Nov 7, 2024
Is Handwriting a Lost Art? What One College’s Kerfuffle Over Cursive Can Tell Us by Brooke Schultz at EducationWeek. Researchers say that handwriting is linked to academic success. Historians, like Morris, worry what is lost if people can’t discern primary sources, which are largely handwritten. Those concerns have reached state education departments and legislatures, with at least 24 states now having some kind of cursive requirement for K-12 schools. But there are still cohorts of students whose education didn’t emphasize handwriting and cursive—who aren’t familiar with the curls and swoops and swirls. And a body of marketing research that emphasizes the importance of readable text may spell a movement away from script in some spaces, like a small college in Maryland, which recently became the butt of the joke on late night TV. Read
Reclaiming Our Catholic Schools by Thomas W. Carroll at First Things. An alarming number of children from Catholic families lose their faith during elementary and secondary school. By age thirteen, 50 percent fall away from the Church; by eighteen, it’s 86 percent. This exodus is not unique to Catholics—other Christian communities struggle with similar problems. But many of these children are in Catholic schools for 16,000 hours from pre-school through 12th grade. Read
Of Popery and Patriotism by History250. Though Catholics were at the helm of many early explorations, including those to the New World, they were excluded from much of early British colonial life in America. Maryland was intended to be different—a refuge for persecuted Catholics. Its story would take a different turn for a time, but its legacy and that of its Catholic inhabitants lasts as a testament to early religious liberty in America. Watch
Can We Change the World? by Andrew J. Zwerneman at Cana Academy. “Change the world!” So common is that call to action that it might not occur to anyone that we ought to question what it means or challenge its possible reach. Since change is a central object of study within history, what, we rightly ask, does history reveal regarding this familiar call to change the world? Read
Receiving Beauty: A Liberal Arts Education featuring Dr. George Harne at the HeightsCast. What is beauty? Is it definable? What is it for, how are we drawn to it—and why do we sometimes resist it? This week we welcome Dr. George Harne, president of Christendom College and an accomplished medieval and music history scholar. Drawing on his perspective as head of a vibrant Catholic liberal arts college, he speaks to us about the liberal arts as a path of study driven by beauty and contemplation, in pursuit of a true vision of reality. Listen
6 Saints Who Can be Found in Shakespeare’s Plays by Joseph Pearce at Aleteia. When most of us think of William Shakespeare we don’t necessarily connect him with the saints. And yet there are a surprising number of saints who appeared in his plays or who had an influence upon his work. Here are six of them. Read
America On-the-Line by Clare Morell at American Compass. Most discussion of the digital era’s harms to children focus on the direct problems of exposure: the emotional distortions wrought by social media, the debasement of easy access to pornography, the compulsion to keep on playing the game. But neuroscientists, psychologists, teachers, and parents are all beginning to realize the greatest harms can come away from the screen, in the ways an online childhood derails development and leaves young people ill-prepared to flourish in other facets of their own lives, and in community with each other. Human brains will choose dopamine every time, no matter the personal or social cost. But a civilization cannot survive the choice to let them. Read
10 Ways to Encourage Your Children to Read by Cerith Gardiner at Aleteia. In a world where screens compete for kids' attention at every turn, getting them excited about books can be a real challenge. In fact, an alarming report by the National Literacy Trust (NLT) in England stated that only 34.6% of eight- to 18-year-olds surveyed said that they enjoy reading in their spare time -- an all-time low since the NLT first started surveying children 19 years ago. Read
Catholic Books and Movies for Families to Get to Know the Saints Better by Francesca Pollio Fenton at Catholic News Agency. The Catholic Church has tens of thousands of saints, blesseds, and venerables — some of whom have had their life stories told in movies and books. Here are several Catholic favorites to get to know some of the Church’s beloved saints a little better. Read
Throwback Thursday
To Lead a Child: On Reclaiming a Human Pedagogy by Elisabeth Sullivan at Humanum on September 30, 2019. The capacity to wonder, St. Thomas Aquinas noted, is among man’s greatest gifts. Aquinas held that man’s first experience of wonder sets his feet on the ladder that leads up to the beatific vision. Even long before the coming of Christ, ancient pagans such as Socrates and his student Plato recognized that wisdom begins in wonder. But today’s dominant educational system, ordered toward the merely pragmatic and utilitarian ends of “college and career readiness,” has no use for wonder or wisdom. We see its consequences in the weary apathy of students who repeatedly ask, “Is this going to be on the test?” When only that which can be quantified or graded is valued, all else falls away. The factory model of teaching and learning is manufacturing the malaise, anxiety, and even despair that burden so many of the young by depriving them of the two elements their innate sense of wonder seeks to find: the meaning and purpose of things. Read |