On Faculty Development

“It is entirely possible for a history teacher to enjoy his students, grade them highly on tests he thinks sufficiently challenging, vary his content and delivery a bit from one year to the next, and still be no good at his job. Or for a literature teacher to cover all the books in the curriculum, enjoy lively conversation with the students several times a week, grade them highly on tests he thinks sufficiently challenging, and yet be a failure as a classical educator. It’s pleasant to think that a few in-service lectures every year about leisure and contemplation will transform mediocre teachers, but that is simply not how human beings change. What mediocre teachers need is for someone who knows what they’re doing to observe them for several days, take notes, and then tell them, “You’re doing this all wrong,” explain why, and then they need to spend several days watching someone do it properly.”

-from How To Fix Your Faculty Development Program from the upcoming Gibbs Classical Online Summer Conference (July 8-9)

Person First Language

In the last several years, the zeitgeist has begun insisting on “person first language,” and so it is now fashionable to say “enslaved person” instead of “slave,” “person with a mental health condition” instead of “mad man,” “person with autism” instead of “autistic,” and so forth.

I have no interest in commenting here what I think of this fashion. I would simply like to suggest that Christians begin insisting on the term “fetal persons” or “unborn persons” whenever possible.

Enough Is Enough: I Am Banning Water Bottles From The Classroom

“As with the fidget spinner fad, our “need” for water bottles has a tissue-like connection to “science.” I put that word in quotes, because the science behind our need to “stay hydrated” is even thinner and more tawdry than “the science” behind wearing two masks. Remember that one? Most of the people claiming it’s important to “stay hydrated” are simply repeating something they heard a friend say over brunch.

I also put quotes around “stay hydrated” because “staying hydrated” is no longer about drinking a reasonable amount of water every day. “Staying hydrated” is now a euphemism for bringing a titanium punch bowl to class and loudly microdosing fluid every ten minutes. How much water is a student sipping from his punch bowl over the course of an hour? Four ounces? Six? Eight? At present, he is drinking this water in the most distracting, obnoxious manner possible. If he wants to “stay hydrated,” let him drink eight ounces of water between classes. Let him drink a pint of water at lunch.

Be reasonable. If you’re going to argue water bottles are necessary in the classroom, how did we do without them for centuries? How did we do without them fifteen years ago? What sort of problems have we eliminated since bringing water bottles in the classroom? Every teacher can certainly tell you about the problems we’ve created since bringing them in.”

-from my latest for CiRCE

You Can Ban Smart Phones And Social Media At Your School And Remain Solvent

Last night, I had dinner with Frank Chilbert, the lower school principal at Mainline Classical in Bryn Mawr, PA. He told me that Mainline Classical did not allow students to have smart phones and neither were students permitted to have social media accounts while they were enrolled.

Have a look at their website. It can be done. Do a little digging and you’ll see it can be done really well, in fact.

Roe V Wade And Mid-Level Christian Intellectuals

This week, mid-level Christian intellectuals the nation over are trying to decide whether to say anything on social media about the fall of Roe. The options are to say nothing about it or to say something positive about it.

For most mid-level Christian intellectuals (10k followers to 100k followers on Twitter, say), saying something positive about the fall of Roe is going to mean significant blowback. Perhaps as much as a 5% audience decline. For such intellectuals employed at universities, the blowback will be even more intense.

These same intellectuals are also tempted to say nothing. The justification for saying nothing is gymnastic: “It’s not a sin to say nothing. The Bible actually says more about the importance of silence than the importance of talking. Besides, I’m really not political. I really try to stay out of political discourse and the fall of Roe is obviously political. I may have made comments about political stuff in the past, but all the political stuff I have commented on has a cultural angle, as well, and I’m really more on the cultural end of things than the political end of things. Besides, a soft answer turns away wrath. I need to pause, say nothing, and really meditate on what to say here. I may have immediately written responses to politi-I mean cultural events in the past, but this is one I really want to linger over before speaking. I need to come up with something conciliating, something peaceful, something…urbane, something that will get pro-choice people to really think. There’s no sense dogpiling on them.”

Thank God Roe has fallen.

Molly Drake Is Sublime

Jon Paul introduced this record to me on a recent trip to New York City. At times, it sounds like Jules Massenet’s Les amoureuses sont des folles, at times it reminds me of Anne Briggs, at other times it sounds like nursery lullabies.

It is fascinating to think of Nick Drake listening to these songs, all originals, when a child.