
Adulthood: Entering the School of Life
An adult is a grown up, someone who has developed to the point of maturity. He or she has “graduated from school,” so to speak. Now what? The dreaded platitude intoned at every graduation comes to mind: “‘commencement’ means a beginning not an end.” But what is it we are about to begin? Or, better, into what precisely are we about to be initiated? Skepticism? Doubt? Distraction? This issue proposes adulthood as a “school of life” where “students”—now on their own two feet—verify the truth they have been given as they seek it more deeply, and become teachers themselves.
Reading this animated discussion, readers will see that something hopeful is afoot: an extensive, thoughtful, intelligent, self-correcting movement that is taking the long view about what is needed to restore life to our culture, the education of the next generation of real grown-ups.
ArteFact continues to feature reviews of great fiction and film. Interested in historical fiction? Don’t miss this article on Lucy Beckett’s The Time Before You Die and also Philip Trower’s A Danger to the State, or the review of Paula Huston’s A Land Without Sin, set in the war-torn jungles of Central America in the 1990’s. We also recommend this thoughtful reflection on Netflix’s “Stranger Things.”
Table of Contents
Editorial
Margaret Harper McCarthy: “Educating To What End?”
ReSource: Classic Texts
Blessed John Henry Newman: “Intimately Knit: Religious Knowledge in College Education”
Feature Articles
Peter D. Crawford: “Education Right Side Up”
Christine Myers: “Crisis and Opportunity: The Drama of Growing Faithful”
Sophia O’Brien: “Growing Time: Thoughts on Charlotte Mason and Teaching a More Natural Science”
Elisabeth Sullivan: “To Lead a Child: On Reclaiming a Human Pedagogy”
Book Reviews
John Beegle: Review of How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare (Ken Ludwig)
Carla Galdo: Review of Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education (David V. Hicks)