A School Is Only As Classical As Its Teachers

“There is a very real sense in which all the headmaster’s work comes down to the work his teachers do in the classroom. Delivering a classical education is like a relay race. The board runs the first leg, the headmasters runs the second, the curriculum runs the third, but the teacher runs the final leg. If the teacher is not classically minded, everything else was for nothing. A very strong teacher can (sort of) make up for a weak curriculum, a daft motto, a risible mascot, indifferent parents, and ugly buildings, but there is nothing which can make up for a weak teacher.”

-From my latest for CiRCE

Lecture Needs Discussion; Discussion Needs Lecture

The modern educator draws too neat and stiff a distinction between lecture and discussion. A good teacher lectures during discussion, discusses during lecture. The line which separates the two is not nearly as neat as we think.

Lecture is the authority of the teacher; discussion is the autonomy of the student. Obviously, these things need each other, even as God gives Job autonomy but does not hesitate to lecture Job.

Some Art Warrants A Generous Audience And Some Does Not

“In the first few years I wrote for FilmFisher, I believed a position of lenience and generosity toward a work of art was necessary to truly understand it. However, while I was writing generous film reviews, I was also teaching Dante and Jane Austen, and eventually I came to the rather obvious conclusion that it was unreasonable to grant the same hearing to Transformers 3 that I offered to The Divine Comedy. Some art warrants a generous audience and some art does not. A book which has survived a seven-century long vetting process and boasts universal acclaim cannot be evaluated on the same terms as a blockbuster film wherein a lingerie model doubles as an actress and alien robots destroy a major US city.”

-from tonight’s lecture, “How Should Christians Watch Movies?”

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Sentimentality Makes Life Harder For The Weak, Not Easier

Over the last twenty-five years, smoking rates are down and suicide rates are up. This must have something to do with the rules of discourse which surround either subject. If we spoke of suicide as bluntly as we speak of smoking, suicide rates might go own, as well. And yet, the more common suicide becomes, the more squeamish Christians are to condemn it.

Book No. 6

“Student: But I have taken personality tests before and found them helpful.

Gibbs: What would you say to a person who claimed to find horoscopes helpful?

Student: I would want to know how horoscopes were helpful.

Gibbs: How was the personality test helpful?

Student: The test told me about myself.

Gibbs: Did you, by any chance, tell the test quite a bit about yourself first?

Student: I suppose so.

Gibbs: So you answered some questions about yourself and then an algorithm said you have quite a lot in common with Stephen Hawking, Winston Churchill, and Rosa Parks?

Student: You make it sound so tawdry, but it made me feel quite special.”