Issue 12: Education

Rhonda Mino-Melanson

Pavlovian responses

In this poem, Rhonda Mino-Melanson reflects on the relationship between teachers and students.

Jeff Keuss

Breathing Lessons: A Vision for Campus Ministries in the Twenty-First Century

In this article Dr. Keuss seeks to reassert the important relationship between campus ministry programs and Christian universities; he proposes four distinct movements within our current educational milieu—the movement from technological isolation toward real-life intimacy, from passive ethics toward engaged citizenship, from occupational drive toward radical vocational abandonment, and from racial ignorance and isolation toward true racial reconciliation through honesty, humility, and hard work.

Patricia Westerhof

Marking Time

In this personal essay, Patricia Westerhof questions her life as a teacher, especially the slow, thankless work of grading papers.

Lee Passarella

There’s a Divinity…

In this poem, Lee Passarella muses on the education of the Austrian composer Anton Bruckner, an artist who one hundred years after his death still has his ardent admirers and his ardent critics.

Andrew Krinks, Lindsey Krinks

A Peculiar Education: Homelessness, Poetry, and the Imagination

In this article, Andrew and Lindsey Krinks suggest that at the intersection between an imaginative exploration of poetry and a creative ministry to the homeless lies a unique potential for the sort of education that is “peculiar” and thus ideal for a life of Christian discipleship, a life that seeks to cultivate reconciliation for the sake of God’s kingdom.

William Hudson

First Grade

That towheaded boy sat In his overalls There in a circle With the others Reading from a primer And the others Would raise their hands And get up from their Little chairs there In that circle And go to the teacher And point at a word And the teacher Would quietly Say the word And […]

Paul Jaussen

Teaching the Universal Subject: A Manifesto

In this essay, Paul Jaussen argues that discipleship is a valuable model for education, one which avoids the common traps of ideological or market-driven pedagogies.

Misty Anne Winzenried

Ocean Children

In this poem, Misty Anne Winzenried describes a visit to the beach—the children playing in the surf, the endless expanse of sea and sky, the surprises of tide pools—and invites readers to “lick / memories from their fingers” as they recall their own life lessons at the ocean.

Jan Lee Ande

The Second Text

In this poem, Jan Lee Ande reminds us that even on “ordinary mornings” we can learn from nature, “that other text written by the finger of God.”

Jan Lee Ande

Words Wearing Their Pontificals

In this poem, Jan Lee Ande imagines the dictionary as a sacrarium and its words as our clerics, our stepstones to the divine.

Charles Taylor, Ron Kuipers

Religious Belonging in an "Age of Authenticity": A Conversation with Charles Taylor (Part Two of Three)

In the second of a three-part interview, Charles Taylor discusses his understanding of “authenticity” as something that deeply influences contemporary Western life, including how religious life is best lived in such an “age of authenticity.” In suggesting ways in which the representatives of religious traditions should respond to people in this age, Taylor echoes the themes of such twentieth-century educational theorists as Paulo Freire and John Dewey.