The Growing Use Of Classroom Catechisms

The use of classroom catechisms has become widespread enough, my name is no longer attached to the idea. I learned the other day that there are classical institutions out there offering tutorials on authoring and implementing catechisms. Apparently, there is sufficient demand for catechism-oriented consultation that others are offering it.

For what it’s worth, I was positively delighted to hear this. In the event you would like to speak with me about it, I do offer hour long and day long consultations. But really, catechisms aren’t my idea. They’re just an old Christian idea.

Karl Marx On “Fiscally Liberal, But Socially Conservative”

“The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.”

-Karl Marx, The Communist Revolution (Penguin, p 243)

In other words, Marx didn’t believe a man could be “fiscally liberal, but socially conservative.” If you’re game for a new way of distributing wealth, you’re game for a new way of doing everything. “Where your money is, there your heart will be also.”

A Proposition For Fellow Teachers

One of the reasons there is so much acrimony about grades is because a 0 to 100 scale is way too broad. If you hate grades as they are, and I know you do, imagine how much less you would hate them if every grade was issued on a 1 to 3 scale. Suppose also that the final grade a student received (for the year) was not an average of all the earlier grades, but determined separately on a 1 to 3 scale.

The Love Of Learning Is Not A Virtue

“Thoughtful Christians rightly lampoon the vagueness and insipidity of secularist slogans like “Love is love” and “Be yourself.” And yet, to “love learning” is just as vague. Love learning what? When a certain student does not do his math homework and spends Latin class flirting with the girl beside him, the problem isn’t that he “doesn’t love learning,” it’s that he doesn’t love learning math and Latin, or that he doesn’t love his teacher enough, or his parents. He absolutely loves learning other things, though, like how to make a TikTok video that will go viral, or what sort of attention the opposite sex will most readily respond to. I can absolutely promise you the boy wants knowledge.”

-from my The Love Of Learning Is Not A Virtue, my latest for CiRCE