Teach me to care and not to care.
Richmond Public Schools (RPS) students average almost five hours a day on YouTube, according to a Chromebook Usage Data report presented to the school board Monday night.
“I wish there was a great solution to this,” Richmond School Superintendent Jason Kamras said.”
-from a recent Channel 6 news story
I was the guest on the latest episode of Anchored to talk about my new pamphlet.
The pamphlet is entirely finished and will be available to purchase on Gibbs Classical in the next week.
In a Target parking lot…
Gibbs: Excuse me, sir. I know you have shopping to do, but I was wondering if we could speak for a moment.
Driver: About what?
Gibbs: About your bumper sticker.
Driver: Which one?
Gibbs: The one that says in very large letters, “My children receive a classical Christian education.”
Driver: What about it?
Gibbs: I should tell you now that I followed you a little ways because I wanted to ask you about it.
Driver: Yes?
Gibbs: Well, why are you sending your child to a classical Christian school?
Driver: Because a classical Christian education is concerned with reality. Public schools revolve around feelings and fantasy.
Gibbs: “Feelings and fantasy.” Yes, what do you mean?
Driver: A classical Christian education aims to align the student’s feelings with reality. Public schools teach students that reality should align with our feelings. It’s delusional.
Gibbs: Couldn’t agree more. A classical Christian education is interested in the truth, regardless of how we feel about it.
Driver: I see you know something about classical Christian education.
Gibbs: I do, and I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.
Driver: We don’t even know one another.
Gibbs: Sir, you either need to learn to drive like a reasonable adult or you need to remove that bumper sticker from your car.
-from my latest for CiRCE
“When it comes to the matter of sheltering and protecting, the modern parent cares far more about a child’s body than its soul. We are fastidious about sheltering our children from germs, sickness, and broken bones, but largely indifferent about protecting our children from lies, vulgarity, mediocrity, kitsch, banality, and perversity. A great many parents who insisted their children wear masks during the pandemic didn’t care that their children were spending hours every day on social media, despite the universally acknowledged detrimental effects of social media on young brains.”
-from “Just A Shot Away: How To Shelter Your Children,” my latest for CiRCE
Having seen a good number of these (and become even a little cynical about them), let me commend to you this video from the Holy Innocents School in Long Beach, California. Make sure you watch through the end so you can see “the scholar’s pledge.” It is good, strong, bracing stuff. I love it.
Did any 20th century author fail more miserably at predicting the future than Margaret Atwood?
“There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.”
-Francis Bacon
“How To Buy A Bottle of Wine” is this week’s episode of Proverbial. It’s my favorite episode since “Marvin,” which aired last Summer.
“Traditionally, sex has been a very private, secretive activity. Herein perhaps lies it powerful force for uniting people in a strong bond. As we make sex less secretive, we may rob it of its power to hold men and women together.”
-Thomas Szasz (1974)
I am only about half way finished with it, but with every chapter I finish, I can sense that Beware of Pity is creeping higher and higher on my list of favorite novels. It is presently up in the realm of Stoner and Strangers on a Train and might finish beside The Road and Till We Have Faces.
“Camilla: My new diary arrived in the mail today.
Gibbs: Before you start this diary, I’m going to lay down a few rules for how it can be kept.
Camilla: What are the rules?
Gibbs: First, your diary will not be a secret diary. I might pick it up and read it whenever I choose. Secret diaries encourage the worst and darkest sorts of thoughts a person has. Secret diaries are often filled with complaints, insults, and grievances with others. Why? A secret diary needs a reason to be secret, which means you will fill it with the sorts of thoughts you don’t want other people hearing, which either means confessing your own sins or the sins of others. A diary is no place to confess your sins, though, because a diary can’t forgive you. And it’s no place to catalogue the sins of others.”
-from my latest for CiRCE
There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity.