The Purpose of Education

The Purpose of Education featuring Tucker Carlson at Anchored by the Classical Learning Test. On this episode of Anchored, Jeremy is joined by Tucker Carlson, host of Tucker on X and The Tucker Carlson Show. They discuss the ultimate purpose of education as arriving at wisdom, rather than merely accumulating knowledge. They dive into the connection between ugly architecture and the pursuit of evil. Tucker also talks about his regrets surrounding his children’s education. Listen

In Praise of the Humble Recorder — a Gateway Instrument for Millions of Schoolchildren by Abigail Covington at NPR. Remember the recorder? It's that small plastic instrument — looks kind of like a flute or clarinet — that's often the first instrument children learn to play in school. Or, at least, they used to. A recent report found that the number of kids learning the recorder has declined over the years in schools in the United Kingdom. Teachers in the U.S. say the instrument's popularity has declined here, too. Read

Put Down the Phone and Pull Out a Book by Meghan Cox Gurdon at The Wall Street Journal. Writers of horror and dystopian fiction often build tension by adding small tokens of dreadful approach to placid, ordinary circumstances. Everything seems fine, even as the characters glimpse the odd creepy thing. Only belatedly do those in the gathering drama realize they’re in the midst of something monstrous. The same can be said of a culture in which reading is increasingly alien. Read

The Catholic Debate of A.I. featuring Fr. Robert Gahl at For Pete’s Sake. "For Pete’s Sake: A Vatican Podcast,” returns with guest Fr. Robert Gahl, professor at the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America and one of the heads of the Church Management Program. Fr. Gahl recalls examines the logic behind Church management, the modern issue of identity, and what it's like to be on a Catholic AI taskforce. Watch

Great News for Catholic Montessorians: New Institute by Theresa Civantos Barber at Aleteia. The University of Mary in Bismarck, North Dakota, just announced the opening of the Catholic Montessori Institute (CMI), the first and only global center dedicated to forming Catholic Montessori educators and providing a certification rooted in both the Montessori method and the Catholic intellectual tradition. CMI has two main goals: to be a resource for existing Catholic Montessori educators (or “Montessorians”), and to train and form new Catholic Montessorians. Read

The Integration of Beauty Into Learning by Nathaniel Urban at The Imaginative Conservative. The absence of beauty in education robs students of their natural curiosity, intuition, and creativity. Beauty provides direction, order, and harmony. Humans are made to desire and perceive beauty, which itself is the mystery of God. Read

The Community of Learners, Revisited by Mary Frances Loughran at Cana Academy. In the early days of the revival of classical education, a high premium was placed on developing and supporting a community of learners consisting initially of faculty members. Over time, the community of learners would expand and overflow to the student body. Perhaps the phrase’s overuse has caused the increasingly diminished understanding of the original purpose and practice of a community of learners: to seek, create, and invest in a culture dedicated to excellence in the arts and sciences, a culture enthusiastically pursuing the good, true, and beautiful. In this post, I offer tips on how to restore and encourage what I will call a culture of learning. Read

Jane Austen’s Novels Offer Lessons of Hope by Lindsey Weishar at National Catholic Register. Austen’s characters must all learn to be good in order to be happy. Her books are very Aristotelian in that way! As Elizabeth Bennet tells her sister Jane, ‘Till I have your disposition, your goodness, I never can have your happiness.’ But all of the characters assume the potential within them for goodness. In that lies their hope. Goodness is possible; happiness is possible. There is never cause for despair in an Austen novel because it seems that these characters create their fate by their virtues or vices. Read

5 Conversational Temptations Mentors and Parents Commonly Face by Alvaro de Vicente at Men in the Making. While our example remains the most powerful means of shaping our sons’ and students’ character, our words still matter. Whether a father counseling his son or a teacher offering advice to a student outside of class time, conversation is the main medium of mentoring. Conversation, though natural to us, is not something we naturally think to work on. Whether you are a parent, a teacher, or a formal mentor, here are some ideas to help you improve your mentoring conversations. Read

Josephinum Academy Extends Its Future Thanks to Transformational Partnership with the Catholic Initiative by the Catholic Initiative at PR Newswire. Josephinum Academy of the Sacred Heart is announcing a significant milestone in its history. Thanks to the unwavering support of its donor community and a landmark partnership with the Pulte Family Charitable Foundation's Catholic Initiative, the school has secured its future—not just for the 2025-2026 school year, but for generations to come. Through this collaboration, the Jo, as generations have referred to the 135-year-old high school, has raised the full $9.4 million needed to acquire the historic campus at 1501 N. Oakley Blvd., which it has leased since 1985. Read

EXCLUSIVE: McMahon Reveals Plan to Work With Congress to Bring Down Department of Education by Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell at The Daily Signal. Education Secretary Linda McMahon would like Congress to use a number of small bills to dismantle the Department of Education, she told The Daily Signal in an exclusive interview. The Supreme Court gave McMahon the OK to continue dismantling the Department of Education on July 14. The department is now able to move forward with 1,300 layoffs and redirecting resources to the states. Read

Throwback Thursday

Wonder and Education: An Invitation to the Truer Realm by Katie Earman at Circe Institute on January 29, 2025. Schools can nurture this deeply human characteristic of wonder. Rather than stunting this growth of wonder with over-testing, boring lectures, and insipid books, classrooms can be vibrant learning communities of discovery, learning from the masters, contemplating the wisdom of the ancients, marveling over the mysteries of mathematics and science, and reading the greatest works mankind has created. This journey into the realm of knowledge and learning promotes imagination and a sense of wonder. Lessons become portals into new and marvelous worlds. We can don our fur coats, pass through the wardrobe, and enter into a kingdom of history as the story of mankind and the stage of good’s triumph over evil, literature as the soul made visible on its quest to God, mathematics as the beauty of patterns, science as the realm of the Creator’s hand upon his creation, verbal arts as the skillful and wise use of language to name our realities and lead souls to truth. Read