group of Christian thought leaders who specialize in dynamic vision forwarding, cognitive missional flexibility, core value development, servant viral marketing ethics, and integratedContinue reading “After The LinkedIn TED Talk Bros Came to Classical Education”

“The badness of the show is easy to see twenty-four years later, and yet it’s not exactly true that it has “aged poorly.” Raw meat ages poorly, but the 2000 Halftime Show was quite, quite rancid on the day it aired—and this was obvious at the time to anyone who had even a modicum ofContinue reading “The Worst Super Bowl Halftime Show Of All Time”

“A little more than half way through Plato’s Republic, Socrates says something that’s bold, honest, and dispiriting enough to send even the heartiest of high school teachers on a two-day bender: “Compulsory intellectual work never remains in the mind.” He means exactly what you think he means. You can’t force someone to learn anything theyContinue reading “Compulsory Learning Does Not Stick”

“The Grinch can’t steal the thing that bothers him most about Christmas, which is the singing, but he can steal everything else—and in stealing everything else, the Grinch is fairly sure he’s going to steal their singing, too. He’s going to prove them all a bunch of hypocrites. While the Grinch never makes a wagerContinue reading “The Enduring Appeal of “The Grinch””

The latest episode of Proverbial is committed to the only real proverb which concerns Christmas.

“My suspicion, then, is that as mankind gains more and more control over nature, we will need Christmas to begin earlier and earlier. If we are impatient, we are impatient to escape the atheistic world of time in which modernity has trapped us. “So,” sneers the grinch, “you’d prefer Christmas to begin in January? IsContinue reading “I Will Justify The Ways Of Christmas To Man”

“Americans have so many things that a certain kind of book has lately proliferated which is expressly designed to make readers want to get rid of their things, and to feel good about it. Simplicity and minimalism are hot ticket non-items this year. Of course, minimalism is really just another kind of thing you buy.Continue reading “Decluttering Your Way To Hell”

“First, your work needs to be typed, printed, and stapled in the top left corner. Second, you need to use the Calibri font and may not mess with margins. Third, the paper itself needs to be pristine. If it’s wrinkled at all, I won’t accept it. Seriously. Fourth, your work needs to be signed byContinue reading “How Do You Test On That?”