The Sound of Silence

The Sound of Silence by Rebecca Rook at Crisis Magazine. As with any virtue, silence must be taught, watered, and tilled. And our Catholic schools, which espouse the twin purposes of personal sanctification and social reform in light of Christian values, have the awesome opportunity and responsibility to cultivate a renewed sense of silent contemplation and prayer throughout their schools. This renewal begins with the administrators and teachers themselves. Read

When Humans Prefer a Machine: Warnings from a 1960s Chatbot Creator by Joshua Pauling at Front Porch Republic. A 2025 Common Sense Media survey reported that over half of US teens regularly interact with AI companions, and 31% of those who do find it as satisfying (or more) than talking to people. Mandy McLean highlights that 90% of AI companion users describe their companions as “human-like.” And even a 2022 study found that 55% of its sample preferred “AI-based therapy.” Read

Eating Alone: Leaving the Table, Losing Community by Kalamos Vradygraphou at Humanum Review. John Henry Newman, in his Idea of a University, insists that the conversation and communion among students and teachers can bear more fruit than the lectures. He maintains that a residential college offering shared meals and ample time for conversation, but without any lectures at all, would be more successful in “training, moulding, enlarging the mind” than would a college offering lectures but lacking all personal contact. Read

Patrick Whalen on Iliad Athletics at Freedom in Education. In this podcast, Co-Founder of Freedom in Education Beanie Geoghegan speaks with Patrick Whalen on Iliad Athletics and the importance of unstructured recess in school. Listen

‘Joyfully Catholic’ Chesterton Academy Network Opens International Schools by Kate Quiñones at Catholic News Agency. In a suburb of Minneapolis in 2008, a small school named after the Catholic author G.K. Chesterton opened its doors. Seventeen years later, the school has grown into the wide-reaching Chesterton Schools Network, with schools sprinkled across the United States. And this school year, the network is going international. The president of the Chesterton Schools Network said there is no other word for it but “miraculous.” Read

Beauty and Order: New England Catholic School Uses Classical Architecture to Form Students by Zelda Caldwell at National Catholic Register. The headmaster of St. Benedict Classical Academy (SBCA), an independent Catholic school in Natick, Massachusetts, often says that architecture is a student’s first teacher. The building was meant to reflect SBCA’s mission to offer a classical Catholic education that cultivates “intellectual and moral virtue in a joyful, Christ-centered environment, rooted in the riches of Catholic magisterial teaching as defined by the Catechism of the Catholic Church,” according to the school’s website. Read

Reviving the Study of Western Civilization by James Hankins at Law & Liberty. It has been about four decades now since courses on Western Civilization began to disappear from American high schools and colleges. In retrospect, the golden age of the Western Civ textbook fell in the decades from the 1950s to the early 1980s. Courses on the subject were a standard curricular offering, often required, for most of the Cold War period. The typical survey course covered Western history from the ancient Greeks and Romans through the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ending with the Enlightenment and the contemporary West. In our parents’ and grandparents’ time, the Western Civ survey was commonly the linchpin for other humanities courses, providing a framework for deeper study of Western literature, philosophy, and the arts. Read

Can Imperfect Parents Raise Saints? by Haley Stewart at Word on Fire. Haley interviews Colleen Pressprich, an author of books for both kids and grown-ups including her new release Real Moms of Real Saints. Colleen is a former missionary and Montessori teacher and currently stays busy homeschooling her children. In this episode, they discuss the spiritual journeys and often very messy lives of the mothers of Catholic saints. Colleen has a lot of wisdom to share after spending time researching these holy (and sometimes very flawed women) to share about their parenting wins and failures and what we can learn from these astounding figures to support the children in our lives. Listen

Mass Attendance Up at Various Colleges in Wake of Charlie Kirk Assassination by Amira Abuzeid at Catholic World Report. In what some are calling “the Charlie Kirk effect,” people across the nation, including many college students who are not ordinarily churchgoers, have decided to go to church since the assassination last week of the conservative Christian political activist Charlie Kirk. Matt Zerrusen, co-founder of Newman Ministry, a Catholic nonprofit that operates on about 250 campuses nationwide, told CNA he has spoken with Catholic college ministry leaders throughout the country over the last few days, and “every one of them told me they’ve seen bigger crowds” at Masses and lots of people “they’ve never seen before.” Read

Going Deep with Publius by Andrew J. Ellison at Cana Academy. One of the most widely-used primary source anthologies for the teaching of American history and political theory at the collegiate and secondary level is Richard D. Heffner’s A Documentary History of the United States.  First published in 1952, it appears to be in its eleventh edition; I used it as a ninth grader 35 years ago, and my ninth grade son is using it in school now.  Heffner’s anthology is a good resource and required book for high school students of US history, but it is not sufficient.  An American history survey course that relies solely on it for primary sources will be missing a great deal. Read

CUA Appoints Microsoft AI Director to Lead New Institute on Emerging Technologies by Tessa Gervasini at Catholic News Agency. The Catholic University of America (CUA) announced that Taylor Black, director of artificial intelligence (AI) at Microsoft, will lead a new institute on emerging technologies and AI at the Washington, D.C.-based university… “Taylor’s background in innovation, AI, and entrepreneurship; studies in philosophy and law; and his formation as a deacon candidate make him the ideal person for this new venture,” H. Joseph Yost, senior vice provost of research for CUA, said in a statement. Read

Student Test Scores Keep Falling. What’s Really to Blame? by Martin R. West at Education Next. Phones distract students from math homework just as much as they do from reading. Surveys show that disadvantaged students spend the most time on their devices, while motivated students of all backgrounds may be able to use them to enhance their learning. New York University psychologist Jonathan Haidt has argued convincingly that these technologies are a key driver of our current crisis in youth mental health. While we lack a definitive causal link between smartphones and learning, the circumstantial evidence is sufficiently strong to justify more experimentation with bell-to-bell phone bans in schools, as well as efforts to rein in students’ near-constant use of other digital devices while in class. Read

Featured: Leading a Discussion on the Declaration of Independence by Mary Frances Loughran at Cana Academy. Leading a Discussion on the Declaration of Independence includes everything you need to teach high-school students about this foundational document. This guide includes the historical background of the Declaration, an overview of the political principles behind the text, and plenty of discussion questions with sample answers. Learn More

Throwback Thursday

Teens Need Tech Limits and Real-Life Relationships to Thrive by Tessa Carman at Institute for Family Studies on December 14, 2022. As any parent or teacher knows, even when there is no online temptation to deal with, we are still faced with the challenge of giving our children good friends, and living relationships on all levels. So then: Parents may disallow phones at the dinner table, not for the sake of a principle, but for the sake of a right relationship with our family, friends, and even the meal itself. We set technology limits for the sake of a proper ordering of ourselves and our relationship with other people, places, ideas, and all things living and nonliving. Read