While visiting friends this summer, I had the opportunity to spend some time at the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina. As the largest home in the United States, Biltmore is a time capsule of valuable treasures spanning everything from Napoleon’s chess set to tapestries from sixteenth-century Belgium. It was while viewing one of these tapestries
READ MOREEvery week for two months, quarterback Colin Kaepernick of the American professional football team the San Francisco 49ers has refused to stand during the playing of his country’s national anthem. He has instead knelt down as his protest of alleged systematic racism in American society and in solidarity with the powerful Black Live Matters movement.
READ MORESince its beginnings, America has directed most of its educational energies toward creating average students. Already in 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville observed in his classic Democracy in America, “I do not believe that there is a country in the world where, in proportion to the population, there are so few uninstructed and at the same time
READ MOREWith due allegiance to persons and places, it is only right that we should love and respect our parents and grandparents. But we can do this without canonising the World War Two generation as the greatest, a piece of excessive sentimentality and sloppy thinking if ever there was one. The phrase was coined by the
READ MORELate last week, I ran across an intriguing article on the state of the Church of England in The Telegraph. According to the paper: “Churches with small and declining congregations may no longer have to hold weekly Sunday services as the Church of England considers dropping the legal requirement. A Church of England task group
READ MOREEnglish is a language rich with imagery, meaning and metaphor – and when we want to express ourselves we can draw upon a canon replete with beautifully turned phrases, drawing from the language’s Latin, French and Germanic roots, through Chaucer and Shakespeare right up to myriad modern wordsmiths – not to mention those apt aphorisms
READ MOREAlthough it hasn’t been discussed very much this election cycle, it’s a well-known fact that education in the United States is in a sorry state. Something must be done… but what? That same question was likely in Booker T. Washington’s (1856-1915) mind as he struggled to educate and advance the position of freed black slaves
READ MOREA friend of mine recently had child number three. After the great event, this friend mentioned that the births of one’s own children are the most amazing moments of life, regardless of whether or not the child is the first or the tenth. Because children are precious treasures, every parent is eager to do the
READ MOREWhile scrolling down my timeline I saw this, an article that describes pictures of a six-year-old boy doing chores—cooking, cleaning, you know, normal stuff. But this particular album went viral because the mother created it to teach the young boy a lesson, namely, that chores are “not just for women.” Yes, I know, this heavy-handed
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