Herman Melville’s (very) short story, “The Lightning-Rod Man,” should be required reading for anyone who consumes the daily news. It rings with modern relevance despite being published in 1854. In the story, we meet a homeowner who lives in a mountain region in Albania known since ancient times as Cape Thunder. He is enjoying a […]
We classical educators tend to be a bookish lot. We like Cicero and Shakespeare. We like Latin and Greek. We like musty bookstores with alleyway entrances in Edinburgh. We use a picture of the library at Trinity College Dublin as the desktop background on our computers. We like traditional school uniforms and Gothic arches. We […]
In 1704, Jonathan Swift wrote a tongue-in-cheek story about the battle between ancient and modern books— between the proponents of a broad education that includes literature and history on one side, and the proponents of what would be the equivalent today of an education focusing on science and math and engineering and technology. The quarrel […]
“I wish people would be more blunt with me,” my son said. “What do you mean?” I asked. Michael continued, “If they’re tired of talking with me, I wish they would just say so.” Subtleties escape many of us, but individuals with significant brain differences seem uniquely prone to missing social nuances. When teaching character […]
Literature stands in intimate relationship with each of the arts, but its closest relationship is with music. The purest form of this relationship involves a composer’s timeless desire to take a poem, wrestle with it, and turn it into a song. Yet what about the novel? Can a complex narrative be transformed into music? The […]
In a country in which everybody goes to school, it may seem absurd to offer a defense of literacy, and yet I believe that such a defense is in order, and that the absurdity lies not in the defense, but in the necessity for it. The published illiteracies of the certified educated are on the […]
Education, it has been said, should knock windows into the world for us. We are born into a closed and darkened room: As the windows are opened, we see, here, man, with all his character and capacities, experiments, endless achievements, and possibilities, there, the material world itself, the elements that compose, and unexpected laws that […]
Tears streamed down my face and I whooped for joy when the text came in. I had spent the morning alternating between busyness and prayer, trying not to pester my husband about the results of our son’s American Kennel Club Junior Hunt Test. Accustomed to achievement falling just out of our son’s reach, my heart […]
My mother was a quiet person. Her childhood copies of Heidi, Little Women, and Anne of Green Gables became mine. As an equally quiet child, such books gave me courage. I felt like Clara but admired the sturdy legs of Heidi. I sympathized with Beth but thrilled with Jo. I held the tenderness of Diana […]
Children’s literature could save the world. I believe that. Stories and books are the primary means of passing culture on to children and have been for countless generations. If we claim to want authority over our children’s education we should refuse to relinquish the privilege of educating them to technology in our homes, cars, and […]