Winter: A Time for Noble Joy

Winter: A Time for Noble Joy

What does it take to form virtue—or to ‘educate’ in the most important sense? This perennial question concerns all of us, at all stages of life. Aristotle offers a simple but surprising principle that should focus us on what we’re doing at home in these winter days....
A Moment That Says It All

A Moment That Says It All

It’s a stunning moment in one of the great books: Jim Hawkins doesn’t jump the stockade. The other day when reading Treasure Island aloud with the family, I fairly wanted to jump out of my skin when we came to it. For the fortunate hearer, a moment like this can...
Losing Sleep Over ‘Educating’ Our Children

Losing Sleep Over ‘Educating’ Our Children

My father-in-law once explained why he wanted to ‘homeschool’ when almost no one else in the state was doing so. “I wanted my children to be like their mother rather than like the teachers in the schools.” Whether this was or is the best practical conclusion, it in...
Manners: A Lost Key in Raising Children

Manners: A Lost Key in Raising Children

Although the lack of manners today is generally noted with disapproval, we often do not think of manners as a central feature of how we raise our children. But manners are arguably the major instance of a concrete, tangible thing we are failing to pass on, to the...
What Makes Someone Want to Be Virtuous?

What Makes Someone Want to Be Virtuous?

There is nothing like parenting, or teaching, or any real formation of the young to help us to see and focus on what really matters. If we have come to the insight that living well—or living virtuously—is at the center of the human vocation, then the enormity of a...

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