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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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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