Education Archives

The Lost Transcendental: What About the Moral Imagination?

Leave a Comment / Education, Literary Analysis, The Hovel / By Emily Andrews

Ian and I did a lot of driving last year. Having recently moved to the middle of the country, equidistant between our two families with almost mathematical precision, we decided to forego flying home for the holidays in favor of seeing America by car. It was a great idea, and we saw a lot of cool landscapes, but let me tell you there are some areas of this beautiful country that are the very reason the Wright brothers desperately turned to flight. Sorry eastern Colorado, but you are one of them. To pass the time we turned into podcast junkies. If you haven’t checked out Mike Duncan’s Revolutions podcast yet and you have any interest at all in history, you should go subscribe right now. His history of the French Revolution, in particular, is a fascinating study…

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“God forgive us:” The Cloud of Broken Witnesses

Leave a Comment / Criticism, Education, Literary Analysis, The Hovel / By Ian Andrews

In his thrilling novella, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson paints the inescapable tension between good and evil in the human spirit. Frankly, that by itself is a pretty good summary of his theme. But, there is more to be said about what he implies concerning human desires and the remedies we can find for them. He doesn’t leave us entirely in the dark when it comes to where salvation lies…

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The Perils of Teaching History Through Literature

Leave a Comment / Education, The Hovel / By Guest Author

Some home school parents think they are killing two birds with one stone when they attempt to teach history through literature. Unfortunately, many of these parents are perpetuating falsehoods, teaching fiction as fact, and training their children to use emotions in order to understand the meaning of the past. There are many reasons why there are separate genres for non-fiction and fiction, and one of the most important is the critical need to teach children how to discern fact from fiction. The blockbuster novel Gone with the Wind is an excellent example of why we cannot teach literature as history. ..

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Image-Bearers and Creators of Worlds

Leave a Comment / Education, The Hovel / By Adam Andrews

A human being is a creator of worlds. I didn’t realize how great this power is (or how true the statement) until one day last spring when my wife Missy and I were late for a plane in the Atlanta airport. As we approached the TSA security checkpoint, we fought the stress and anxiety you would expect in this situation. I noticed that traffic was being directed down a narrow hallway before spilling out into the familiar back-and-forth, Disneyland-style queue that leads to the metal detectors. On the left side of this passage stood a stern, scowling TSA agent. Her job was to remind us to empty our pockets, remove laptop computers from their cases, and dispose of liquids totaling more than three ounces. And to hurry up – always hurry up…

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The Lost Transcendental: Moral and Theme

Leave a Comment / Education, The Hovel / By Emily Andrews

In my last post, I examined the so-called ancient Greek “transcendentals,” truth, goodness, and beauty, and suggested that if these concepts are meant to describe qualities that bridge the gap between heaven and earth, we might be missing one. And, in fact, this lost transcendental should stand in front of the other three, like a lens that necessarily colors our attitude toward them…

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Of Lists and Laws: Busy Lives and Back-to-School Plans

Leave a Comment / Education, Homeschooling, The Hovel / By Missy Andrews

August is upon us, and if you’re anything like me, in addition to the sunshine and heat, it brings with it a crushing realization that the long list of summer to-dos that we penned with great hope in late May is not going to be accomplished. Mine sits before me, a glaring accusation. Where did the time go? The bathroom with 18-year-old wallpaper I was going to re-decorate, the vanity I was going to refinish, the pictures I was going to rescue from the vaults of my computer and finally frame on my walls, the books I was going to read, the coffee dates I was going to have with neglected friends and family, all of these proclaim my insufficiency…

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The Lost Transcendental: My Only Concern for the Classical Education Movement

Leave a Comment / Criticism, Education, The Hovel / By Emily Andrews

Prince Hal is one of my dearest friends. I met him at a critical moment in my life, and in fact, it is not entirely an exaggeration to say he almost single-handedly saved my education. It was the middle of my senior year at Hillsdale College and in order to graduate from the Honors Program, I had to write and defend an interdisciplinary thesis. Having majored in literature and history, I decided to combine my two favorite areas of study by researching Shakespeare’s memory of English history as portrayed in his Henry plays. Every narrative of history is biased according to the unique perspective of the storyteller. I wanted to see what set Shakespeare’s perspective apart from the chroniclers who told the story of England before him…

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The Humility of Socratic Discussion

Leave a Comment / Education, Literary Analysis, The Hovel / By Guest Author

We spent the June session of the Pelican Society’s Office Hours pondering teaching with Socratic discussion. Socratic discussion and teaching is relatively new to me, I’m embarrassed to admit. This probably isn’t as true as I believe, for at its most basic level, Socratic teaching is asking questions, and doesn’t everyone ask questions all the time? Anyone who’s been around a preschooler (or been a preschooler, for that matter) knows this is true. Anyone who’s wondered something, or had a curiosity about something, is asking questions…

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Fair Trials and Kangaroo Courts: An Interpretive Philosophy

Leave a Comment / Education, Literary Analysis, The Hovel / By Missy Andrews

I spent March on the road traveling to homeschool conventions. These are interesting events: educators, professionals, and entrepreneurs of every stripe fill exhibit halls with their wares and spend literal hours on concrete floors explaining their materials. Wide-eyed parents are just trying to figure it all out so that their precious charges can get what they need to survive in the world. Of course, “need” is a broad term…

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Picture Books…for High Schoolers?

Leave a Comment / Education, Homeschooling, Literary Analysis, The Hovel / By Adam Andrews

If you are already thinking about the reading list you will assign to your students next fall, congratulations – you are way ahead of Missy and me! But let me offer one piece of advice as you assemble your curriculum: Assign children’s picture storybooks to all of your students in the first few weeks of the school year…

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