Why Students Don’t Suffer
The best American colleges students are perhaps the most prepared, accomplished, and engaged students ever with stellar academic accomplishments and active civic engagement.[1] At the same time,…
Defenses Against the Dark Arts: The Political Education of Harry Potter and His Friends
Defenses Against the Dark Arts: The Political Education of Harry Potter and His Friends. John S. Nelson. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2021. John S. Nelson’s Defenses…
Is it possible to separate politics from philosophy, from any educational pursuit?
Education cannot occur where equality is taken as the preeminent moral virtue, where the past is rejected as hopelessly morally compromised, and when materialism is adopted as…
Why We Play: Football Coaches and The Making of Boys Into Men
I sing of shoulder pads and the player. Even more so the football coach. This position is controversial these days. After all, football is, in George Will’s…
Pedagogic encounters: Master and disciple in the American novel after the 1980’s
Pedagogic encounters: Master and disciple in the American novel after the 1980’s. Aristi Trendel. Lexington Books, 2021. Biographies of the legendary broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow…
Getting “Woke” with Socrates
“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” –Maya Angelou The term “woke” is associated with increasingly widespread…
Liberal Education and Politics: The Case of The Tempest
Everything is Political Just as I began my college teaching career thirty years ago, the whole academy seemed to have accepted as axiomatic the assertion that “Everything…
The College Admissions Scandal of 2019
Higher education has long been the focus of controversy: specifically, the disproportionate opportunities afforded to members of varying socio-economic classes. While one demographic argues for free and…
Teaching Judgement
Twenty five years ago I took up a position as University Professor at Boston University. I was asked to teach a graduate seminar on the philosophy of…
Cana Academy Interview with Lee Trepanier
Cana Academy's interview with Lee Trepanier is available here.
History: Forgotten and Remembered
History: Forgotten and Remembered. Andrew J. Zwerneman. Falls Church, VA: Cana Academy, 2020. History: Forgotten and Remembered is a small and delightful book about how to…
American Academic Cultures: A History of Higher Education
American Academic Cultures: A History of Higher Education. Paul H. Mattingly. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. With higher education in America being scrutinized once again,…
Winged Words: Reading and Discussing Great Books
St. John’s College and the Great Books Program here at Mercer University have much in common. Both programs revolve around a set of great works of Western…
Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life
Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life. Zena Hitz. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020. It’s tempting to argue that, faced with threats from…
Is Online University Education Possible?
Is there anything better for a teacher than watching one’s students do great things? I have never bought into the rhetoric that some teachers use about “learning…