Parents Keep Filling Up Schools Where Children Learn to Love Western Civilization

Parents Keep Filling Up Schools Where Children Learn to Love Western Civilization by Mark Bauerlein at The Federalist. The growth of classical education schools is astonishing. The numbers keep rising; there is no sign that the movement is beginning to plateau. Schools open, networks are created, charters are authorized, and kids fill the seats. One would think that as more spaces are available the (supposedly) small number of parents who favor the classical way would be satisfied and demand would diminish. Read

Educating for Freedom by Peter Mommsen at Plough. Peter Gray (interviewed in this issue), a professor of psychology at Boston College, argues that the alarming rise in anxiety and depression among children and adolescents is tightly linked to the disappearance of opportunities to play freely. What’s caused this loss, he observes, is ironically the good intentions of modern parents and educators to protect children through constant supervision and to maximize the educational value of how they spend their time through adult-controlled activities such as early academic learning or youth sports. Yet this deprives children of fulfilling a natural need. He argues that humans evolved to learn skills and gain trust and independence through play, just as other young mammals do. Read

The Wonder of History by Andrew J. Zwerneman at Cana Academy. Aristotle teaches that all learning begins in wonder. How do we apply that observation to history? There are two chief responses. On one level, we wonder about what happened in the past and how we can know what no longer exists. On a second level, we wonder about why and how the past means so much to our lives now in the fleeting present, looking toward the uncertain future. Below are four questions that express those two kinds of responses. Read

Manliness Needs to Make a Comeback by Alvaro de Vicente at The American Mind. Regarding the education of American boys, the news of late seems rather bleak: our boys are struggling in school. As Richard Reeves of the American Institute for Boys and Men points out, 45,000 fewer boys than girls are graduating each year from high school, amounting to a gender gap of 6%. The gender gap in higher education is even wider, with young men earning only 42% of the degrees. In the average school district, according to Reeves, boys are almost a grade level behind girls in English language arts. Read

Teens Can't Get Off Their Phones. Here's What Some Schools Are Doing About It by Claire Murashima at NPR. Teachers NPR spoke to about phone use in class say students' inattention and social isolation was made worse during the pandemic. "It just got to be really exhausting to deal with phones on a case-by-case situation," high school English teacher Emily Brisse said. "Nobody goes into education in order to become the phone police. We want to be able to focus on our content." Her school in Golden Valley, Minn., was among those that implemented a phone ban in recent years. Right after it went into effect, she noticed students were more engaged and some admitted in feedback forms they appreciated it. Read

The Ninth Circuit Upholds Parental Rights in Religious Education by Charles J. Russo at The Catholic World Report. The Ninth Circuit, in Loffman v. California Department of Education unanimously handed down a strong rebuke to the California Department of Education and Los Angeles Unified School District in a dispute over parental free exercise rights to direct the religious education of their children. Reversing an earlier order to the contrary, the court reinstated the plaintiffs’ request to enjoin California officials from enforcing a ban against permitting parents of children with disabilities to send them to “sectarian” schools because state law only allows public funds to cover all costs in “nonsectarian non-public schools.” Read

Keep the Faith: How Holy Family High School is Changing the Conversation on Campus by Clare Kneusel-Nowak at Denver Catholic. The Encounter events are part of a larger movement at Holy Family called Ut Fidem (Latin for “keep the faith”), a grass-roots style, student-driven small group ministry that aims to draw students into deep and lifelong encounter with Christ. Students interested in deepening their faith and friendships form small groups, meet weekly with a mentor for an hour and engage in intentional formation through prayer, Scripture studies and community building, all of it centered around the Eucharist. Read

Throwback Thursday

Catholic Culture: Living with the Saints by ICLE Staff at The Institute for Catholic Liberal Education on July 25, 2018. What are we doing? In today’s confusing, demanding world, Catholic educators must frequently ask this question of themselves. Standards, tests, mandates, accreditation, programs, parents, students, board members, pull us this way and that all the time. But what is our goal? How can we steer a consistent path to that goal? In today’s pluralistic society, Catholic schools have a unique goal – to pass on wisdom. Read