Author Archives: William Kirk Kilpatrick

Why We Tell Stories

“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.” So begins Dickens’ David Copperfield. It’s a wonderful passage and immediately confirms Dickens’ reputation for having captured the “feel” of childhood as few others have. The dream of […]

Moral Illiteracy and the Case for Character Education

Moral Illiteracy and the Case for Character Education

In After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre observes that in all classical and heroic societies, “the chief means of moral education is the telling of stories.” In a real sense the heroes of the Iliad and the Odyssey were the moral tutors of the Greeks. Likewise Aeneas was the model of heroic piety on which young Romans […]

How to Teach Virtue

virtue

Why Telling Stories to Our Children is the Best Kind of Character Education … In After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre observes that in all classical and heroic societies, “the chief means of moral education is the telling of stories.” In a real sense the heroes of the Iliad and the Odyssey were the moral tutors of […]

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