Luceat!

As we continue our quest for the answer to the purpose of education, I would like to take a step back and ask how one becomes educated.  I don’t aim to become too philosophical here and enter into an array of pointless definitions.  What I do intend is to strike at the heart of the […]

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The soft light issuing forth from a Benedictine Chapel in Leon, Spain invited me and my travel-weary companions to evening vespers the evening of July 12th, 2007. As we began our pilgrimage to the tomb of St. James the Apostle in Santiago de Compostella, five FOCUS missionaries and six student leaders joined the […]

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The National Catholic Register has an exciting article (here) on the “Renaissance of Catholic higher ed”. It brought me back to an article (here) by Fr. Neuhaus in the April 2007 edition of First Things called, “A Particular University.”
Concerning a ‘university’ Fr. Neuhaus explains that an institution with university in their title has done […]

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Building off of Nathan’s initial question, as well as the thoughts of C. S. Lewis and Newman (see Idea of a University), I think that it is essential to explore the focus of an education. Should it primarily teach a skill set or a way of life and foundation of reasoning?
An “education” in the […]

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Well, the more ‘open-minded’ alternatives being pumped into the mushy brains of teens and pre-teens the country over don’t prove much better, according to Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse:
A poor cohabiting teenager using the Pill has a failure rate of 48.4%. You read that correctly: nearly half of poor cohabiting teenagers get pregnant during their first […]

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I would like to propose a question that is at the heart of education, building off Kelly’s post, The Purpose of Education. Is the purpose of the education to train successful people to go out into the world and influence the world through specific skills? Thoughts…
I would like to shape this discussion around a […]

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What is the purpose of education? Is there a set of natural laws, true for all men for all time, that the young person is initiated into by the wise teachers of the community? Or, is the role of the teacher to facilitate the student’s journey to discover his own perspective without the […]

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Just in time for the start of school a couple of weeks ago, Archbishop Chaput (affectionately referred to by my friends as the ‘AbC’) presented a cogent challenge to a popular philosophy of education–”Education alone is not enough.”
While the whole column is worth reading, here’s a rather salient excerpt:
The lesson here is plain. Catholics have […]

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I would like to take a few moments today to reflect upon academic freedom. This is the banner flew high above many universities today. Academic freedom is on the forefront of the progressive education experience. And who wouldn’t want freedom?
Recently, a student of mine told me about his film class, where he […]

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I realize that we’re firmly in the “or so” part of the “day or so” in which I promised my next post (see previous post ‘Vive la France!’). My apologies.
For your consideration, I submit the following thesis–courtesy of one John Zmirak–on one of the major turning points of Gallic history:
If you think French peasants […]

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