ChatGPT Holds These Truths to be Self-Evident
Logic and history teacher Mark Grannis challenges ChatGPT alongside his students to explain what it means to be an American. Is it right?
Eleven Common Questions for an Art Teacher
God is the perfect artist. He creates beauty at every scale and in every context we’re willing to find it. Our job as cooperators in his creation is to represent that beauty to the world… and that’s hard. Every earthly artist is going to struggle—that’s the nature of attempting anything good. What a joy it is, therefore, having the job of helping our sons push through that struggle and find the satisfaction of co-creating through art. This has been a passion of mine which unites the various steps in my…
Living the Sermon: A Review of 42
Jackie Robinson’s Story When Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey cooks up a plan to add a black man to the roster, he knows there will be pushback. “You break a law and get away with it,” says an advisor, “and some people will think you’re smart. You break an unwritten law; you’ll be an outcast.” “So be it,” says Rickey. The year is 1945, and the man for the job is Jackie Robinson. Starring the late Chadwick Boseman (of Marvel fame) and Harrison Ford, 42 chronicles Jackie’s rise and the…
Turbulent Seas: Lessons from a Dog on Confidence
On a chilly evening in the suburban sprawl of Northern Virginia, I set about my usual nighttime ritual of taking our middle-aged field-bred Red Setter, Rosie, out for her postprandial perambulation. This more lithe version of the Irish Setter popularized in the mid-twentieth century by Jim Kjelgaard’s Big Red books and Richard Nixon’s King Timahoe, is a tidy, but excitable, thirty-five pounds, the ideal size for road trips, backpacking, and an overpriced DC-suburb apartment filled with, what will soon be, three girls under the age of three. In addition to…
Terrible Purpose: Beauty and Contradiction at the Heart of Dune
In Dune, Part One and Part Two, Denis Villeneuve has adapted the unadaptable. These two impressive films, though they simplify and sometimes alter their source material, manage to distill the heart and soul of Frank Herbert’s original novel (1965). Given the influence of the ideas embodied in the text and now popularized in the films, it seems a good moment to appraise these adaptations, and to reflect on the ideas they promote. Like the films, this essay is divided into two parts, the first being a traditional film review (of…
Classroom Ambience
Joe Bissex shares some ways we can make our classrooms feel less institutional and more personal to foster the best atmosphere for learning.
From Pickles to Peacock Brains: The Friendship of Samuel Johnson and James Boswell
Tuesday, 24 May 1763: The rain had stopped before sunrise, but the sooty-film it left on the cobblestones off Inner-Temple-Lane made Boswell nearly slip into the mire twice. A third time, and the thought of sliding into horse-dung and God knows what else might have warned him off, ill-omened, to be sure. But Boswell wasn’t so easily put off today, so he watched his footing, while the sounds of carriages and whipped horses and carts and jouncing coaches filled his ears with something like a medley, a humming tune of…
Technology in the Home: Perspective, Principles, and Practices
Michael Moynihan, father of eleven and head of the Upper School at The Heights, offers some advice on the limits and liabilities of technology in the home.
Forgiveness and the Person: Why Shakespeare’s Tempest is better than Hamlet
English teacher Joe Bissex reflects on what makes Prospero better than Hamlet, and thus the Tempest greater than the Danish play.
To the Glory of God and the Memory of Emil Beer
Mark Grannis shares his quest, which ultimately leads him back to World War II, to understand an understated plaque on a lectern he purchased on eBay.