Aug 7, 2025
‘Incomparably Rich’ Teaching Program Launches Amid Catholic Education Revival by Kate Quiñones at Catholic News Agency. Most people don’t go to graduate school for the rich liturgical life. But that’s exactly what Adelyn Phillips has found at “Teachers for Christ,” a nascent Catholic master’s program in St. Louis, where she is one of 12 students this summer. Phillips said she has found a vibrant community, structured daily prayer, and solid theological formation. “My time in this program has already been incomparably rich,” she said of the program. Read
Recovering the Place of the Fine Arts by Carol Reynolds at Memoria Press. In teaching the fine arts, the mission of the classical pedagogue is clear: Take the joy children inherently feel for learning and shape that joy toward the end of acquiring an understanding of the arts. Read
Responses to Common Misconceptions of Active/Immersive/Natural Methods of Language Teaching by Laura Eidt at ClassicalEd Review. A lot of ideas are floating around the internet regarding a grammar centered approach vs. an active or immersive one, such as: “Latin is not like modern languages and shouldn’t be taught like one.”…“The goal of Latin instruction is to read not to speak.”…Drawing on the history of Latin teaching and research in Second Language acquisition, I will try to explain why these claims are in fact misconceptions. Read
AI Is Making Us Wiser. Just Ask Socrates. by Jeremy Tate at The Daily Signal. A recent MIT study made for splashy headlines: “Using AI makes you stupid, research finds.” Though researchers cautioned against using words like “dumb” or “stupid” in their findings, the study appeared to show that the more a person relied on AI, the less neural connectivity that person experienced. The jury is still out on whether AI is making people dumber, but it is almost certainly making people wiser. In fact, the only people capable of using AI to the fullest must be wise. Read
Hope for the Humanities in ‘The Long Defeat’ by Jeff Morgan at Word on Fire. David Brooks makes a persuasive case that our national disinterest in the humanities has created a culture that is morally inarticulate, narcissistic, and mean. A person who learns to translate Augustine’s Confessions from Latin or read novels like Brideshead Revisited may have acquired more patience, discipline, and empathy as well as the good fortune to encounter the wisdom of the ages. But those are hard chips to cash in a contract negotiation. Liberal arts ideals like the pursuit of truth and the development of character sound increasingly highfalutin. Read
What Should Classical Academies Say of History? by Andrew J. Zwerneman at Cana Academy. Aristotle developed the categories of liberal arts and sciences in great detail. Of history, however, he says almost nothing, never working it up under either category. History is what happened, he says in the Poetics, as distinct from what could be in poetry and what is in philosophy. What should classical academies who teach liberal disciplines with liberal purposes say of history? Is it an art or a science? Does either category encompass all that history is? Is its primary purpose intellectual or moral, or do the two purposes perhaps hold comparable weight? Read
Why Read? Literature as Cultural Resistance to the Decadent West by Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative. All great literature, in poetry and prose, is part of the great conversation which has animated Western civilization for almost three thousand years. Anything purporting to be literature which owes nothing to this great conversation is rootless and meaningless. It is not worth reading because it was not worth writing. It has nothing to say. Read
Does a Screen Detox Work? by Clare Morell at Plough. Let’s be real. You already know that the half measures don’t work. But maybe you don’t feel like getting rid of the screens is possible. Maybe you feel like you’re in a complete lose-lose situation. Other parents and your school don’t make it easy on you either. Phones are required for soccer practice updates and class assignments. All the outside pressures push toward screens. You feel forced into settling for devices with screen-time limits and parental controls, because that is the least worst option… But what if there is another way? Read
Madrid Schools Limit Tech Use for Half a Million Students by Daniel Esparza at Aleteia. Reshaping classroom culture, the regional government of Madrid has approved a decree that significantly reduces the use of digital devices in schools. Beginning in the 2025–2026 academic year, over 550,000 students will face stricter limitations on tablets, laptops, and other screens — part of a broader effort to return to more traditional learning methods. Read
St. Leo School Students in Ridgway Place Among Best in Standardized Test Scores at Community Media Group. St. Leo School recently reviewed the results of its latest standardized testing, which places it among the best schools in the country. The school also invites parents, especially families with children in kindergarten, to come learn more about the unique academic success story at St. Leo. “The numbers are really remarkable,” said St. Leo Principal Lynne Kucenski. “We begin testing in kindergarten, and these results start with our kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Erica Mitcheltree.” Read
“Cultivating the Heart” 2025 National Conference Attracts Record Crowd for the Renewal of Catholic Education by Megan Sheehan at The Institute for Catholic Liberal Education. More than 500 PreK-12 Catholic educators, clergy, superintendents, and scholars gathered at the 13th annual National Conference, July 15-18, to discuss and renew the work of reclaiming the Catholic church’s vision for education. Messmore explained that Catholic liberal education is best understood as “Catholic liberating education.” Read
Throwback Thursday
Do Good Educators ‘Impose’ on Their Students? by Dr. John Cuddeback at Life Craft on January 25, 2024. I will cut to the chase and assert that properly understood, parents and teachers do, or should, ‘impose’ something on their children or students. Here I follow one of the Oxford definitions of impose: ‘to place authoritatively.’ An ever-controversial issue is whether education of the young is more a drawing out or a putting-in of something. The truth, it seems, is in the right balance of the two. But here I want to suggest that many—even among those explicitly seeking to provide a traditional and objective formation—have lost sight of the importance of the ‘putting in,’ even a kind of ‘imposing.’ Read |