“‘What would you do if everyone let you?’ is actually the same question as ‘what are you actually trying to accomplish?’ But such thought experiments are dangerouis because they require that we postulate a frictionless world, which is not the world we live in. Thus it is all too easy to drift off into utopian …
Why the Bait Hides the Hook
“One proverb expresses the principle well. He who takes the king’s coin becomes the king’s man. If we receive money from the government, we must know that the money comes with conditions. Today the conditions might be tolerable. In fact, they will certainly be tolerable because otherwise the bait would not hide the hook. But …
When Education is too Narrow
“But the danger is that their education can become little more than reading. When they come to take their SATs, they discover that their verbal scores are stratospheric, and their math scores give the impression that the test was taken by a rock that was having trouble holding the pencil” (The Case for Classical Christian …
Embodied Education
“But one of the glories of education is the opportunity to hear the truth come out of a human being with blood in the veins and air in the lungs, and not just off a printed page” (The Case for Classical Christian Education, p. 198).
Ford and Chevy
“We tend to bond to all the wrong things. Picture a four-lane highway, two lanes headed to heaven and two lanes to hell. Alongside one another, a Ford and a Chevy are driving to heaven, and on the other side of the road a Ford and a Chevy are heading the other way. If the …
Classrooms Are Normal
“I want to defend the Christian classroom as a normal and appropriate way to teach children, one that has been used for millennia by covenant parents and that should not be rejected for modern ideological reasons. Covenant schools were common before the time of Christ. The classroom can (and often should) be rejected for practical …
Taught or Entertained?
“This means work on the part of the pupil. The entertainment model goes in the opposite direction. When the student is entertained rather than taught, he is in an oxymoronic way being aroused to passivity. Good teaching awakens in the student a desire to learn” (The Case for Classical Christian Education, p. 193).
Eschew Prolixity
“The teacher must stoop in order to teach. She has to step into the language known by the students in order to expand the power and extent of that language . . . Nothing is accomplished if big words whistle over the children’s heads” (The Case for Classical and Christian Education, p. 192).
The Mind Must Close On Something
“Education is not mere ‘data transfer.’ We are not moving around ones and zeros. The student must think . . . The receiving mind is not a bucket into which the teacher drops things” (The Case for Classical Christian Education, p. 192).
Except What It Means
“Young people today are desperately trying to vandalize the image of God that they carry about, despite themselves, in their bodies. God gave long hair to women as a glory and a covering — showing that the Lord is near — and yet bewildered, unprotected, and lost women now cut their hair with hedge clippers …