Category: Education
When Should I Write? Brief Reflections on the Relationship Between Writing and Expertise
It was a Thursday afternoon; I was perched up in the corner of my favorite local coffee shop with a back-pack full of books that teetered somewhere between impressive and embarrassing. I was in the middle of what I refer...
Teaching Children to See
This past winter, my six-year-old began each day looking out the window. I would hear him roll out of bed, feet hit the floor, his footsteps moving toward one of the windows in his room. I knew what he was...
An Education for Lincoln’s Heaven
In a 2013 article on ‘Christian Schooling and Racial Realities,’ Hunter Baker concluded that while “the racial unification of the American church might best begin in the Christian schoolhouse” he lamented that it is a “mission … awaiting a champion...
In Memoriam: Michael Baker: Teacher of Persons
I suspect that my old high school teacher Michael Baker would have rather mixed feelings about having an obituary published in a magazine called Mere Orthodoxy. Certainly, he was the kind of teacher that would have scared many white evangelical parents,...
The Case for the Christian Liberal Arts in a Polarized, Fractious Age
Physicist Leonard Mlodinow opens his entertaining book The Drunkard’s Walk with the story of a lottery winner whose lucky ticket ended with the number 48.[1] However, according to the contestant, luck had nothing to do with it. Claiming clairvoyance, they dreamt the...
A Univers(ity) Without a Story
Blessed are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise! Selah -Psalm 84:4 Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi is a novel open to myriad interpretations. One reading of the story is as a parable helping us rediscover the integrative power of the...
Moral Values and the Intercultural Development Inventory
In a previous article, I wrote about my concern with Christian organizations employing the Intercultural Development Inventory for two reasons, the undermining of the image of God and the undermining of objective moral values.
Christian Organizations Should Reconsider Using the Intercultural Development Inventory
If you’ve ever taken the Intercultural Development Inventory, a psychometric assessment administered at multiple secular and Christian organizations, you may have sensed that there’s more to it than your ability to get along with people of other cultures. In a...
Contemplative Pedagogy: Notes on Educating Screen-Addled Students
Not long ago I taught a summer class in creative writing to middle schoolers. On one sun-drenched day, I took the class outside to wander through our campus and down to our stretch of shoreline on Narragansett Bay. Their task...
On Unlearning
Come now, O Lord my God. Teach my heart where and how to seek you, where and how to find you. Lord, if you are not here, where shall I seek you, since you are absent? But if you are...