Burn All the Schools

Introduction: H.L. Mencken once suggested a shrewd educational reform that has somehow not caught on. He said that there was nothing wrong with our current education establishment that could not be fixed by burning all the schools, and hanging all the teachers. Now some might want to dismiss this as an extreme measure, but visionaries …

The 9 Pitfalls of Homeschooling

Introduction: Before getting into this, please allow me to say that there will be a follow-up and parallel post on the pitfalls of traditional classroom instruction. This is a post of pastoral cautions for parents, not an exercise in pedagogical partisanship. I have been involved in the work of education for almost forty years. And …

On the Propriety of Saying โ€œExpel His Assโ€

This last week we spent some delightful time in Pittsburgh, as we attended the 25th annual conference of the ACCS. In the course of my plenary talk there, I said a few things about what our schools are facing now, and are going to be facing in the near future, now that the sexual revolution …

The Classical Christian Option

In his next chapter, Rod Dreher spends a good bit of time singing a song I am very familiar with, and he says many good things. The cultural key is education, and what Dreher urges is, from one standpoint, very heartening. โ€œThis is why we have to focus tightly and without hesitation on educationโ€ (Loc. …