We were doing an interview on an NPR station, a kind of “point-counterpoint” thing. The other interviewee was a self-identified agnostic , and the topic was the rights of academic institutions to “discriminate” on the basis of religious beliefs. My dialogue partner was not overtly hostile to religion as such. Indeed he said some nice things about the school where I was president at the time. Fuller Seminary produces some excellent scholarship based on our religious convictions, he observed. But why do we hire only folks who subscribe to those convictions? Having religious beliefs is fine, he said. But for institutions to hire only faculty who subscribe to those beliefs is contrary to the principles of academic inquiry. Continue Reading »
It’s commencement season and tens of thousands of students are graduating from inner-city Catholic elementary schools. As decades of empirical research have shown, these kids have a better chance of successfully completing high school and college, and are better prepared for life-after-the-classroom, than their peers attending government schools. These inner-city Catholic schools are “public schools” in the best sense of the term; they’re open to the public (not just to Catholics), and they serve a genuine public interest, the empowerment of the youthful poor. Continue Reading »
A recent Gallup-Purdue survey 0f more than 30,000 college graduates explored connections between education and workplace engagement and well-being. The former combined job satisfaction with intellectual and emotional connection to the people and places of employment while the latter encompassed the . . . . Continue Reading »
Our political leaders generally discuss education in terms of economic development and competitiveness. Adam Smith, arguably the founder of modern economics, did not. Continue Reading »
For many years, traditionalist thinkers have promoted the teaching of a set of core texts—the “great books”—as a vital element of a liberal arts education during a time when demands for multiculturalism led to the dismantling of a number of traditional programs of study. In more recent . . . . Continue Reading »
No Child Left Behind is one of those laws made like a Bismarckian sausage. The more the public knew what was in it, the more unappealing it was and difficult to swallow, politically. The idea of some such legislation was proposed by President George W. Bush in January of 2001. . . . . Continue Reading »
He has authored over a dozen books, written a syndicated newspaper column and countless essays and articles covering a broad range of subjects—sports, politics, mobsters, union thugs, cultural touchstones, booze, and blades of grass—all of it written in a smart, literate voice of the casual sophisticate who takes his subject, but not himself, seriously. Continue Reading »
Freddie : I gotta tell you, I’m such a fan of sweeping ideas and idiosyncratic solutions to social problems that I’m naturally kind of attracted to Newt Gingrich’s new grand scheme , even if it is from one of the more odious people in American politics. Certainly, I think . . . . Continue Reading »
In trundling along on my path toward understanding how theological, cultural, social, and political conservatism are interrelated yet distinct things, I revisited a fine Heritage lecture by one James Ceaser called "Creed Versus Culture." There is no way to do justice to the whole lecture . . . . Continue Reading »
