Reformation

Every movement acknowledges that there are people not yet in the movement who ought to be.

But it must also acknowledge there are people within the movement that ought not to be.

If classical Christian education is a movement, we must confess that too much time has been spent on the former and too little time spent on the latter, and the need for the latter grows exponentially every year.

Unless we are nominalists, we must admit that not every school which claims to be classical is actually classical. Claiming to be classical does not make one classical.

This is a troublesome thing to say, for it means making painful divisions, tough calls, borrowing from the Against The So-and-So’s spirit of late antique Christianity. It means contracting, not expanding.

The temptation is to believe: “There are people inside who don’t belong, but we will bring them to the point they do. And we will fiscally benefit from those who don’t belong in the meantime.”

But this makes the movement unattractive to the people who do belong. Bad money drives out good money.

In my mind, the race is on to be the first school that claims openly, unapologetically, in no uncertain terms: “So far as classical Christian schools go, being Republican does not make you missionally aligned.”

As the number of applications to classical Christian schools rise on account of this Fox News documentary, this will become a harder and harder message to present.

Boundless Respect

“People are all more or less materialists today, for they are the heirs of the nineteenth century. They need only be shown some crude mimicry of ‘mental’ events in nature or in instinct, and they will fancy that the ‘mental’ has been explained. It is whatever is lower that we take to be more real.”

-Denis de Rougemont, Love in the Western World

Denis de Rougemont is better at explaining modernity than Rene Girard.

Faking It

A feigned care for the poor has brought as much suffering on the world as poverty itself. It is not a sin to be poor, but it is a sin to pretend to pity the poor, and the wages of sin is death.

Five Questions To Ask Every Teaching Candidate

“By now, there is little point asking teaching candidates to write a personal philosophy of education. Anyone who has spent ten minutes browsing classical school websites can cobble together an adequate series of statements about virtue, the “image of God,” and the seven liberal arts. Here are five better questions to ask.”

-“Five Questions To Ask Every Teaching Candidate” is my latest for CiRCE

Does Handwriting Matter?

“Student: My handwriting is naturally messy. I can’t help it. It isn’t fair that you graded me down on this week’s essay simply because my handwriting was messy. I can’t help it. Besides, don’t my ideas matter more than my handwriting?

Gibbs: What do you mean your handwriting is “naturally messy”?

Student: No matter how hard I try, my handwriting is messy.

Gibbs: How much practice do you get handwriting?

Student: I don’t practice handwriting. Nobody in high school practices handwriting. That’s for little kids.

Gibbs: You don’t practice your handwriting, but you’re positive your handwriting couldn’t possibly get any better?”

-from “Grade My Ideas, Not My Sloppy Handwriting,” my latest for CiRCE