One of the most common modern beliefs is that science is rational while religion is not. This dogma has been asserted again and again, most loudly by atheist thinkers. I say “asserted” rather than “argued” because, like most dogmas, it is never actually argued for, only assumed. It is simply repeated, again and again, almost […]
By Susan Pearson “You are come to the very edge of the Wild, as some of you may know. Hidden somewhere ahead of you is the fair valley of Rivendell where Elrond lives in the Last Homely House… And so at last, they all came to the Last Homely House and found its doors swung […]
One hot Missouri June when my children were very young, we decorated our front porch with a large white container of flowering impatiens. The pink and red petals with deep foliage cheered our doorstep. At the time, I knew that impatiens needed shade, but I hoped they would thrive in the full sun like other […]
Given as the Opening School Ceremony address for Highlands Latin School’s 2016-2017 school year, August 29, 2016. Welcome, parents, teachers, and students, to the 2016-2017 academic year. It is a joy and privilege to address you at the beginning of this, our seventeenth year. We thank God for this sultry summer morning, for Highlands Latin […]
God blesses some of us with vision and with lives of clear purpose and meaning— and to some of us he adds the time and opportunity to accomplish what we have been given to do. The life of Cheryl Lowe, Publisher at Memoria Press and Headmistress of Highlands Latin School, was this kind of life. […]
I guess it’s because I’m starting to get old (some would say I’m already there), but with each succeeding Christmas I think more about what has become of the holiday. There is, of course, the problem of the secularization of Christmas. The “War on Christmas” that we have heard so much about in recent years […]
We late twentieth and early twenty-first century Americans are the first people in history who do not know poetry. Every civilization prior to our modern American civilization has read and heard and memorized poetry. This was still done in schools when I was young. We use poetry to a certain extent every day, of course, […]
In Walter Isaacson’s 2008 biography of Albert Einstein, he quotes the great scientist as saying, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Einstein was certainly an example of this maxim, with many of his scientific discoveries having resulted from his own thought experiments. But this maxim applies even more so to the newest object of Isaacson’s […]
In a blog post published at her website, “The Argument Against Raising Well-Rounded Kids,” homeschool writer Penelope Trunk argues, well, against raising well-rounded kids. I myself am in favor of raising well-rounded kids. In fact, not only am I in favor of raising well-rounded kids, I have actually done it. And one of the things […]
One of the things a logic student learns is that, of the 64 possible kinds of arguments (also called syllogisms), only 19 of them are valid. Let’s take the most common argument form of all: PREMISE #1: All flowers are plants (A) PREMISE #2: All roses are flowers (A) CONCLUSION: Therefore, all roses are plants […]