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The Best Way to Teach Kids to Hate History? Rely Only on Textbooks 0
- Culture
- October 26, 2016
Whenever I hear that only 12 percent of American students are proficient in history, I have to shake my head in amazement. How in the world can so few students be proficient in a subject that’s so fascinating? Historian David McCullough may have an answer to that question. Several years ago he noted that contemporary
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A Culturally Literate Person Knows the Bible 2
- Culture
- October 26, 2016
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
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The ‘Feel Good’ Approach is Not Working for Churches 0
- Culture
- October 25, 2016
Late 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
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The Real Problem with American Education?0
- October 25, 2016
Since 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
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Lost in translation: five common English phrases you may be using incorrectly 0
- Culture
- October 25, 2016
English 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
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Booker T. Washington’s 3 Tips for Today’s Schools 0
- Education
- October 25, 2016
Although 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
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