by Brian G. Daigle

The question of nature vs. nurture, regarding nearly all existing things, has been, I believe, adequately spoken to throughout our classical and Christian (albeit, Western) heritage, if we would only take the time to deeply understand and implement that wisdom. But first, we must recover this wisdom, for it has been buried under the rubble of modernity; I am thankful, for my own interests and gifts, to have found but a few beautiful stems shooting through this rubble, clear and beautiful enough to require that I would dig down to the root and source of such vivacious breakthroughs. While the previous installment accurately, though not completely, spoke to the nature of the child, the child as fully human, with a vocation to be fully human, this present entry will turn to just one important way we nurture the child.
              A home, like a classroom, is a work of art. More than that, it is a work of atmosphere. When I have the opportunity to observe a school or classroom, I approach it like a dinner guest. I approach it as someone invited to dine at a table I did not make, in an atmosphere I did not create, and be nourished by a meal I did not choose. I then, first, use my five senses to simply observe. I make lots of notes, akin to setting, character, and plot sketches from a great classic novel I’m reading. What do I hear? What do I see? What do I smell? Taste? Feel? What is the energy of the room or the school? What are the variant moods or emotions passing through the language, the relationships, the speech, the attire, the content, the art, the furniture, the protocol, the technology, the interruptions, the moments of quiet, the jokes, the facial expressions, the lighting, the things the characters touch and do. In doing this for many years, I have become deeply sensitive to a teacher’s slightest move and a student’s slightest response. And there are times I ask, “If my child were in this room, would I want them to be formed by and impressed with the nutrients of this academic and social meal, of this particular society and the leader who leads it, the teacher?”  

by Brian G. Daigle

​​Creativity is a fundamental impulse, a deep and residing reflex of our humanity. We were made to create. We are, as much as we are homo sapien (thinking man), also homo faber (making man). That creativity bears out in big ways and in small ways, in ways that create something over several years or just a few seconds. It bears out in how we organize both time and space, how we not just use sticks and stones to build cathedrals and homes but also gestures and gaits to build romance and soulmates. We create as much with material things as we do with immaterial things. And our daily lives are both the soil and the fruit of our creativity. But as with anything else in the human condition, creativity can be stifled. It can erode or be diminished or dwindle in both individuals and groups of individuals. It can be directed to vicious ends. There are, therefore, twelve great creativity killers we should avoid:

by G.K. Chesterton, chapter VIII in Come to Think of It (published 1930)

Chapter VIII. "On the Classics"

In a moment of fine frenzy a young man has stood up and declared that ‘the study of Latin and Greek is not of much use in the battle of life’, and gone on to demand that the young should be instructed chiefly in the science of Health — that is, in the facts and the functions of the body. The young man in question will be gratified to know that I, for one, consistently neglected to do any work at the school in which I was supposed to be learning Latin and Greek, though I am not sure that the mere fact of idleness and ignorance can be said to have armed and drilled me for the battle of life. But, when I consider such armour or armament, some faint memories come to me from the learning that I neglected. There flits across my mind the phrase aes triplex, and I remember how Stevenson used it for a title to his essay defending a cheerful contempt for medical fussing; and how he cited the example of Dr. Johnson, who dreaded death and yet disdained any vigilance against disease; and whose ‘heart, bound with triple brass, did not recoil before the prospect of twenty-seven individual cups of tea’. It is, doubtless, terrible to think that Stevenson took his Stoical image of triple brass from a Latin poet; and still more terrible to think that Johnson would have approved of Stevenson for quoting the Latin poets. But though Stevenson and Johnson were superficially about as different as any two men could be in everything except in this weakness for traditional scholarship, I do not think that either of them can be said to have come off so badly in fighting the battle of life.

by Brian G. Daigle

by Brian G. Daigle

​In order to make and support the claim that every home is a school, we first must be convinced that every child is a student, and this “studentship” extends beyond the formal classroom, beyond the formal school in which the child is enrolled. Not only does it extend beyond the classroom, the seedbed of the child’s student-nature actually begins at home and extends beyond that particular roofline. Therefore, every home is a school, not because every student brings their learning from school back to home, but because every child brings their innate sense of learning from home out with them into everywhere else they go, especially school.

by Brian G. Daigle

​Parents are given one of the most unique opportunities on the planet. They get to form a child. They get to form a child in ways that can never be undone. And in so doing, they set a trajectory for the child, training and forming and shaping the child's faculties and competencies at the deepest levels, giving them a vocabulary by which they understand themselves and the world, and forming in them intellectual and spiritual architecture which will inhabit the child for the rest of their lives.

But we have heard before that children don't come with a manual. And this is true. But parents do come with experiences by which to become the best parents possible. One of those key experiences is having attended some kind of schooling, and now having to choose a school for their child. And no matter what the parents' own schooling was like, and no matter the school they choose for the child, one of the most important analogies by which a parent can understand their job is that the home is a school. And this means that all the many platforms, ingredients, "assignments," subjects, teaching opportunities, etc. that are available to a school are not only available to the home, they are deeply and uniquely potent in the home.

In the coming months I will be posting a series of short entries on "The Home is a School" where I will share some of the greatest wisdom and expertise I've seen in great schools, in great teachers, and how that same perspective and same methods can build better parents. I will also share how great parents avoid some of the worst teaching mistakes I've seen. Parents are called to be teachers, in the most profound ways; they will be teachers, the primary educators of their child. And it is important that the best tools and techniques in history's best educational models are applied to the home. Welcome to "The Home is a School."

by Brian G. Daigle

While fathers may not be the most verbal of the two parents, and while fathers may say many things that both cause hurt or bring healing, a father's words matter. When fathers choose to speak, what they choose to say, when they choose to remain silent, what they say with their grunt or wag of a finger or wink of an eye, it all matters deeply for a child's self-understanding, knowledge of the world, and the child's view of their father. If we want to raise adults who are confident, competent, and courageous, if we want to raise sons and daughters who know a father's love, if we want to give our children a baseline human wisdom in the words we speak to them in even the must mundane moments around the house, there are twelve simple phrases children should hear fathers say:  

by Brian G. Daigle

There will be conflict. Welcome to the human theater. Those who avoid conflict affirm its presence. Those who create and seek it out also affirm its presence. Those who do something more moderate and healthy with conflict also affirm its presence. If we want to live upstanding and good lives, lives of high quality relationships, personal and social success, and even lives of professional advancement, we must learn to be better with verbal conflict. If we want healing and health and peace, we must handle verbal conflict well.

by Brian G. Daigle

I recently made the claim that secularism offers no good answer to anxiety. This is quite true, for secularism offers no good answer to anything, including itself. A friend responded that surely walking is an answer to anxiety, and on top of that it is a secular answer to anxiety.
       I do not doubt that walking can be an answer to anxiety. I have experienced the benefits myself, especially on colder days when I have my family in tow, or perhaps when my family has me in tow. I do have greater peace in those moments, and I do sense that the unfounded cares I carried with me are easier to forget than I had previously thought. But I doubt everyone has always experienced walking as a cure to anxiety. I expect many men have experienced the opposite. For I’m certain there are men who paced the beaches of Normandy, ambulating over dead men’s chests, who indeed experienced more anxiety than ever before in their lives. Far less courageous, I have seen men walk through a thunderstorm, pacing in a way that proves they are more anxious, not less. Though I have never experienced this, and most certainly pray I never will, there have been men who take their last walk along “the green mile,” whose peace is not settled and therefore whose anxiety is greater than ever. A man with the heavy yoke of guilt or pride cannot face death without death’s handmade, anxiety.  ​