Author: Patrick Egan

Liberating Education from the Success Syndrome

The quest for success in education is a familiar narrative for students, teachers and home educators alike. Schools especially can often get caught up in the elusive search for success. As Christian schools, the desire to reach as many students as possible in order to make as big a kingdom impact as possible is laudable. As classical schools, the ambition to provide a rigorous education in order to propel students onto the college pathway is powerful. The urgency of achieving success now on all fronts means that most of us are confronted with the “success syndrome,” in other words, the

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So Your Middle Schooler Wants to Go to a Different School ? 3 Strategies for High School Retention

It’s an incontrovertible rule of life: every middle schooler will express a desire to go to a different school than the one they are currently in – any school – just as long is it is different. For small, private schools, this can be a worrisome proposition. Enrollment attrition is to be expected at key stages, most prominently advancing from 8th to 9th grade. Parents who chose your school over all others now feel that their child needs to bear more of the decision for where to go. Bigger schools with more programs make it seem like tuition dollars get

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new guy name tag

New to School: 5 Principles for Starting the Year Well

Have you ever been new to a school? Often there are awkward days trying to find new friends. You feel like there’s an opportunity to turn over a new leaf. Every school has its own culture that needs to be learned and navigated. Whatever succeeded at your previous school might not work here. The temptation to be something you are not is a serious pull.  I am joining a new school this fall, moving from Providence Classical Christian Academy in St. Louis to Clapham School in Wheaton, Illinois. Truth be told, it’s not exactly new to me. I will be

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classroom waiting for students to return

Back to School and Back to Educational Renaissance

Welcome back to a new school year and to a new year of Educational Renaissance! The back-to-school sale shelves are probably already picked over and disheveled, but Jason, Kolby and I are planning a whole series of great posts that will last you the whole school year. Look for our first post to drop next weekend! Welcoming Kolby to the Team We’d like to welcome Kolby, the newest member of the team! You can read more about Kolby on our bio page. After getting to know Kolby over the years, I knew that there was a likemindedness that made him an ideal contributor to

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last day of school on calendar

End of the 2018/2019 School Year

It’s the end of the 2018-19 school year. Most of you are on vacation now, or at the very least your work at the school can be done without students present. That said, a good many of you will roll right into summer school, or you’ve taken on a summer job, because – let’s face it – teachers just don’t make enough. This is an excellent time, no matter what your situation, to take stock of another year done and to look forward to next year. For Jason and Patrick, this will be the last post of the school year.

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Bible on a Stand

Easier Than You Think, Yet Harder Than You Think: Teaching the Bible to Children

The Bible ought to be taught to children. This should be self-evident from a theological perspective, given that the Bible is God’s authoritative self-revelation to mankind. “Let the little children come to me,” Jesus says, “and do not hinder them.” From an educational perspective, though, we do well to ask ourselves what it means to teach the Bible in the school classroom. How might this differ from teaching in a church context or in a Christian home? What consideration do we give to the age of the child and their stage of cognitive development? The Bible is simultaneously so precious

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Plato and Aristotle in the Lyceum

Why Study Western Civilization?

The classical Christian movement has at its core a commitment to teaching Western civilization. Even though we teach Western civ, its distinctive qualities are not always clear. As a result, many educators (even within the classical movement) question why we would teach Western civilization. Here I will lay out what I think are the three key pillars of Western society. My hope is that with greater clarity about what Western civilization means, there will be deeper conviction to instruct our students to promote and defend its values. So what do we mean by Western civilization? Today we equate the “West”

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civic building with classical style of architecture

Educating for Moral Character and Civic Duty

There was a fascinating set of papers delivered at the recent Education 20/20 Speaker Series presented by the Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank addressing education policy. Living in a private school world, I have been largely out of the loop on public education policy debates. So I was intrigued to learn more about the state of the discussion. The February 12 session featured two papers. Eliot Cohen made a case for teaching history from the standpoint of patriotism as a means to promote civic and moral virtue. Yuval Levin traced the utilitarian policies of the 90s and 2000s and

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Review of Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning by Douglas Wilson

Most people in the classical Christian school movement look upon Dorothy Sayer’s 1947 essay “The Lost Tools of Learning” as something of a founding document. However, the movement as it currently exists in North America stems from the implementation of that essay in the late 1980s, and is best represented in Douglas Wilson’s Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning (Crossway, 1991). Wilson had founded Logos School in Moscow, ID in 1981, a school that forms the backdrop to his book. Wilson would go on to help found the Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS) in 1993, which currently has over

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teacher in authority over children in a forest

Authority and Obedience in the Classroom: Reading Charlotte Mason’s Philosophy of Education

I recently talked with a frustrated teacher about the anti-authoritarian Tendenz of her math class. The smug look of the child says everything. “You can’t tell me what to do.” This child might accomplish the set of math problems assigned, at least externally. But on the inside, there is a refusal to submit to the teacher, the assignment, or even mathematics itself. “Who even cares? I don’t even plan to get a job in mathematics,” says the child under his breath to the amusement of a classmate. The spirit of revolution is in the air. Down with the king and

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