Tag: education

To Quantify the Complexity of a Book

There's a computer program called Lexile that purports to measure the complexity of books and thereby determine the grade level for which they are...

Crazy Quilt Conservatism

Hidden Springs, VA.Last week the Washington Post ran a story titled “Rethinking the Classroom: Obama’s Overhaul of Public Education.” The piece described the various...

A Footloose Spring Day

On a gorgeous April Wednesday I am filling in as substitute homeschool teacher. We do arithmetic; we do a language lesson about adverbs and...

Bar Jester Chronicles 15: In Praise of Smartassery

Give me smartassery. Give me a yawning match.

The Real Educational Issue: College Students and a Crisis in Citizenship

The fact that the people who will likely occupy the top of the socio-economic chain—and whose decisions will thus set the terms of most Americans’ existences—have little room for the necessarily leveling notion of citizenship is our most significant and least discussed educational crisis.

The Primary Error of Early English Education

During my brief foray into public education, I taught a group of seventh-graders a typical lesson from a standard middle school literature textbook: we...

Boredom and the “App” for Self-Control

The future is grim, my friends.

Magpie Education for Small-Mouth Bass

We’re like small-mouth bass, and we’ve swallowed the technological treble hook.

What Is Wrong with Contemporary Intellectuals?

"Intellectual" and "Disinterested," as we use them, are new words. I "prefer" old words: Scholar, Monk, Contemplative, Lover of Wisdom.

That Endless Enlightenment

Academic leftists and conservative critics of academe are united in a fundamental proposition, says Stanley Fish. True enough, say I: education is endless and the world is a nauseating abyss.