"Moreover, a refusal to discipline teaches students to treat the education being offered with contempt. The students will certainly despise any education that the educators themselves hold in contempt. And if parents and teachers refuse to discipline, they are holding in contempt … [Read more...]

"I was once speaking with a mother who was wanting to excuse her son's behavior because of certain circumstances which she believed were rigged against him. I did not agree with her, but her assumption led to an interesting question. She believed that her son was living in a … [Read more...]

"This difference in student ability is one of the reasons why our government school debacle is not a whole lot worse than it already is. Even though most schools do not teach phonics anymore, some students are bright enough to teach themselves phonics -- but of course these are … [Read more...]

"Whenever we use the language of praise and blame, in this lumpy and uneven world that praise and blame is invariably distributed in uneven amounts. And for an egalitarian, such unevenness is always 'unjust,' or 'unfair.' Because it is unfair and because modern educators are … [Read more...]

"And as this generation of children has grown up in an environment of institutionalized excuses, it is supremely ill-equipped for maturity. Not surprisingly, many adults are now insisting on bringing their baggage -- in the form of notes from their doctor -- along with them. We … [Read more...]

"If it is our schools which are 'teaching disabled,' the symptoms of this lack would still be visible primarily in the students and not necessarily in the schools or teachers. When a doctor is incompetent, it is the patient who dies" (The Paideia of God, p. 17). … [Read more...]

"In our postmodern culture, the polytheism inherent in the diverse culture can certainly accommodate one more clown in the circus ring. What they cannot accommodate is a true alternative, which is starting to take shape. Christians have not presented a true cultural alternative … [Read more...]

"I want to argue here that it is not possible to fully provide 'the paideia of the Lord' outside the context of a Christian civilization. If this is the case, then Paul's command to the Ephesians, when they did not live in a Christian culture, just as we do not, means that he … [Read more...]

"And this situation illustrates the nature of our dilemma. Suppose for a moment that some prophet had come out of the wilderness in 1958 and predicted that within a generation one-fifth of the children enrolled in our schools would be doped into docility. The prophet would, of … [Read more...]

"If we bring this down into the present in order to illustrate what it would mean to us, paideia would include the books on the bestseller lists, the major newspapers, the most popular sitcoms and networks, the songs on the top forty lists, the motion pictures seen by everyone, … [Read more...]