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November 2024

December 2024

Introducing "Schools, Souls, and Civitas"

Today I’m pleased to launch Schools, Souls, and Civitas, my new Substack. This will be a place to collect and share my writing from various platforms and publications and to provide original content at the intersection of my favorite topics: education, leadership, faith, culture, and public policy.

Substack’s newsletter subscription feature makes it easy to share new content via email to interested readers. Subscriptions are free, and for the foreseeable future I don’t anticipate posting much paid-subscription-only content, but of course if you want to support this work, I welcome you to become a paid subscriber.

The title Schools, Souls, and Civitas reflects my deep conviction that American education, and American culture more broadly, is in deep need of renewal. The Christian understanding of the human being, which provides the very foundation of Western Civilization, has been under assault from more than a century of modernist materialism and secularism. This assault has undermined and largely replaced the traditional purposes of education: the formation of men and women for lives of virtue, service, and discipleship. I want to do my part to help identify and promote education practices that reflect that best of the Western philosophical and theological traditions, and public policies that contribute to genuine human flourishing.

The logo I chose for Schools, Souls, and Civitas is the church dome at the Birmingham Oratory, the English religious community founded by St. John Henry Newman, who I have selected as spiritual patron of this website and for my work as a writer. St. John was a great champion for traditional, faith-filled education, and I entrust my efforts to his intercession, and to Our Lady.

Schools, Souls, and Civitas is a complement to my long-standing blog, School Leader, which I established in 2011. School Leader was initially a supplement to my teaching in the education administration program at Western Kentucky University, a place to share articles and reflections on school leadership for my students who were aspiring and practicing school principals. As my interests turned toward education policy, School Leader emerged as a platform for reform advocacy and as a repository for my writing that appeared in a variety of other venues. More recently, my writing interests have broadened even further into the realms of faith, culture, and politics. Schools, Souls, and Civitas is meant to reflect that diversity of topics, and to better serve and grow my audience of readers. School Leader will remain active for the forseeable future, although I will slowly move content from there to this site also.

I am deeply grateful for the great many friends and fellow travelers writing has brought into my life over the years, and look forward to deepening those connections and making new ones through this new platform. Please subscribe to Schools, Souls, and Civitas and share so that don’t miss a single post!