Socrates told us to get out of the cave. Teaching literature forces us to get back in. This is good for us. Many of the teachers who fill humanities positions in classical schools are philosophy majors who have not really studied literature as literature. They may have read the philosophical chapters of some books, “The […]
Teaching Literature: A Guide for Confused Philosophers Read More »
This essay is a test. Classical schools claim to value logic. Logic, we say, is how one learns to find the truth. Logic is a prerequisite for rhetoric; we must know how to find the truth before we can persuade others of the truth. In practice though, logic seems to bear very little weight in
The Logic of Womanhood Read More »
I ask my students: “Is it ridiculous to imagine Heaven seeming bland? Can we imagine ourselves choosing Hell? Heaven is eternal joy, we have been told: how could it be so boring?”
Telling Our Students They Won’t Like Heaven Read More »
At the end of this school year, I made the mistake of making 15 middle school papers due the same day final course grades were due. This left me about 30 minutes after school to rapidly grade these papers. Normally, assessing 15 papers would take me 2-3 hours. I like to read the papers thoroughly
My Grading Does not Teach My Students Read More »
The following is the 2020 middle school graduation speech from St. Monica Catholic School, Mercer Island, WA. If you are anything like I was when I finished 8th grade, you will almost certainly not pay attention to the speech I’m about to make. I hope you are better than I was. When I was in
You Are The Fruit of Your Labor Read More »
As I sat at my desk one evening grading papers, I got stuck on a poem. It was the final paper in a stack I’d been working on for nine hours. I stared and stared at it. I read it aloud once, twice, three times. I counted the syllables in each line. I wrote out
The Comments Should Be the Assessment Read More »
