There is one argument today that seems able to trump all others. It is not really an argument, though we tend to treat it as one, and it is one that is often considered definitive: “A study has found …” This phrase seems to many people to have an almost religious gravity to it, lending […]
There is a famous restaurant in Memphis called Rendezvous. It is down an alley off a sidestreet, with a small awning underneath a neon sign. You go in the door and down a couple flights of stairs into the basement, where you find tables with red and white checkered tablecloths and walls decorated with memorabilia—antique […]
One of the few books we had in our house when I was young was a set of World Book Encyclopedias. When you looked up something in the encyclopedia you first had to find the volume which housed all the words beginning with the first letter of the word you were searching for. If you […]
In his prophetic essay The Abolition of Man (1944), C. S. Lewis asked whether the triumphs of modern science “may have been too rapid and purchased at too high a price.” Already by the middle of the twentieth century, Lewis had sensed the threat that genetic engineering would pose to mankind, and he called for […]
It goes without saying that the greatest pleasure of books is in the reading of them. The reader who has learned to appreciate the exhilaration and heartbreak of Charles Dickens; the vibrancy of life and sweeping human vision of Leo Tolstoy; the human drama and poetic insight of Shakespeare; the whimsical humor of P. G. […]
Classical writings possess a distinctly concise wisdom. Rather than distant relics or dusty artifacts, these treasures instruct our children in our own time. When we want to introduce classical literature, Aesop is a good place to start. Aesop’s fables have long been considered “the ideal pedagogical vehicle, second only to the Bible when it comes […]
Memories of graduate school flood my mind these days. Those four years of coursework at the University of North Carolina marked the beginning of my life as a scholar. I had painfully figured out how to study as an undergraduate, but the fervid quest to learn, the burning desire to piece together difficult or obscure […]
Amidst the gushing river of popular culture, the turbulent climate of politics, media bias, and misinformation, the tornadic winds of modern educational theories, and the volcanic eruption of screens and technology, a pertinent set of questions exists: Why read literature? Of what value is literature? It is helpful to think about the role of literature […]
I usually enjoy planning for an upcoming school year, but last summer was different. Very different. For the first time the schedules of six school-aged children and a toddler stared back at me. All my children have various combinations of challenges: anxiety, attention, sensory, memory, emotional. With a family business and a homeschool ministry on […]
One of the most heartbreaking things I hear is fatigued resignation from a parent: “I loved the curriculum, but I gave up after the first few weeks of trying to make my child like it. Maybe he would do better with a non-traditional approach, like ‘discovery learning.’” Such a homeschooler has often spent months researching […]