Featured

Schools for Philosopher-Carpenters
A new crop of innovative schools encourages all students to use their minds and their hands.
Alex Sosler
Report
Why I Became a Firefighter
A priest joins her local volunteer fire department.
Brit Frazier
Personal History
The School that Escaped to the Alps
Faced with a Nazi takeover, the first Bruderhof school took refuge in Liechtenstein.
Marianne Wright
Essay
Does Teaching Literature and Writing Have a Future?
Learning that one’s job might soon be eliminated by the emergence of an overhyped new technology puts one in good company.
Phil Christman
Essay
Deerassic Park
A high-school science teacher and his students practice conservation in the woods and ponds of upstate New York.
Tim Maendel
Doers
Why We’re Failing to Pass on Christianity
How do you teach Christian basics to those who think they know all about it?
Benjamin Crosby
Essay

Insights

For the Love of Public School Teaching
An immigrant educator tells why he chose to teach underprivileged children.
Anthony Garces Foley
Interview
Let Children Play
In an age of high-pressure childhoods, free play is more necessary than ever.
Peter Gray
Interview
Timber Framing with Teenagers
Why a history teacher believes in training students to use hand tools.
Clem Robertshaw
Doers
The Most Valuable Joads
Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath inspires a small-engines project in the English classroom.
Tom Huleatt
Doers
The Music on Mount Sinai
As students enter adulthood, how can they learn to hear the voice of God beneath the noise of life?
Meir Soloveichik
Address
The Green Paint Incident
There’s no room for irony in a second-grade classroom.
Toby Payne
Personal History
Reverence for the Child
Four thinkers prepare us to come into the presence of children.
Eberhard Arnold
Maria Montessori
James Baldwin
Saint John Chrysostom
Reading
How Math Makes You a Better Person
Across cultures, I found that math can be more than mere problem-solving.
Frederick K S Leung
Interview
Tell an Old Story for Modern Times
A Bruderhof teacher applies lessons from her mentors and Homer in her classroom and beyond.
Lisabeth Button
Essay
Should I Read Scary Fairy Tales to My Child?
My kids already know the world is not safe. Will dragons and goblins make it worse?
Stephanie Ebert
Essay
Lernvergnügenstag: A Day for the Joy of Learning
Once a year, I get to teach my students whatever inspires me.
Patrick Tomassi
Doers
Freedom of Speech Under Threat
From Nicaragua to Finland, bold speech is a Christian’s right and duty.
Paul Coleman
Elyssa Koren
Report

Web Exclusives

Grand Canyon Classroom
A hiking club is a natural extension of a classical education.
Betsy K. Brown
Essay
Teaching the One Percent
A Columbia professor defends the spiritual worth of liberal education.
Dhananjay Jagannathan
Essay
The Homeschooling Option
Homeschooling in America has never been more widespread – or more diverse. We checked in on several parents in Detroit.
Casey Kleczek
Report
Gentleness in Academia
In a cutthroat environment, is it naive to approach one’s critics, or even one’s students, with virtues such as gentleness, patience, and humility?
Elizabeth Hoare
What Is a University For?
Three academics reflect on the purpose of university education.

Arts & Letters

Iron Sharpens Iron
Real friendship is the most powerful education.
Johann H. Huleatt
Essay
Hearing a Lecture on the Mandelbrot Set
To whom is the cheetah being obedient as she strangles a young impala?
Claude Wilkinson
Poetry
A Meditation on Figs
Rooted in rich, dark soil beside my grandmother’s smokehouse where hams hung and cured…
Claude Wilkinson
Poetry
On Raphael’s La Disputa del Sacramento
The first of my umbrages is how utterly humdrum eternity seems.
Claude Wilkinson
Poetry
We’re Alone Together
A review of Edwidge Danticat’s new essay collection, We’re Alone.
Caitrin Keiper
Editors’ Picks
Disagreeing Respectfully
John Inazu’s Learning to Disagree aims to improve civil discourse by showing readers how to navigate differences more gracefully.
Joseph Holmes
Editors’ Picks
Life without Magic
In H. G. Parry’s novel The Magician’s Daughter, a sixteen-year-old chooses to leave a magical island for the the wider world.
James Smoker
Editors’ Picks
The Jakob Hutter Story
In this excerpt from By Fire, a radical reformer risks everything for a cause.
Jason Landsel
Sankha Banerjee
Richard Mommsen
Comic