All Roads Lead Back to Curriculum

All Roads Lead Back to Curriculum by Robert Pondiscio at The Hoover Institution. Robert Pondiscio is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who focuses on K–12 education, specifically curriculum development. His chapter in A Nation at Risk +40 makes the case for a focus on higher-quality curriculum as a lower-cost, high-impact means of boosting student achievement. He spoke with Chris Herhalt about curriculum development and why it is not discussed by leading education reformers. Read

Classical Education and Learning Differences: 5 Resources by Rachel Woodham at Circe Institute. From the second I set foot in the classroom a dozen years ago I began wrestling with the puzzle of learning differences. I found that charity and attentiveness went a long way. For example, I noticed the connection between outbursts from a child with ASD and the use of the overhead projector. This was an easily resolvable problem once I realized the cause. Attentiveness, however, has its limits; in other circumstances I failed miserably because learning disabilities often require specialized attention or input beyond the capacity of the classroom teacher. Read

Lessons From Beer Halls by Mark Perkins at First Things. An ugly school building might be cheap, but it does not serve the ultimate purposes of education. As T. S. Eliot says of society as a whole, a good school is one “in which the natural end of man—virtue and well-being in community—is acknowledged for all, and the supernatural end—beatitude—for those who have the eyes to see it.” The end of education is arete, excellence and human flourishing leading to worship for those with eyes to see. Read

The Case for Resurrecting Homer’s Iliad by Andrew J. Zwerneman at Cana Academy. It is time we restore Homer’s Iliad to the heart of American education. Most schools today do not include the epic on their reading lists. This is a terrible loss. Homer is a great teacher, and his passing as the foundation of humanities education is a terrible loss. Let’s resurrect him and his Iliad for the sake of our students. Typically, the first line of apology offered for reading Homer’s Iliad is an historical one: Students need to absorb the Western tradition, so the argument goes, and any curriculum that places a high premium on understanding the West will see their way to Homer first. Because Homer’s Iliad is the wellspring of the entire tradition, every student ought to read it. Read

Classical Education and American Literature by Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative. In my role with the Sacred Hearth Hybrid Academy, I have helped design the high school literature curriculum, which covers classic texts from Homer through to Tolkien and Lewis. In considering the selection of texts from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it was American literature which presented the greatest challenge. A colleague suggested the following shortlist:  Death Comes for the Archbishop, The Great Gatsby, Our Town, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Violent Bear It Away, Joan of Arc by Mark Twain, and The Old Man and the Sea. Read

Screen-Free, Faith-Based Activities for Kids Stuck Inside by Cecilia Pigg at Aleteia. Whether it is rain, extreme heat or extreme cold, sometimes the weather doesn’t allow for much outside play. On other days, kids are sick enough to have to stay inside, but not sick enough to be in bed all day. Here are some screen-free activities that can connect you and the kids in your care to the life of the Church. Read

4 Back-to-School Prayers by Rose Church at CatholicVote. The back-to-school season is full of scheduling, planning, and preparation. During this time of excitement and renewed enthusiasm, why not recharge your prayer life? Here are a few powerful prayers to fit into the nooks and crannies of life as you head back to school. Read

Trump's Agenda47 on Education: Abolish Teacher Tenure, Universal School Choice, Patriotism by Kinsey Crowley at USA TODAY. Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump has laid out his education policy plans in Agenda47. Separate from the oft-mentioned Project 2025, Agenda47 covers Trump's official policy platform on issues including crime, health care and immigration. Agenda47 on education proposes 10 ideas for "great schools leading to great jobs" that range from curriculum requirements to preferential funding for schools with internship programs. Read

Oklahoma School Board Rescinds Contract for Catholic Charter School by Kate Quiñones at Catholic News Agency. The Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board on Monday unanimously rescinded the contract for what would have been the nation’s first religious charter school. St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School would have been the first religious charter school in the nation, but in late June the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled against its establishment and ordered the Statewide Virtual Charter School Board to drop the Catholic institution’s contract. A charter school is a privately run, publicly funded school. Read

Wisconsin Teacher Suing School District After Being Fired for Not Using Students’ Preferred Pronouns by Corrinne Hess at Wisconsin Public Radio. A Wisconsin teacher has filed a federal lawsuit against his former school district after he was fired for not using the preferred names and pronouns of transgender students. Jordan Cernek filed the lawsuit against the Argyle School District last month alleging his First Amendment right to freedom of religion was violated. Cernek also alleges the district violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that protects employees from discrimination based on religion when he was fired in August 2023. Read

The Catholic University of America Receives $1 Million Grant for Campuswide Virtue Effort by Kate Quiñones at Catholic News Agency. The Catholic University of America (CUA) has received a $1 million Institutional Impact grant from the Educating Character Initiative (ECI) to expand programs designed to cultivate virtue in students. CUA’s project, the Virtue and Character Initiative, is one of 24 projects among 29 schools receiving the grant. Aimed at supporting character education in colleges and universities, ECI is part of the Program for Leadership and Character at Wake Forest University, a liberal arts university based in North Carolina. Read

Throwback Thursday

Bringing the True, Good, and Beautiful into Math Class by Dr. Andrew Seeley at The Institute for Catholic Liberal Education on February 24, 2019. In the ancient world, the mathematical disciplines were honored among the arts essential to the education of free men, and the road leading to the doors of wisdom. But contemporary approaches to math make this almost impossible to see. Math textbooks and the standardized tests that guide them aim at forming excellent calculators, leaving very little time for exploring why the rules for calculation work, and why anyone would want to be calculating in the first place. Institute President Michael Van Hecke, who teaches math to seventh and eighth graders, believes that learning to calculate well can contribute in important ways to the development of virtue. Read