Article | November 25, 2025
The Magisterial Case for Single-Sex Education
Featuring Dr. Joseph Lanzilotti
Read OnArticle | November 17, 2025
The Journeys of Eamon Duffy: Doubt in the Life of Faith?
Featuring Michael Ortiz
Read OnHeightsCast | November 12, 2025
Formation for the Body: Lifelong Functional Fitness
Featuring Dan Lively
Read OnArticles & Essays
Don’t Spoil Your Son
Do we have guiding principles around giving good things to our children? Four practical battlegrounds can help us to raise sons who do not expect a life of constant comfort.
By Alvaro de Vicente | December 02, 2025
The Magisterial Case for Single-Sex Education
The Church has continuously recommended distinct educational settings for boys and girls, including in the 21st century, even as the prevailing educational culture shifts.
By Dr. Joseph Lanzilotti | November 25, 2025
The Internet and Pornography
Our sons should not only be men who behave truly in accord with their God-given natures; they should learn truly how to love. Pornography erodes both.
By Alvaro de Vicente | November 18, 2025
The Journeys of Eamon Duffy: Doubt in the Life of Faith?
The work of Eamon Duffy, which follows his interest in English Catholicism, speaks to the cry: “Lord I do believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:23-4).
By Michael Ortiz | November 17, 2025
AI and the Hype Cycle
When a technology is first introduced and improved rapidly in its early iterations, the trajectory of improvement is drawn up to infinity. But evaluating the tendencies and tradeoffs can help us to see new technologies more clearly.
By Tom Cox | November 11, 2025
What Is Your Level of Boy Tolerance?
As a culture, we have a decreasing tolerance for boyhood itself. In his latest post, Alvaro de Vicente reframes boyish energy as the raw material of virtue, not to be stifled at every occasion. As parents and educators, we must elevate our “boy tolerance” if we are to raise dangerously good men.
By Alvaro de Vicente | November 04, 2025
The Men of Austen
Some books teach; some books entertain. The best books do both. That is why I enjoy Jane Austen. Each time I read her novels, I am inspired. Beneath her polished prose and sharp wit was an intelligent mind that perceived how easily we deceive ourselves. While she is known best for her female heroines, the men in her novels can serve as models for what a good man does and does not do. In this essay, I’ll concentrate on her novels from The Heights reading list (Pride and Prejudice, Emma,...
By Robert Greving | October 31, 2025
Why Boys Need Fewer Rules and More Rites of Passage
The objective of real education is not the rule, but the man who no longer needs it. Rites of passage, especially, can help signal to the young man that he is ready to take on more self-governance.
By Alvaro de Vicente | October 21, 2025
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Book & Movie Reviews
Soaring Over the Rainbow
" Wicked: For Good completes the faithful adaptation of a Broadway masterpiece. The Broadway musical Wicked first hit movie theate..."
- Mark Grannis Read the ReviewThe Power and the Glory – A Review
"Have you ever read a book that inspired in you a soul-crushing desire to eat fried chicken, shed undefinable tears through a mouthful of Spr..."
- Joseph Bissex Read the ReviewIn Search of Sacrifice: The Drama of the Family in Godzilla Minus One
"2023’s Japanese film Godzilla Minus One is more than a monster flick—it’s a true family movie. Not to be confused with CGI-heavy Ameri..."
- Joe Breslin Read the ReviewTestosterone Tropes: A Review of F1: The Movie
"If the social media “manosphere” became incarnate as a movie, that movie would be F1. Not so much a story as a series of “manly” tro..."
- Joe Breslin Read the ReviewLook Up: Why I Believe in Superman (2025)
"Superman (2025) is a fun and wholesome movie that’s best enjoyed on the big screen. Despite some issues with pacing and a few unfortunate ..."
- Tom Cox Read the ReviewCutting Edge, but Get to the Point
"Fantasy authors have a league of their own. They play for various intramural teams, such as The Snarky Sendups (Terry Pratchett’s Discworl..."
- Joseph Bissex Read the ReviewMelancholy, Minnesotan Medicine
"In a post-progress Midwest, beside that omnipotent and mercurial god, Lake Superior, Rainy and his wife Lark have the closest thing to happi..."
- Joe Breslin Read the ReviewEscaping the Void: A Review of Thunderbolts*
"The Marvel Cinematic Universe hasn’t done itself any favors since Endgame (2019). Between emasculating beloved male characters, inserting ..."
- Joe Breslin Read the ReviewA Sublime Comedy: Joe Versus the Volcano at 35
"Friday, March 9, 1990, was a pivotal day in my life, because it’s the day I picked up the phone and called the young woman who would, eigh..."
- Mark Grannis Read the ReviewPure Murder: A Review of Gladiator II
"I never want to see this movie again. Granted, this might sound a bit harsh coming from a Classics undergrad who spent most of his Classics ..."
- Conn Mehigan Read the ReviewBrowse all Reviews...
Podcasts & Videos
HeightsCast
On Manners: The “ABCs” of Virtue
Please, thank you, after you… Do manners matter? Are they artifice or virtue? In this rebroadcast from 2019, lower school head Colin Gleason shares how manners can be the building blocks to a richer moral life—the habituation of virtue. He then offers practical advice for families and schools to help even young boys strengthen their “moral muscle” through manners that matter. Chapters: 1:34 Why start in the lower school 3:12 Manners: artifice or virtue? 5:34 Orienting them towards the needs of others 10:06 Manners that matter 13:31 Social manners for...
Featuring Colin Gleason | November 20, 2025
Forum Faculty Podcast
Athlete or Academic: What’s the Real Priority in Schools?
We welcome to this conversation coaches and teachers Jeff Thompson, Joel Sellier, and Brian Carroccio. They dive into the historical importance of physical education, the post-COVID surge in youth sports, the impact of club sports on school sports, and the critical development of discipline and teamwork through athletics.
Featuring Jeff Thompson, Joel Sellier, Brian Carroccio | August 01, 2025
Formation for the Body: Lifelong Functional Fitness
In our school communities, we talk a great deal about moral and intellectual formation. But physical development, too, has an essential place in the whole-person, long-term vision of what our sons and students can become. Heights Athletic Director Dan Lively reminds us that the goals of athletic training don’t begin and end with high school sports. In fact, lifelong functional fitness is in service to every vocation. It ensures that we and our sons are capable of having a positive impact—on the world and in our families—for as many years...
Featuring Dan Lively | November 12, 2025
Why Beauty Matters: The Postmodern Pressure on Our Interior Life
One philosopher of our time claims that “today, the experience of beauty is impossible.” Dr. Jason Baxter, director of the Center for Beauty and Culture at Benedictine College, begs to differ. Dr. Baxter joins us on HeightsCast to unpack his latest book, Why Literature Still Matters, which looks at why such a claim might feel true in our digital age. Then, he talks us through why and how we should reclaim our experiences of beauty for the health of our soul.
Featuring Dr. Jason Baxter | November 06, 2025
Faculty of Friends: Making Schools into Communities
The joy of “being known here” is not just for the students. When a faculty cultivates friendship, it benefits the entire school community. Tom Cox has been a middle and upper school Latin and Greek teacher at The Heights since 2009. He also hosts The Forum Faculty Podcast, now in its second year, which gives a slice of teacher breakroom culture: the kinds of conversations, rapport, and friendship that are born of our shared work and life as teachers. Tom joins us today to talk about how important faculty friendship...
Featuring Tom Cox | October 30, 2025
Parental Rights in Natural and Constitutional Law
What are parental rights? Are they a legal stance—or a philosophical one? In today’s conversation, Dr. Melissa Moschella of the University of Notre Dame discusses the profound and practical implications of the parent-child relationship. She then explores how those conclusions operate in the American legal tradition, tracing from natural law to John Locke to historic court cases and the public discourse today. Chapters: 3:46 True rights imply true duties 10:04 Natural law: knowable through reason 15:00 The rights and duties of parents 22:32 Role of the state in the American...
Featuring Dr. Melissa Moschella | October 23, 2025
A Whole Education: Teaching Persons, Not Just Subjects
There should be no contradiction in pursuing hard sciences, humanities, and moral virtue all in one day. For upper schoolers switching classrooms every hour, or for teachers siloed in a single subject, it can be easy to mistake “education” for a series of distinct academic categories. In this rebroadcast from 2015, Upper School Head Michael Moynihan gives us a better framework. He urges us to look at how our school’s different departments present a unified and infinitively connective worldview—one that invites inquisitive engagement and exercises the full scope of human...
Featuring Michael Moynihan | October 16, 2025
Parental Expectations: On Being Both Perfect and Anxious for Nothing
“Be perfect” (Matt. 5:48) and “anxious for nothing” (Phil. 4:6). This tall order from the New Testament may put modern parents into a cold sweat. Parental perfectionism and anxiety are surely on the rise, but in his annual Headmaster’s Lecture at The Heights School, Alvaro de Vicente talks us down. He shows us the compatibility and wisdom of these two Biblical encouragements by refocusing on the process of growth—moral, academic, athletic, and spiritual—over simply the apparent results. Chapters: 2:41 Introduction: being “good enough” 8:15 A new way to see perfection...
Featuring Alvaro de Vicente | October 09, 2025
Conversation: The Medium of Mentoring
The art of mentoring is not just for teachers and coaches, but also parents—who can never really be out of mentoring mode. In a recent Substack article, Alvaro de Vicente named five pitfalls for our attempts at mentoring young men. This week, he talks us through some of the takeaways, reminding us that mentoring is not a profound lecture but an ongoing conversation, and the goal is not to modify but to form. Chapters: 3:49 What mentoring is 4:35 Conversation as the basis 8:55 Parents: always in mentor mode 10:13...
Featuring Alvaro de Vicente | October 02, 2025
Building Parent-Teacher Rapport
In broader society, mistrust increasingly defines the parent-teacher relationship. But it doesn’t have to be this way. As seventh grade core teacher and Heights parent, Kyle Blackmer shares a practical vision for sound parent-teacher relationships. It begins with understanding parents and teachers in their true, cooperative roles for a child’s good. And it ends with developing real friendship between parents and teachers as they pursue this good together. Chapters: 1:29 Decline of the parent-teacher relationship 4:51 Parents’ true role as primary educators 10:18 How teachers relate to parents 13:40 How...
Featuring Kyle Blackmer | September 25, 2025
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