Category: HeightsCast

The book of Genesis tells us that God made man ut operaretur—that he may work. Far from a punishment for the Fall, work is an essential part of man’s original vocation. Indeed, it is precisely as a craftsman—a tektōn, in the Greek—who does his work well (cf. Mark 6:3) that Jesus was identified in the Gospels. Education, therefore, even a liberal arts education, ought to take into account this important aspect of man’s nature.  This week on HeightsCast, we welcome John Paul Lechner and Dr. Joseph Haggarty to discuss how…

“I’m a big believer in boredom…. All the [technology] stuff is wonderful, but having nothing to do can be wonderful, too.” Thought-provoking words from the man whose company produces one of the most powerful tools for distracting ourselves from any feelings of boredom. Not only Steve Jobs, but seventeenth-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal, too, understood the dangers of perpetual entertainment, the inability to sit alone in a room by oneself.  Given the current cultural moment, a particular arena in which children—and, indeed, parents too—need to grow in self-mastery is that…

“Man He made to serve Him wittily,” said Thomas More in Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons, “in the tangle of his mind.” To serve God wittily requires an orderly mind, one capable of parsing through truths and falsehoods, able to string together arguments. Thus, the trivium endures: grammar, rhetoric, and logic.  To discuss teaching logic to high school students, we welcome to the podcast Mark Grannis, Heights teacher, attorney, father, and author of The Reasonable Person: Traditional Logic for Modern Life. In this episode, Mr. Grannis discusses what…

This episode of HeightsCast features our Headmaster’s Open House presentation, in which he shares our vision of education, along with the specific mission and concrete approach this vision animates.  As you will hear, the Heights is informed by the timeless, yet vigorously engaged with the present, sinking its roots as a school and community into the soil of the 21st century.  The Heights education, rather than seeking escape, strives to strengthen men who will, in turn, preserve, protect, and promote the good that is abundantly present in our modern world.

The real problem for many today is not ADD; it is, rather, what Headmaster Alvaro de Vicente refers to as IDD: intimacy deficit disorder. This problem is even worse for men, who on average have fewer close friends. Studies indicate that the percentage of males who report having at least six close friends has been cut in half since the 1990s. There is, it would seem, a recession in male friendships. While there is no easy panacea for this problem, as with most things, one’s education can have a lasting impact on…

Man is by nature made for movement. As a social-rational animal, he is not meant to live an angelic existence; his flourishing is embodied and, even more, it is familial.  Though we all know this intuitively, living a healthy life can be difficult in practice. Not only does personal experience tell us this, data suggests it: life expectancy in America is dropping. How is such a downward trend possible given the advances in medicine and technology? What humans have done since the dawn of time, and what they have stopped…

According to Aristotle (and Aquinas and others), the human person is essentially rational and social; man thinks, and he thinks best in the context of friendship. As such, at the very heart of man’s education ought to be learning to write effectively, for good writing is thought clarified and beautified which can be shared with others. Recent developments in Artificial Intelligence, however, seem to pose a formidable challenge to teachers who wish to help their students grow in this most human of crafts.  To help us think through how we…

In a culture where autonomy is often pursued as an ideal, it’s not surprising to learn that America is also experiencing a so-called loneliness epidemic. Together with loneliness, depression is also on the rise—a correlation that makes sense, given man’s nature as a social animal. What is the solution to these problems? While there is perhaps no panacea, there is a particularly important starting point: the intergenerational family.  This week, we explore the idea of “intergenerational human flourishing” with Fr. Robert Gahl, long-time professor at the Pontifical University of Santa Croce in…

Be careful that in encouraging a grade, you don’t shortchange growth; for a grade ought to be a means to growth, helping students—and their parents—see where they are so they can know where to go. Ideally, grades are the beginning of a conversation about what lies underneath the surface: the “why” beneath the “what”.  In today’s episode, Heights Headmaster Alvaro de Vicente guides us through a nuanced discussion on how parents can understand, interpret, and respond to their sons’ grades while nurturing strong and lasting bonds. Acknowledging that grades serve…

Interested in attending the next Teaching Vocation Conference? Register here. “The mind,” Plutarch wrote, “is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.” The teacher’s job, then, is not so much transferring data about the world from his mind to the students, but leading them to fall in love with the world that they see as good. The same is true for preparing teachers: what is needed is to light a fire.  There is no better man to light such a fire for the teaching vocation than Heights Headmaster…