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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Venice, an iconic center of the Renaissance

Renaissance Education: Looking to the Past to Chart a Course for Education Today

Education in the Renaissance centered around a rediscovery of lost ideas leading to a rebirth of civilization. Looking back to Renaissance education provides insight into our own age as we reclaim the great texts and ideas lost over the past decades through waves of progressive educational reform. Rediscovering a World of Ideas Prior to the age of exploration, exploding into life after Columbus’s westward journey across the Atlantic in 1492, a different exploration of an unknown world occurred after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. For well over a millennium, the Byzantine empire was the eastern stronghold of Christendom, paralleling

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Overcoming Procrastination

Procrastination can be debilitating for teachers and students alike. We often treat procrastination as either a mental issue or a time-management issue. I was inspired by Jason’s series on self-control, especially his latest article on attention and willpower. I think learning more about procrastination ties right into his ideas. However Tim Pychyl in his book Solving the Procrastination Puzzle suggests that procrastination is actually an emotional issue. In this article we’ll explore some strategies to help us and our students overcome procrastination. What is Procrastination? Why do today what can be done tomorrow? That is the mantra of procrastination. A popular video by

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model of areas of the brain, frontal lobes for attention and willpower

Educating for Self-control, Part 2: The Link Between Attention and Willpower

In my last post on educating for self-control, I laid out a Christian case for the importance of self-control from the New Testament, citing Paul’s famous fruit of the Spirit and Peter’s not-as-famous virtue list in the first chapter of 2 Peter. Then we delved into the roots of self-control as a concept deriving from early Greek philosophers, before turning to what it might look like to develop a school for self-control, rethinking how our schools should be set up if supporting self-control is a chief goal. In particular, we referenced the British educator Charlotte Mason, as she discussed “the

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Educating for Self-control, Part 1: A Lost Christian Virtue

If there’s any virtue that Christians need, especially in contemporary society, it’s self-control. We have available to us more seductive entertainment, more well-advertised temptations and even more innocent pleasures (like unhealthy foods, which end up being not so innocent in the long run…), than any other people at any time in the history of the world. The average 1st world Christian experiences a higher “standard of living” than the richest kings of the ancient world and middle ages. Our prosperity itself may be the greatest weapon the enemy ever devised. And unfortunately, at such a moment, self-control is one of

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Rules for Schools?: An Interaction with Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life (Part 3)

I have been interacting with Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life over the past few weeks. This is now the third and final installment. Part 1 looked at habit formation and deliberate practice, while part 2 considered several of Peterson’s rules in conjunction with the idea of discipline. At the heart of Peterson’s book is a concern for truth and meaning. Taken together these have a bearing on our philosophy of education, particularly in what we are trying to produce in the lives of our students. Truth Peterson grounds truth in the biblical conception of the Divine Logos as the creative force behind

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children playing on swing

Rules for Schools?: An Interaction with Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life (Part 2)

Last week I wrote part 1 of my interaction with Jordan Peterson. Here is part 2, grouping several of his 12 rules for life. Discipline is one of the hardest aspects of life as a teacher. Discipline for parents can be quite difficult. But discipline is even harder when you are dealing with other people’s kids. Peterson addresses discipline in his 5th rule, “Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.” In this, my second reflection on Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life, I will dive into discipline. We are adults – for many of us,

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an old and traditional school room

Rules for Schools?: An Interaction with Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life (Part 1)

Chaos is all around us. Education certainly has its element of chaos, given that we are dealing with multiple human beings in the classroom, each bringing his or her own indeterminacy and potential. With this in mind, we could say that the teacher’s role is to cultivate order in the midst of chaos. Order and chaos go together, we cannot have one without the other. I liken this to architectural and organic structures. For instance, in gardening we use trellises for plants such as clematis or roses to climb. Beauty is created through a combination of organic chaos as the

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a classroom, a common setting for practicing education

Practicing Education: Growing in the Art of Teaching

When I was a child I did gymnastics, and one of the most fundamental aspects of gymnastics is practice. We practiced skills and routines, we stretched and we worked out for hours, far longer than the average sports team practices. Where your average soccer team practiced an hour or an hour and a half a couple times a week, gymnasts practice three hours at a stretch at least three times a week. And that’s at my American gym which was no doubt less intense than some. One of the biggest lessons I learned from my coach was his frequent saying,

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an elegant oval library, the perfect place for deep reading

The Importance of Deep Reading in Education

Deep reading is the type of reading that involves one’s undivided attention in a sustained manner to tackle a long-form book, like a novel. The feeling cultivated by deep reading is that of being lost in a book, taken to new worlds, enraptured by an alien train of thought. While many educators still feel that the importance of deep reading for education can hardly be overstated, that it is sacrosanct, the end-all-be-all of education, the winds are blowing a different direction. Beyond the basic literacy taught in early grade-school and the short-form, though still highly complex, reading skills needed to master

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