AI, School, and You
This was a letter sent to our student body in May 2023 about the rise of AI in education. You can read an essay of mine that expands on these things here.
Let them be born in wonder
Let Them Be Born in Wonder is the title of an excellent article that highlights the work of the storied, but relatively short-lived, Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas. Part of the reason the program no longer exists is that a disproportionate number of students in the program were converting to Christianity as a result of their studies. The program was closed for this reason in 1979, despite the fact that the investigative committee found “no evidence that the professors of the program have engaged in such activities in the classroom.
Christus est stella matutina, Qui nocte saeculi transacta Lucem vitae sanctis promittit Et pandit aeternam, Alleluia
Christ is the morning star, who when the night of this world is past brings to his saints the promise of the light of life and opens everlasting day.
A prayer attributed to St. Bede, which is displayed beautifully at his tomb in Durham.
I am a happier, healthier, and more focused person when:
- I do not have email on my phone
- I do not have a web browser on my phone
- I go for a morning walk before looking at a screen
- I pray the morning office before looking at a screen
These are undisputedly true. And I still find them hard to maintain.
A Letter to the Class of 2024
On May 18, 2024, the Coram Deo Academy Dallas Campus graduated its first class of Seniors. Below is my message for that class, shared at the Class of 2024 Commencement Ceremony. There have been many times—perhaps more than I care to admit—that I have stood in the hallway outside the doorway to your classroom thinking to myself “I don’t have time for this. I need this hour for something else.” To reflect on what just happened.
The children “helping” with the leaves in the front yard.
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
T.S. Eliot, Choruses from The Rock
This past weekend served as a personal and professional watermark. Our six year journey of launching a Rhetoric School for the Coram Deo Academy Dallas Campus culminated in a Commencement ceremony during which Malcolm Guite blessed our seniors as our inaugural Honored Speaker.. I will forever cherish all of his words that day, but especially these:
If I come from another world, then I have to say it’s also felt extraordinarily like a homecoming here. Because I have loved and recognized the mutual admiration and respect between student and staff, between teacher and learner.
There is more to say about Malcolm Guite’s visit to Coram Deo Academy and our home this weekend, but these photos capture some of the joy of watching my own children, our graduates, and many friends soak up time with him.
I do not think it will pass, but I am excited to see that Premier League clubs are voting next month to abolish VAR as early as next season. There is not any less controversy now than there was before VAR, and the impact it has had on the flow of the game is hard to overstate.
Today, it was finally announced that the new USL Super League team in Dallas is in fact in Dallas. Excited to see Dallas Trinity FC develop as a team in the months to come, and looking forward to seeing them at the Cotton Bowl this fall.
The iPad ad shows the true colors of much of the tech industry. These companies stopped making tools a long time ago. They now make Everything Machines that are designed to free us from the shackles of the analog world. Up next: freedom from the shackles of the physical world. This is Gnosticism revisited, not by ancient religious leaders, but by tech moguls who are driven by far more than profit.
I wonder how much of the push towards thinner and lighter is rooted in a desire to free the user from anything physical? Sure, these devices are (sometimes) easier to transport and (sometimes) easier to hold when they are thinner and lighter. But the ad suggests that thinness is about more than usability. The thinner the device, the less reliant we are on the physical realm.
I am writing this on an iPad. I am well aware of the cognitive dissodance involved here. But my recent flirting with the idea of only purchasing used tech devices did just gain an extra measure of resolve.
This ad reminds us that we have too weak a vision for the value of repair and restoration. As one whose views on automobiles and life have been shaped by decades of listening to Car Talk, and admires the folks behind The Repair Shop, the sharp contrast between this ad and the spirit of shows like these is palpable.
The ad works, in a world where advertising is successful in so much as it is viral.
What a perfect subtitle for this season of life: “unexpected demands on a man already tired.”
Lewis goes on to rightly argue, through Uncle Screwtape, that the root issue lies in us holding the utterly unrealistic expectation that there will be no “unexpected demands” in the first place.
Working towards maintaining Inbox Zero while using an “as minimal as possible” setup for Apple Mail that I recently stumbled upon. What you can’t see in the screenshot is the Grayscale mode that remains enabled for MacOS, since screenshots ignore Color Filters.
An Ash Wednesday 2024 sermon for my parish and letter for my school community, prepared as we embark on another Lenten season together. This one comes with a reminder that Lent is not the Thing itself.
A lesson for all those who ever have to save and submit things online: USMNT forward Duncan McGuire’s deal to play in England this spring is now gone, following an unsuccessful appeal by Blackburn.
Blackburn thought they had clicked “submit paperwork” on the English Football League’s transfer system before the deadline but had actually hit “save”.
The result was there in the end, and it was thrilling attacking soccer as promised. Three goals within ten minutes of the second half kickoff. What a dream first season under Ange.
Paideia for Preachers—a new regular column I am writing for the Covenant blog of The Living Church—debuts today. If you find yourself teaching or preaching in any number of contexts, these regular glimpses into the Art of Rhetoric from ages past might help.
This is the final exam for one of the Rev. Dr. MLK, Jr’s courses at Morehouse College. I am encouraged by how similar it looks to the sort of exams our Rhetoric School students take, but discouraged by how it differs from our nation’s most common forms of assessment at similar levels.
We did not stop to ask why; we have been had.
When you used to store your family photos in physical albums, and then you were convinced to store them all on a hard drive, and then you were convinced by a large for-profit company to store them in the cloud for free, until the cloud became the only place your photos were stored, and the company decided to charge a monthly fee in order for you to continue to store all of your photos online, you have been had.