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As Friday’s post mentioned, virtue education is not effectively accomplished in a liberal arts classroom education. It requires what the foremost expert on excellence, Anders Ericsson, called deliberate practice. One of the keys Ericsson found to deliberate practice in a particular endeavor is to improve one’s mental representations. He defines a mental representations as “a…

Between 1928 and 1930, Hugh Hartshorne and Mark May published a series of famous studies about character that would set back the study of virtue for over a half-century. Based on their studies Hartshorne and May concluded there was no such thing as stable character traits in people.Hugh Hartshorne, Mark May, and Julius B. Maller,…

Do buildings push your buttons? How does it feel to walk down a city street and feel gleaming glass rising on either side? What about towers of stone, casting long, dark shadows? How does it feel to see spires of commerce (think New York’s Chrysler building) rising like space-age cathedrals against a vast, blue sky?…

My father was a university chaplain in a nation under military rule.  I was a child during this time and had no idea what he, my mother, and others experienced.  Years later, we spoke about these years. He recalled that on that university campus it was common knowledge that most classrooms and spaces had someone…

It belongs to the examined life to strive for excellence in the discipline of memory. The honest and diligent activity of remembering helps us in several ways. It can be action-guiding or forward-looking. Through remembering a past experience, we are able to make a prudent call about what to do here and now—not repeating a…

"I want it all, I want it now"QueenYour kingdom come.Your will be done,on earth as it is in heaven.Jesus In their song, “I Want It All,” the rock band Queen famously described the outrageous desire to want it all and want it now as characteristic of the cries and dreams of youth. Empirically speaking, Queen…

Editor’s Note: In honor of our graduating students, we are posting a devotional reflection from a Baylor graduate student, Casey Spinks, offered during a retreat for a special program we sponsor to help graduate students think about faith and learning.  At the end of his life, the philosopher Eric Voegelin asked for two New Testament…

2 Corinthians 2:14-16 ESV But thanks be to God, who in Christ Jesus, always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from…

Restless Devices by Felicia Wu Song, Professor of Sociology at Westmont College, is a book published in 2021 by IVP Academic. The purpose of the book is clearly stated in the subtitle: “recovering personhood, presence, and place in the digital age.” While engineers build our digital tools, I am grateful for wise social scientists like…

The recent announcement that the human genome has finally been fully sequenced received the widespread recognition that it rightfully deserves. It was covered by PBS, Time, CNN, BBC and more. Notably, most of these stories reference the full about-face that geneticists have made since the publication of the first draft of the genome in 2003.…

Dr. Michelle Ami Reyes  Editor's Note: Due to a technical error, this post was not e-mailed on May 2 as intended. As a result, we are reposting it today.  Thanks, PLG  May is Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. How might Christian scholars effectively engage AAPI topics during this month and beyond? I…

I’m on sabbatical and I’ve taken up swimming. I know how to swim, but I’ve never done lap swimming, official swimming. I knew this would be a challenge for me, and I took it on philosophically and Biblically—the best ways I know. Phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty says: “true philosophy consists in relearning to look at the…

End of the quarter grading used to make me sick to my stomach.  By the second afternoon of my three-day grading marathon, I would be so hepped up on caffeine and sugared carbohydrates that I would begin to feel disoriented as if I had been flying for 24 hours with only fitful minutes of sleep…

There are several different terms that use the concept of humility that are somewhat popular in many circles: intellectual humility and cultural humility, just to name a couple. The fact that these two ideas have some applications outside of religious contexts suggests many people see humility as an important component of numerous facets of life.…

"The simple believes everything, but the prudent gives thought to his steps.” – Proverbs 14:15 ESV"Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute. Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.” – Proverbs 31:8-9 ESV In one of the laboratory classes I teach, students…

Perhaps the most famous saying of God from outside the Bible is an exhortation to read: “tolle lege” —meaning, “pick up and read.” These words, repeated as a chant in what sounded like a child’s voice, once exhorted Augustine to read and, in that act of reading, find salvation. Reflecting on this exhortation to read—salvific…

The primary goal of a liberal arts education is to aid students in developing practical wisdom. By introducing students to foundational knowledge from a wide array of academic fields and exposing them to multiple ways of interpreting that knowledge, a liberal arts education guides students toward becoming critical and nuanced thinkers who can gather, reflect…

Perhaps nowhere is the variety of American evangelicalism more apparent than among the 150 or so faith-based institutions that belong to the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU).  While these institutions have learned to cooperate in areas such as faculty research, campus technology, and library services, in their core function—teaching and learning—Christian colleges and…

According to Friedrich Schiller, beauty is our “second creator” and a necessary component for both societal progress and our education as individuals. Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man and Letters to Prince Frederick Christian von Augustenberg, trans. Keith Tribe (UK: Penguin, 2016), 78. In On the Aesthetic Education of Man, Schiller even asserted…

Some years ago, I read back-to-back autobiographies of two retired tennis players who had achieved excellence during their lives: Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras. There is little doubt that both underwent exacting forms of practice with coaches that built incredible physical and mental habits. Yet, as Andre Agassi said in his autobiography, “We could not…