Tag: Education

Lewis on Progressive Education: God Help Us All

  

C. S. Lewis developed friendships with a number of American college and university professors. One of them, Nathan Comfort Starr, visited Lewis three times over a period of fifteen years, and kept up a steady correspondence with him. Like Lewis, he was a Christian traditionalist when it came to education: learn the classics, hold students to a standard of intellectual rigor. Starr was teaching at Rollins College in Florida in the early 1950s when a “progressive” president at the college… Read more »

Happy New Year? The Moral/Cultural Divide

  

In yesterday’s post I focused on the role of the real church—those truly committed to being disciples of Jesus Christ—as the key to a happier 2015. If genuine Christians become the salt and light that Christ said they should be, they can diffuse His truth throughout our society more effectively. Today, I want to concentrate on what is actually happening in our society. Where are we morally and culturally? The two are connected, of course, and they both are the… Read more »

Lewis: Replacing Natural Law

  

For the third Saturday in a row, I want to share some poignant excerpts from C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man, a small book with rather large insights. Taken from lectures he gave, and published in 1943, it remains astoundingly relevant today as we watch our civilization teeter on the edge of utter rebellion against God-given natural law. Lewis takes aim at the change in education during his time, and its attempt to replace undeniable truths with man-made ones…. Read more »

Lewis: The Education of Man

  

This past week, I reread C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man. Although I have been reminded of quotes from it throughout my life, probably the last time I had read it all the way through was forty years ago. So, I decided, it was time again. It’s a small book, but packed to the brim with insights on education and worldview. It didn’t start out in book form, but as special talks he gave at a university during WWII;… Read more »

Puritans & Education

  

My last few posts about the early Puritans have contained controversy, as they attempted to deal with disagreement in the Massachusetts colony. They had to decide what to do with people like Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, and the Quakers who showed up later. Some of their decisions may have been just, while others (such as hanging Quakers) clearly were not. Let’s leave most of that controversy behind today and examine the Puritan desire to educate their communities. In a document… Read more »

Learning How to Think

  

Just a quick commentary today on education. How many times have you heard educators say, “Don’t tell children what to think, but teach them how to think”? I understand the concept, really. I want my students to learn how to think also. Yet aren’t there some things we have to tell them first? Aren’t there some building blocks that must be in place before they can launch out and do their own thinking? This is applicable at the college level… Read more »

The Core of Common Core

  

I post on the subject of education quite often; that’s to be expected from someone in my profession. I share the concerns voiced about the Common Core initiative and have read many of the critiques with respect to the specifics of Common Core. I agree with most of what I have read. Yet there are political conservatives who support this approach because they are enamored with the promise of enforcing a basic education for all, particularly when they perceive, quite… Read more »