What Bloom’s Left Out: A Comparison with Aristotle’s Intellectual Virtues

In the last three articles in this series, I laid out the good, the bad and the ugly of Bloom’s Taxonomy. After the last two posts it is perhaps worth reaffirming the value of Bloom’s project. While I ultimately believe that Bloom and his colleagues may have done more harm than good, I do affirm the importance of clear objectives in education. The clarity and focus of their project, which raised the issue of teaching objectives in a unique way in the history of education, leaves a real and positive inheritance to the discipline. Moreover, I am convinced that where

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Human Development, Part 2: All the World’s a Stage

That one essay – you know the one that got this whole educational renewal movement going – needs to be reevaluated. I am talking about the essay “The Lost Tools of Learning” by Dorothy Sayers. Her approach reminds me of Galadriel’s speech in the prologue to The Lord of the Rings movies, “Much that once was is lost. For none now live who remember it.” Someone who remembers the way things were must pass that knowledge down or else it is forever lost to the detriment of future generations. “And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost.”

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Life in Plato’s Republic, Part 1: Is Justice Worth it?

“Whether we like it or not, whether we know it or not, we are all more or less Platonists. Even if we reject Plato’s conclusions, our views are shaped by the way in which he stated his problems.”1  In today’s article, I begin a new series on Plato’s Republic. I’ve been wanting to start this project for some time now for two reasons.  First, I want to make Plato more accessible for everyone. The philosopher is a seminal figure in the history of ideas. Without his writings, it is difficult to know where western civilization would be today. In particular,

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Human Development, Part 1: What Do You Have in Mind?

A sound pedagogy requires a good understanding of anthropology (the study of human beings including our nature, our biology, our behavior and our social patterns) and of epistemology (the study of the nature of knowledge and how humans experience and acquire knowledge). One way these key areas of study (anthropology and epistemology) converge pertains to the development of children. We have a general understanding of the child as a small and vulnerable human being that undergoes tremendous transformations from birth to adulthood. Considerable philosophical, psychological and scientific work has been done to help us gain a clear understanding of the

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Christian Education and the Calling of the Church

Every Christian family has to make the difficult decision at some point where to send their children for school.  With the widespread availability of public education over the last hundred years, the conventional option for some time now has been public schooling. Here the cost for admission is free and the overall education they receive is, generally speaking, adequate. However, more recently, some parents have developed concerns about this option as secular and progressive principles have increased prominently within state legislation. For example, the Illinois State Board of Education recently passed rules requiring teachers to align their lessons with “culturally

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Bloom's Taxonomy

Breaking Down the Bad of Bloom’s: The False Objectivity of Education as a Modern Social Science

In the first two posts of this series (which I am reviving after a 6 months long hiatus) I proposed replacing Bloom’s Taxonomy of educational objectives with Aristotle’s intellectual virtues. The major flaw in Bloom’s taxonomy, which is a hierarchical categorization of educational goals in the cognitive domain, is that it privileges the bare intellect over the heart, like so much of modern education. Even if Bloom and his university examiner colleagues proposed an affective and psychomotor domain as well, and had the modest goal of improving clarity and communication among teachers, curriculum planners and educational researchers, still they codified

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What has Ambleside to do with Jerusalem?: A Consideration of Charlotte Mason’s Philosophy of Education as a Model for Teaching Biblical Studies

In this week’s blog post I am going back into the vault to share with you a paper I presented at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting in Atlanta on November 20, 2010. This was a pivotal moment in my career, having earned my PhD and taught for a few years at colleges and seminaries in the US and UK. I joined the faculty of Clapham School in 2009 and there first encountered Charlotte Mason. My introduction to Miss Mason’s philosophy of education completely revolutionized my teaching, and this was something I wanted to share with my biblical studies

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Educating for Resilience in a Coddling Culture

In The Coddling of the American Mind (Random House, 2018), authors Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt make a forceful critique of the way Americans today go about raising and educating their children. Their point isn’t complicated: parents and teachers, in general, overprotect children from the challenges and rigor of everyday life. As a result of such coddling, the majority of youth today are soft and fragile students, easily perturbed, anxious, and intimidated. The key to raising strong, independent young people, the authors argue, is not to shield boys and girls from these challenges, but instead to allow for situations in

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Why the History of Narration Matters, Part 4: Charlotte Mason’s Practice of Narration in Historical Perspective

In this series I have contended that the history of narration should bring Charlotte Mason educators and classical Christian educators together. That is because narration’s use as a pedagogical practice in the classical tradition illustrates vividly the connection between the two. When we know this history and turn to Charlotte Mason’s advocacy for the practice of narration as a central learning strategy, we see her not as a scientific modernist, intent on casting aside the liberal arts tradition of education, but as a renaissance-style educator. Mason was seeking to revive the best of ancient wisdom about education, even as she

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