The Narthex

Under the direction of the United Auto Workers, 48,000 “academic workers,” chiefly researchers and graduate students, at the University of California are on strike—the largest such job action in history. It even includes the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, whose task is to “mind” and “develop” the country’s nuclear arsenal. The…

Before my class of one hundred graduated from grade school -- from Mary, Seat of Wisdom School in Park Ridge, Illinois, in 1964 -- we had a Day of Recollection at our church conducted by one of the priests who belonged to the Mission Band of the Archdiocese of Chicago.…

Previously I addressed teaching Latin to Catholic grade school students. Now I'll address teaching Latin to high school students who are Catholic. As previously described, I used the Bible, Latin hymns, Latin prayers, and the Latin Mass to help teach Latin to Catholic grade-schoolers. But what about Catholic high school…

I taught Latin to Catholic grade school students from 2010 through 2018. Admittedly, the course was not demanding since we met for only 40 minutes once weekly (on Saturday mornings). But from the outset I never intended to concentrate, as is typical of Latin instruction, on grammar or, shall I…

I took part in a seminar in Melbourne early this week at which parents, teachers, and representatives from Catholic, Protestant, and secular schools came together from around Australia to learn more about what constitutes a classical education. The term classical education has become an important buzz word in conservative circles.…

Today Arizona governor Doug Ducey is signing a universal school-choice law that gives parents $7,000 per child per year to spend at any educational institution of their choice, including private schools and religious schools. Catholic schools in Arizona will be among the many beneficiaries of this innovation. In City Journal…

In July, a grisly video made the evening news. The video—apparently real—shows a Ukrainian prisoner of war being tortured by Chechen soldiers fighting for the Russian military. The Chechens castrate the Ukrainian prisoner with a box cutter and then shoot him dead. People in modern societies comfort themselves with the…

Even the so-called best of our modern schools offer suboptimal conditions for boys. Warren Farrell and John Gray's The Boy Crisis (2019) substantially treats the topic, as does the older War Against Boys by Christina Hoff Sommers (2015). We all experience manifestations of the boy crisis in our daily lives…

Another school shooting, but the same old debate follows. The blood of the slain and wounded children is not yet dry in the classrooms before pundits start to parrot the usual lines.

“It’s the guns!” cries the Left.

“It’s mental illness!” cries the Right.

I submit it’s the public schools.…

Before color movies, TVs, and then iPhones came into widespread use, radio mystery stories like The Shadow Knows had the power to fascinate. The Orson Welles radio broadcast War of the Worlds was so vivid that it caused panic in the streets of major cities. I suspect that same broadcast…

We at the Christopher Dawson Centre, in Australia, are looking forward to hosting a talk by Prof. Ian Plimer on Thursday April 21. He is a controversial and provocative climate scientist who questions the prevailing "narrative." After choosing the venue, a pub in central Hobart, and making the arrangements I…

“The Liberal Arts” is a term we hear a lot which perhaps calls for some explanation. We are not talking about precious and “arty” school subjects that students do when they can’t quite manage math and science! Though that is a common enough impression: I recall as classics master in…

The Protestant Revolution was not the only revolution of the 16th Century.  Just three years prior to Luther’s presentation of his 95 Theses there was an even more earth shattering revolution started by Nicolas Copernicus.  The Copernican revolution posited that the Earth was not the center of the cosmos but…