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Answering Anxiety

Jun 12, 2025

Answering Anxiety by Michael Moynihan at The Heights Forum. Too many children today suffer from serious anxiety, and parents are not in great shape either. It did not used to be this way. This unfortunate trend is well documented by academics such as Jonathan Haidt in his book The Anxious Generation, and it is apparent to anyone working in education who has their eyes open. The explosive increase in childhood mental health challenges over the past few decades, notably anxiety, affects most of the members of a school community in one way or another. Read

 

Weathering All Weather with Children by Lindsey Fedyk at Refine. I stumbled across the writings of Charlotte Mason—an early twentieth-century British governess and educational philosopher. Her ideas have inspired generations of families, including mine. In her first volume, Home Education, Mason devotes an entire chapter to the importance of outdoor life for children. I was fully on board with outdoor play—when the weather was nice. But what did she say about the not-so-nice days? Read

 

Is It Time to “Smash Your TV?”  by Bishop James D. Conley at The Catholic Thing. Professor John Senior, my godfather and one of the professors of the famed Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas, was a master of hyperbole. He once hinted to us, his students, that we should just go home and smash our television sets. Perhaps he didn’t mean this literally, but he suggested that this was something we should consider. I know of at least one fellow student who took him at his word and dropped his 19-inch Motorola black and white television set out of the window of his fourth-floor dorm room onto the concrete alley below. Read

 

9 Tips for Teaching the Average Reader in Your Seminar by Mary Frances Loughran at Cana Academy. Some students, no doubt, will struggle more than others. It is our firm belief, however, that students can successfully read the very best literature when they are trained well. We have offered tips on how to help the struggling student in other posts. The following 9 tips will help you train the student with average reading ability and provide guidance on striking the right balance between reading aloud to them and teaching them to read on their own. Read

 

Reclaiming Identity Through Classical Education | Michael Adkins by Jeremy Tate at Anchored by The Classical Learning Test. On this episode of Anchored, Jeremy is joined by Michael Adkins, Dean of Academics and Director of the Lower School of Saint Agnes School in St. Paul, Minnesota. They discuss the secret to keeping Catholic education faithfully Catholic. They dive into misconceptions about the word “classical” and how its popular conception has changed over time. They also explore the identity crisis driving people to reconnect with the cultural heritage of classical education. Listen

 

Stratford Caldecott: Rethinking the Foundations of Education by Andrew Seeley at The Imaginative Conservative. Stratford Caldecott’s Beauty in the Word is like no book in the genre of classical education that I have read to date. It is personal, reflective, profound, spiritual, psychological, learned, practical. I have hopes that it will fill a great need in my work with Catholic schools seeking to recover and develop our lost traditions, but it might be too rich and varied for most educators. Still, I recommend it to anyone who is serious about Christian education at any level and has time to think with a man of great heart who has read widely and reflected deeply. Read

 

Dismantling the Department of Education Is Not Enough by Daniel B. Murphy at Public Discourse. The Department of Education was already dismantled once before, but through the efforts of the National Education Association (NEA) it returned. The NEA has also lobbied for federal spending on education, which has dramatically increased without improving student outcomes. Trump’s executive order is a step in the right direction, certainly improving government efficiency, but it is not enough. Read

 

Data Shows College Degrees and Income Aren’t The Only Measures of Educational Success by William Estrada at The Federalist. In the most recent survey report from the Cardus group, a non-partisan think tank that regularly reports on educational outcomes across all school sectors…the data shows long-term homeschoolers were more likely to be married, less likely to be separated or divorced, more likely to have kids, and have more kids than their counterparts in other cohorts…When looking at mental health outcomes, long-term homeschoolers are also less likely to “feel helpless dealing with life’s problems” and…had the lowest scores for depression and anxiety and the highest scores for life satisfaction and close social relationships. Read

 

The Chapel and Sancta Maria Regina Angelorum Fresco at Seton High School in Manassas, Virginia. by Shawn Tribe at Liturgical Arts Journal. Today, I would like to feature the work, once again, of painter and mosaicist, Ioana Belcea of Princeton, New Jersey. Specifically, I would like to highlight the "Sancta Maria Regina Angelorum" fresco which is located in the Queen of Angels Chapel at Seton High School in Manassas, Virginia. Read

 

Throwback Thursday

 

Reclaiming an Education for Joyful Hope by Elisabeth Sullivan at Catholic Exchange on January 5, 2021. Among parents, educators, and clergy who are alarmed by the skyrocketing numbers of young people who are falling away from their Catholic faith, there is a growing realization that the secular progressive model of education has been a stealthy saboteur. Rooted in an atheistic, utilitarian philosophy, it has no interest in wonder or wisdom. Aimed at the merely temporal goals of college and career readiness, it fails to feed the mind, the heart, and the soul. A pragmatic, godless education relentlessly defies and belittles the mysteries at the heart of faith. Its consequences can be seen in an epidemic of skepticism, anxiety, and even despair among the young. Read


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