For the moment you wake until the moment you leave the house. I have made it a collaborative playlist, so after you get the vibe, feel free to add to it.
A List Of The Most Meaningless Words
Passion
Impact
How To Not Raise Egotists
“There’s a certain sort of teenager who simply cannot appreciate the fact that adults—specifically teachers and parents—are reasonable, feeling human beings who respond in realistic ways to insult, abuse, slight, and offense.”
-from How To Not Raise Egotists, my latest for CiRCE
Miyazaki On “Let It Go”
“That song ‘Let it Go’ is popular now. It’s all about being yourself. But that’s terrible. Self-satisfied people are boring. We have to push hard and surpass ourselves.”
-Hayao Miyazaki in Never-Ending Man
The Space Race
Thirty years ago, the most readily identifiable icon of the space race was Neil Armstrong, a reserved and dignified man who observed a brief communion service with Buzz Aldrin while they were on the moon.
Today, the most readily identifiable icon of the space race is Elon Musk, who named his child “X AE A-XII” and got high on the Joe Rogan Experience.
The comparison reveals quite a bit about “science.” Not real science, I suppose, but the sort of thing which passes for science in the news cycle, White House press briefings, NPR’s Science Friday, TED talks, Bill Nye’s Instagram account, and the sort of classrooms where “Science is fun!”
How To Not Be Shallow
“You are not too young to begin paying close attention to the world, to others, and to begin asking yourself, ‘What do joyous people have in common?’
You are not too young to pay attention to the words and deeds of your friends and ask what sort of adults they will become if they continue down their current paths.
You are not too young to pay attention to the pious adults in your life and ask how they got there, how they became pious.
And neither are you too young to look at miserable adults and ask how they became miserable.
As an adult who is nearly 40 years old, and as an adult who has been teaching high school for sixteen years, I will say that very few of the miserable adults I know became miserable because their grades in school weren’t good enough. Rather, most of the adults I know who are miserable, whether they are “saved” in the common evangelical sense of the word, or Baptist, or Presbyterian, or Catholic, or Orthodox, are miserable because they never learned profundity of spirit. In short, they are miserable because they are shallow.”
-from a lecture I am giving to Orthodox youth this weekend at The Saint Emmelia Orthodox Christian Homeschooling Conference
How To Avoid Grading Burnout
“While teachers are apt to chide students about writing papers the night before, many teachers also procrastinate when it comes to grading and returning papers. Students who write their papers the night before rarely do great work, but teachers who attempt to grade forty essays in four hours are rarely doing great grading either.”
-From Grading Hacks for Humanities Teachers, my latest for CiRCE
Finally Something New
I have never (ever) heard anything like this. Uncanny, unearthly, overwhelming.
Something new is almost always something old.
To Grade Or To Edit
At the moment, I am going over the first draft of my next book, which has been copiously marked up with red pen by the editor. The following thought occurred to me (during my ninth hour of looking over the proposed edits):
Many teachers fill student papers with editorial marks and corrections, indicating that a certain word should be capitalized, or that a comma is needed, or that a certain sentence is awkward or needs to be rephrased.
However, there is no point in putting editorial marks on student work if the student is not asked to go back and fix them. If the teacher does not require corrections should be made and the work resubmitted, it is a waste of time to point out how things ought to be different.
Bad Taste Is Its Own Punishment
“Modern beliefs about politics, church government, democracy, and so forth are all neatly and appropriately reflected in modern literature, modern music, and modern liturgies. We do not deserve a better culture than the one we have. Every culture is perfectly suited to the music it produces, the churches it builds, and the poems it writes. We cannot lament our inability to build a fitting sequel to St. Peter’s Basilica without simultaneously lamenting our complete lack of a theology that might compel us to do so.”
-from Love What Lasts, out later this year
