Thoughts On Sheltering Children

“The world stands to have a far tighter grip on teenagers than it does on little children, and yet many parents I speak with basically give up on governing their sons and daughters around 8th or 9th grade.

They give them phones and video games and glumly report at parent teacher conferences that their children are addicted to them, as though the situation is fated, futile, hopeless.

What is odd, though, is that these same parents give their children food and clothing and beds and a home to live in, but worry about “sheltering” them.

If you shelter a child’s body, you need to shelter that child’s soul, too. If you shelter a child’s body because they’re not old enough to do it, then the child is certainly not old enough to shelter its own soul.

Parents, the fact that teenagers are too old to spank does not mean the most difficult part of your work is over. If you do not help your children develop good taste, they will develop bad taste. At seventeen, you should still be telling your sons and daughters, “Don’t listen to that. It’s wretched,” and, “Don’t watch that. It will rot your soul.””

-from the lecture I’m giving for Classical Academic Press tonight, which you can register for here

One Of The Most Generous Poems

Christmas Party At The South Danbury Church

by Donald Hall

December twenty-first
we gather at the white Church festooned
red and green, the tree flashing
green-red lights beside the altar.
After the children of Sunday School
recite Scripture, sing songs,
and scrape out solos,
they retire to dress for the finale,
to perform the pageant
again: Mary and Joseph kneeling
cradleside, Three Kings,
shepherds and shepherdesses. Their garments
are bathrobes with mothholes,
cut down from the Church’s ancestors.
Standing short and long,
they stare in all directions for mothers,
sisters and brothers,
giggling and waving in recognition,
and at the South Danbury
Church, a moment before Santa
arrives with her ho-hos
and bags of popcorn, in the half-dark
of whole silence, God
enters the world as a newborn again.

Thoughts On Homework

“The teacher who does not use class time well—the teacher who only needs five minutes to account for all the material a sick student missed in a sixty minute class—has no right to ever assign homework. Teachers who want their students to live full, rich lives have to steward their class time better than that.”

Register for my December 6 lecture for Classical Academic Press here.

One Good One

It would make for an interesting list: Wretched Bands That Have One Uncharacteristically Lovely Song.

I think “Blackmail” lovely. There’s nothing else in the Swans catalogue that sounds anything like it. The rest is all lip-curlingly awful. But this one, this one is something else.

When Is A Standing Ovation Warranted?

“When the standing ovation is thought permissible for any and every performance which wins the heart of the audience—even a lot of first graders doing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”—the performers are likely to be disappointed and even insulted in the future when a more reasonable audience offers more modest praise. But great praise ought to be reserved for great performances of great art, which is a difficult lesson for the audience to learn, as well. If the standing ovation is reserved for Hamlet and Beethoven, the theatergoer who only enjoys new works must admit to himself that he doesn’t have taste which is good enough to stand for anything. And yet, his desire to stand for something may drive him to develop better taste and thus help keep classics alive.”

-from my latest for CiRCE, When Is A Standing Ovation Warranted?

Dear

In the last several years, it seems that the conventional greeting “Dear” has become stigmatized, and so emails now begin, “Hey Josh,” “Hi Josh,” “Hey there,” “Hey,” “Hi ya Josh,” and so forth.

Really, though, we should all use “Dear.” Unless you’re in fourth grade, “Dear So-and-So” isn’t a sign you’re in love. It is fitting when speaking to a man or a woman, young or old. “Dear” isn’t meaningless. It’s fond, formal, dignified.