There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity.

“The Veritas awards ceremony is only one hour long, students dress in their formal uniforms, and it is the very last thing which happens in the school year. When I say “the very last thing,” I mean the academic dean prays at the end of the awards ceremony and then says, “Alright, have a great summer!” After that, there’s no lockers to clean, no textbooks to return, no nothing. There’s a loud cheer and everyone adjourns to the quad to say their goodbyes. In this, our awards ceremony banks on the importance which every real beginning and every real end has. Almost all holy days (Christian, pagan, secular) mark the beginning of something or the end of it. When an awards ceremony is the actual factual last thing which happens in the school year, everything which happens during the ceremony has greater heft. The ceremony is the formal operation by which the year is closed out. When the ceremony is held with three days of school left, the actual end of the year is anticlimactic. Students depart a math exam one by one, mill around the hallway a moment, say, “I guess that’s it,” and then walk home or wait to get picked up. The school year really ought to end on a moment where everyone assembled together. It ought to end with honor given, honor received, prayer, and joy.”

-my latest for CiRCE

If you’d like to listen to a sprawling interview I did with Thomas Magbee of Classical Stuff You Should Know about Love What Lasts, it’s available now. This interview was all kinds of fun to do and I’m grateful for Thomas, who has always been generous when reviewing my work.

“Teacher: Discipline should be painful. By its very nature, discipline is painful. If it’s not painful, it’s not discipline.

Dean: But who should discipline be painful for? We could have kicked Elliot off the soccer team, but that would have been painful for the team. I don’t see what good it does to punish the soccer team for something one player did.

Teacher: You know that the game of soccer itself works that way, though, right? If a player gets a red card, they’re kicked off the field and their whole team suffers?

Dean: That’s different.

Teacher: If a father of four is driving drunk, gets into a wreck, and kills someone, should he not be sent to jail because it would mean “punishing his kids”?

Dean: That’s different.

Teacher: It’s not.

Dean: It is.

Teacher: It’s really not.” 

-from my latest for CiRCE

I was a guest on this week’s episode of Tsh Oxenreider’s A Drink With A Friend. We discussed Love What Lasts, which is arriving in mailboxes this week. It was a very fine conversation. Have a listen here.

“Graduates, I’d like to let you in on a little secret. If you had attended half as many graduation ceremonies as I have, you would not be excited for the speech I’m about to give.

There’s no kind of speech in all the world so full of cliches and platitudes as a commencement address. Some of the worst speeches I’ve ever heard were commencement addresses. What made them so bad wasn’t just the cliches and platitudes, but the lies.

Granted, it’s a very particular kind of lie you’re apt to find in a commencement address, but it’s a lie nonetheless.

What kind of lie? Flattery.

There’s just something about the commencement address—the setting, the occasion, the audience, the time of year—that tempts adults to say things to young people that sound really good but just aren’t true.”

-from the 2023 Mirus Academy Commencement Address, which I gave last weekend

You can find out more about Mirus Academy here.

“Given ChatGPT’s sudden, unforeseeable intrusion into our lives several months ago, teachers and administrators across the country have spent the latter half of the school year playing catch-up—and, from most accounts I’ve heard, they have been roundly defeated. We now have the summer to sort out what policies we’re going to put in place next year which will keep us from getting our classical Christian butts kicked again.

Here’s the thing, though: ChatGPT is a huge boon to the classical Christian world. Why? Because it’s going to force us all to be more classical. For starters, it’s going to mean fewer five-paragraph essays assigned as homework. There’s no assignment in the world more overvalued than the five-paragraph essay. Actually, ChatGPT is going to mean less homework in general, which is going to force teachers to use their class time better. It’s going to mean more oral examinations, more memorization projects—it’s going to mean less work which involves laptops.”

-from my latest for CiRCE