Socrates Fights the Culture War

Socrates Fights the Culture War by Andrew J. Zwerneman at Cana Academy. The question, “How do I face death?” is an old one, as old as the beginning of Western letters when Homer’s Achilleus wonders whether it is better to die after a long peaceful life and end up forgotten, or die young in battle and be remembered forever. Since we all die, the question is a universal one as well. Plato’s Socrates came late in Greek letters, but more than anyone else among our Greek forebears his answer became normative for our entire culture. Since he answered under the constraints of a culture war in his time, and since we face our own cultural perils today, our answers should benefit from examining his. Read

The Truth Is in the Classics by Mark Bauerlein at First Things. The latest installment of an ongoing interview series with contributing editor Mark Bauerlein. Paul Krause joins in to discuss his new book, Finding Arcadia: Wisdom, Truth, and Love in the Classics. Listen

Training the Hand to Train the Mind and Appreciate Beauty by Robert Greving at The Heights Forum. When you take pen in hand and write a word, you do something approaching the divine. You are giving physical form to a thought. It is, in its way, an Incarnation. To do this with beauty and grace is to honor this Incarnation. This is penmanship. Read

All Flesh Shall See the Salvation of God: Advent Practices for the Classroom by Monica Clarke at The Institute for Catholic Liberal Education. Advent is both a new beginning and a waiting. At the same time that we begin a new liturgical year, we are waiting for the coming of our Savior at Christmas. And while it’s easy to get caught up in the flurry of activity that precedes Christmas, we are reminded by St. Luke that what we are preparing for is not a festive dinner, nor an exchange of gifts, but rather an event that is the source and principle from which all these beautiful and natural traditions flow…Below are suggestions to bring some of these practices into your classrooms and schools. Read

Trump Picks Linda McMahon as Secretary Of Education by Mariane Angela at The Daily Caller. President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he’s tapped Linda McMahon as the secretary of Education…McMahon previously served as the head of the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term, taking office in 2017 and stepping down in 2019 to lead America First Action, a pro-Trump super PAC, CNN reported. Currently, McMahon chairs the America First Policy Institute, a think tank she co-founded in 2021 with Larry Kudlow and other advisors from the Trump administration. Read

Ohio Legislature Passes Bill Requiring School Bathroom Use Based on Biological Sex by Kate Quiñones at Catholic News Agency. The Ohio Legislature approved a bill on Wednesday that would require students in public K–12 schools to use bathrooms that correspond to their sex rather than their subjective “gender identity.” The 74-page S.B. 104 would “enact the Protect All Students Act regarding single-sex bathroom access in primary and secondary schools and institutions of higher education.” Read

Texas Board Advances Plan to Allow Bible Material in Elementary School Lessons by Nadia Lathan at The Associated Press. Texas’ education board on Tuesday advanced a new Bible-infused curriculum that would be optional for schools to incorporate in kindergarten through fifth grades, one of the latest Republican-led efforts in the U.S. to incorporate more religious teaching into classrooms…The curriculum — designed by the state’s public education agency — would allow teachings from the Bible such as the Golden Rule and lessons from books such as Genesis into classrooms. Under the plan, it would be optional for schools to adopt the curriculum though they would receive additional funding if they did so. Read

‘The Philosophy of Art & Beauty’ – New Catholic Course by Dr. Daniel McInerny at Principles. What is art? Why do we human beings make it? What is its connection to beauty? These are the simple yet profound questions that will drive the inquiry of this course. In pursuing answers to these questions, we will discover that art has not always been understood as it is understood today, and that indeed, even granting the many treasures of modern art, much that is valuable has been lost in the transition from the pre-modern conception of art to the modern one. In order to retrieve what has been lost, a reimagining of the arts is needed according to the Catholic Imagination. Read

Franciscan University to Launch Institute for the Study of Man and Woman by Kate Quiñones at Catholic News Agency. Plans are underway at Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio for the launch of an initiative that will address what it means to be human amid “ever-growing confusion in our world” about gender. Franciscan University President Father Dave Pivonka, TOR, announced the launch of the Institute for the Study of Man and Woman during the Oct. 24–26 “Man and Woman in the Order of Creation Conference.” Read

Throwback Thursday

Five Misconceptions about the Liberal Arts by Anne Harmon at CLT Journal on August 11, 2019. If you want to be a mechanical engineer, why spend time studying the history of Renaissance Europe? If your goal is to start a business, why bother with grammar? As both careers and courses of study become more narrowly focused, many students find themselves asking these questions. If you know what job you want to have, they reason, why not focus primarily on developing those skills throughout your education? An answer can be found in a very old philosophy of education: the liberal arts. Read