Born in Wonder: A Humanities Program Taught Us How to Change the World Through Literature

Born in Wonder: A Humanities Program Taught Us How to Change the World Through Literature by Walker Larson at Crisis Magazine. Something miraculous occurred during the 1970s at a university campus on the plains of Kansas. Scores of young students turned away from the heathenism they’d been raised in and embraced Catholicism. What precipitated this unlikely Christian renaissance at a secular university during a decade when millions were leaving the Catholic Church? The answer lies in a humble humanities course, the Pearson Integrated Humanities Program (IHP), led by three literature professors: John Senior, Dennis Quinn, and Franklyn Nelick. Read

Australian Study Finds ‘Lifelong Benefits’ to Catholic Education by Kate Quiñones at Catholic News Agency. A recent Australian study based on government data found that people who attended Catholic schools saw “lifelong benefits” across employment, health, and general life satisfaction. The study, released at the beginning of this month, found that Catholic school attendees were more likely on average to be employed and to earn higher wages than attendees of Australian “government schools,” with average wage differences ranging from 4% to 11%. Read

The Stages of Education by Jacques Maritain at The Imaginative Conservative. As to the principal stages in education, let us note that there are three great periods in education. I should like to designate them as the rudiments (or elementary education), the humanities (comprising both secondary and college education), and advanced studies (comprising graduate schools and higher specialized learning). And these periods correspond not only to three natural chronological periods in the growth of the youth but also to three naturally distinct and qualitatively determinate spheres of psychological development, and, accordingly, of knowledge. Read

The Power of Loving Parents: How Your Faith Shapes the Next Generation by Scepter. In his new book, The Upward Arrow: A Way of Holiness For Every Home, Fr. Colum Power explores what it means to raise children in faith, even amid the messiness of daily life. He calls it “holiness in the domestic battle”—the struggle to uphold the sacred amidst the secular. But here’s the truth: it is in the small, daily acts of faith that God works the most powerfully. Read

Hopeful Parents, Hopeful Sons by Alvaro de Vicente at The Heights Forum. As parents and educators, we hope—in the truest sense of the word—that our boys will become loyal, courageous, prudent, God-fearing men of service. We know that we cannot entirely determine this outcome for any particular boy, but we also know that our efforts are not futile. We hope for this outcome with the knowledge that our current culture presents many challenges to this end. And we can hope for this outcome because, while remaining completely aware of the facts about our present situation, we also perceive the intangible realities that are working for the good of our boys. Read

School Choice Soon Available to Half of US Kids, But How It’s Designed Is Critical by Jason Bedrick at The Daily Signal. School choice will soon hit a tipping point. If Texas enacts a universal school choice bill, as seems very likely, then more than half of K-12 students nationwide will be eligible for private school choice. Already this year, three states—Idaho, Tennessee, and Wyoming—have enacted new universal education choice policies or expanded existing ones to make all K-12 students eligible. Read

Why the Department of Education Has to Go by Emmett McGroarty at First Things. In the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress study (NAEP), math and reading scores were abysmal. Seventy-two percent of eighth graders were not proficient in math, and 70 percent were not proficient in reading. Writing for Pioneer Institute in 2020, education analyst Ted Rebarber observed that, since the nearly nationwide adoption of Common Core, “the total gain before Common Core was statistically significant and the total decline since Common Core [has also been] statistically significant.” Yet, despite disasters like Common Core, Goals 2000, and No Child Left Behind, the U.S. Department of Education sallies forth, happily taking citizen money and interfering in children’s formation. Read

The Upstart 'Classic Learning Test' Gets a Testy Welcome From the SAT by Vince Bielski at RealClear Investigations. A lobbyist for the College Board delivered a sharp warning to William Slater last month. She was not happy that the Tennessee Republican lawmaker had recently introduced a bill to allow the state’s public universities to accept the Classic Learning Test, an upstart competitor to the College Board’s famed SAT, as an admissions exam…The battle over the CLT reflects the profound forces transforming K-12 education. As growing numbers of Americans seek alternatives to traditional public education, an infrastructure of charter, private, and home schools has expanded to support them. The CLT, which grew out of the classical education movement, is a recent addition to that infrastructure, a bridge between high school and college. Read

Throwback Thursday

Apart from Our Mother Tongue: Math as a Language and the Results of Socratic Dialogue by Michelle Stevens at Circe Institute on January 3, 2024. Most new educators in the renewal community think of a Socratic discussion as a tool in the humanities, but as we see in the Meno, it is wise and good to use this tool in our math classes as well. Our students know these truths that math seeks to display. It’s written on their hearts. A teacher’s job is to guide them in their recollection. Too often in our classrooms, students are expected to simply mimic their teachers or their textbooks instead of being given the tools through language to recollect mathematics rightly. Read