Author: Kolby Atchison

Irrigating Deserts in Schools: The Redemption of Emotion in an Age of Feeling

In a world of sensationalistic news, propaganda, and emotions running in overdrive, our students need specialized training in how to navigate life’s challenges with wisdom. Dorothy Sayers and C.S. Lewis, two favorites in the classical education renewal movement, offered different, but related, educational solutions to respond to emotive and misleading propaganda. Dorothy Sayers, known for her essay The Lost Tools of Learning (1947), advocated for a return to liberal arts education. With a special emphasis on the language arts of the Trivium, Sayers believed that the best remedy against sensationalistic news headlines was to equip the intellect with the right

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Good to Great: Attracting the Right Teachers

In my previous article, I introduced a new series on how insights from Jim Collins’ Good to Great (New York: Harper Business, 2001) might apply to schools. In his book, Collins and his team of researchers study eleven companies that achieved exceptional results over a long period of time in relation to their comparison peers. Through his research, Collins and his team distilled seven characteristics of these great companies, each of which he claims are implementable across industry lines. A few years later, Collins wrote Good to Great and the Social Sectors (2005). In this companion monograph, Collins draws out

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Good to Great: Measuring the “Greatness” of a School

Like many educational leaders who are familiar with books on leadership and management, I am greatly indebted to Jim Collins’ Good to Great (New York: Harper Business, 2001) for my understanding of how to take an organization to the next level. In this #1 bestseller, Collins identifies through longitudinal research the seven characteristics of business outliers who jumped from good to great while their comparison peers did not. A few years later, Collins wrote a short sequel, this time targeting a nonprofit audience, entitled Good to Great and the Social Sectors (2005). In this monograph, Collins thinks through how the

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Building a Strong Faculty Culture

Schools are interesting organizations, to say the least. They may vary in leadership structures and governance policies, but they all contain the same core groups of constituents: students, parents, faculty and staff members, administrators, board members, and donors. Of these groups, which is most critical for the success of the school? While a compelling case could be made for each one of them, I have come to believe that the answer is faculty. Faculty are the front line workers and first responders of the school. They are not only expected to interface with school customers (parents) on a regular basis.

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Educating in Desire for the Kingdom

In the Christian, classical renewal movement we often draw the distinction between an education focused on information and an education focused on formation. Education in information focuses on the dissemination of facts, critical thinking skills, and beefing up the intellect, while education for formation prioritizes the process of developing a certain type of person. Both information and formation are important, of course, so which is right?  Well, that depends on what humans essentially are. If humans are, at core, cognitive creatures, then it makes sense to focus exclusively on the intellect. This was the predominant view of modernism. Influenced by

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Fostering Grit Through Charlotte Mason’s Practice of Habit Training

We write and speak often at Educational Renaissance about the importance of cultivating good habits (you can listen to our podcast on habit training here). Habits are, as Charlotte Mason put it, the railways of the good life (Home Education, p. 101). A person with good habits experiences a life of ease, while a person missing such habits often finds life burdensome and difficult.  By “ease” I don’t mean easy, of course. I mean smooth, orderly, peaceful, and effective.  For example, the habit of timeliness is indispensable for a life of ease. Imagine how difficult life is for the person

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Educating for Truth

I recently gave a short talk at my school’s curriculum night on the practical value of a classical education. In many ways, it was a recapitulation of the blog article I wrote a few weeks ago. I identified two popular ways of thinking about education today–both geared toward practical aims–and then argued that classical education is actually more practical than both of them.  In today’s blog, I will make a different argument in support of classical education. Rather than arguing for its practical benefits, I will make the case for something even more important: it is an education in truth.

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Is Classical Education Practical?

Is classical education practical? I suppose it depends on what we mean by the question. In modern times, a practical education is usually synonymous with one focused on job preparation. Students are educated in order to join the workforce and be economically successful.  But job preparation is not the only way an education can be deemed practical. Another avenue is life skills training. Students trained in life skills are introduced to the basics of keeping a budget, changing a flat tire, using a washing machine, investing in the stock market, shopping for groceries, mowing the lawn, and so forth. It

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The Human Brain and the Liberal Arts

For some Christians, brain science and talk of “caring for your brain” can be uncomfortable. It smacks of a physicalist conception of reality in which all we are is our physical bodies. As Christians, we believe in the reality of the soul and a transcendent immaterial world. To focus myopically on the brain may cause us to lose sight of the spiritual aspect of what it means to be human and the hope we have for eternal life. Moreover, some Christians fear, utilizing brain science to boost cognitive performance through strengthening the brain sounds like a mad scientist’s version of

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Liberal Arts and the Transmission of Culture

In classical circles, we speak often about the importance of the liberal arts, over and against mere career-readiness skills, but we do not always elaborate. The reality is that career-readiness skills–skills like analyzing data, applying information technology, preparing for an interview, and completing tasks efficiently–are immensely helpful. The problem is not their usefulness, but their limitations. Career-readiness skills fail to lead students outside the realm of function and into the world of value and meaning. What our world needs today more than anything is not faster internet or a new task-management system, but better stories injected with purpose. Telling better

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