Tag: back-to-school

TBT^65,536: Back to School with Richard Weaver

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The 2025-2026 school year kicks off on Monday, 18 August 2025.  That means it’s time for my annual reflection on the works of Richard Weaver, the legendary academic who did more than anyone (that I know of) to defend a more traditional, quasi-medieval way of life.  He was also a major champion of the South.

Weaver catches a lot of flack from edgier fringes of the Right because his book Ideas Have Consequences (that’s an Amazon Affiliate link, as is the “South” link; I receive a portion of any purchases made through those links, at no additional cost to you) places a large emphasis on ideas as the source of our various social maladies, overlooking more fundamental influences like biology.  While I do believe that genetics play a fairly significant role in how we interact with and perceive the world, I am not a biological determinist by any stretch of the imagination.  Humans are animals to an extent, yes, but we are more.  We have souls that endure beyond our body.  We also have minds with which to think.

The HBD crowd among the online Right has some interesting insights to bring to the table, and their critiques of blank slatism are worth considering (for example, it is clear that black Americans and Africans are far more likely to develop sickle cell anemia than other races, as sickle cell anemia developed as an adaptation to resist malaria in sub-Saharan Africa), but plenty of people with the same genetic constitution believe and practice vastly different things.  Ideas, experienced and encountered at the right times and/or under the right conditions, can have a massive influence on how an individual develops.  Sure, we might see certain ideas taking hold more among a group of people, but that doesn’t mean every person in that group must come to believe those things.  The HBD folks also downplay the importance of cultural reinforcement of certain ideas.

For example, do I think Southerners are more conservative and traditional and religious than other Americans because so many of our ancestors were part of the pro-monarchy Cavaliers in the English Civil War?  Sure.  But none of us are sitting around talking about the Cavaliers outside of University of Virginia football (and, honestly, we’re not talking about that much, either).  Centuries of cultural reinforcement have played a huge role in keeping our institutions and our churches relatively traditional.

Dr. Fiancée’s family, for example, are of German Lutheran extraction from Michigan.  She was raised in the Lutheran tradition.  I can definitely see the German genetic influence in her family’s more taciturn, logical nature.  But her family moved South when she was still a child, and she is very Southern.  Her religious journey ultimately brought her to the Southern Baptist tradition.  She speaks with a Southern accent.  She is incredibly reflective and thoughtful, and came to her conclusions about religion through rigorous reading and reflection (and, of course, through the power of the Holy Spirit).

So, no, I don’t think Richard Weaver is the secret source of all of our modern ills, because he thought that ideas matter.  That’s rather myopic.  Indeed, Weaver’s work demonstrates how even the grain of idea can grow into a huge worldview.  Christopher Nolan explored the very same concept in his film Inception (2010).

With that, here is 15 August 2024’s “TBT^256: Back to School with Richard Weaver“:

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TBT^256: Back to School with Richard Weaver

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The 2024-2025 school year resumes this coming Monday, 19 August 2024, and yours portly has already been back on campus for the past few days, busily preparing for another school year.

Without any warning, my administration has given me two sections of World History to teach, rather than my usual US History classes.  While they should have told me about the change two months ago, I’m excited to dive into a subject I have not taught in many years (the last time I taught the class was in the 2011-2012 school year, and I taught its kissing cousin, Western Civilization, off-and-on in 2014 and 2015 at the local technical college).

Last school year was a fairly brutal slog, and I’ve been alternatively dreading this year and looking forward to it.  Perhaps the opportunity to teach World History will reignite the spark (plus, World History is just cool).

But what of our good friend Richard Weaver and his book Ideas Have Consequences?  At the time of writing I haven’t dipped back into Weaver the way I would like, but I find that his ideas always help to crystallize for me what teaching and education are all about—the preservation of civilization for at least another generation.

With that, here is “TBT^16: Back to School with Richard Weaver“:

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TBT^16: Back to School with Richard Weaver

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The 2023-2024 school year commenced yesterday, which brings to mind this annual tradition of mine:  re-reading the introduction to Richard Weaver’s Ideas Have Consequences.

Unfortunately, I don’t always manage to dip back into this classic work every year, but I find that when I do, it helps to crystallize why it is I do what I do, and what is at stake.  I’m under no illusion—as some teachers are!—that I can “save the world” or any such messianic nonsense.  The crusading impulse that I possessed as a naïve young teacher is no longer there, beyond some vestigial bits of self-righteous fury that peak from behind the clouds of well-worn cynicism.

Still, we have much to be thankful for, even as the empire burns around us and the elites fiddle.  Life is sweet; the opportunity for an education is a privilege and joy.  I’m thankful to be a small part of that process.

With that, here is 25 August 2022’s “TBT^4: Back to School with Richard Weaver“:

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School Resumes!

The Portly Politico6 Comments

Here we are—the first day of school!  The 2023-2024 school year marks yours portly’s thirteenth consecutive year in the classroom (after returning to my current school in 2011), and my fourteenth year total (I taught at my current school in the 2008-2009 school year, before being unceremoniously dumped due to the privations of the Great Recession).  It’s been a crazy ride.

I’m at that point in my teaching career where I can pretty much coast in terms of course prep and assessments.  I’ve pretty much memorized American history (well, at least, the very limited survey of American history that I teach), and as anyone who reads this blog knows, I can wax poetic on pretty much any topic for hours (much to my students’ chagrin, I imagine).  It’s a good place to be professionally.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Back-to-School Update 2023

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Yours portly is not quite back to teaching just yet, but I am back to work.  That means I’m entering into this odd period of quasi-work before the storm of the school year begins.  It’s a kind of ramping up to the main event, but I’ve been teaching for so long, it feels a bit more like spinning my wheels.

Whatever the case, I’m no longer allowed to enjoy leisurely mornings, and have to be somewhere other than home during an arbitrary stretch of hours that another person dictates.  In other words, I’m doing what everyone else does year-round.

With school looming, some of my projects and their output will slow down a bit, but I do have a few updates to share with subscribers, some of which will interest them greatly (or, at the very least, slightly), including my next book project idea.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

TBT: Benjamin Britten’s “The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra”

The Portly Politico2 Comments

The new year school year is back into full swing, with this week being the first full week of classes.  Needless to say, yours portly is tired, but very much enjoying the academic year so far.

I’m teaching Pre-AP Music Appreciation again this year, so I’m excited to dive back into some of the works we discussed last year—and some new ones!  Of course, we’ve kicked the year off with a listening to “The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra,” a favorite for introducing orchestral instruments.

My Pre-AP Music class this year is quite small—just five students—which makes for a more relaxed classroom environment.  We’re able to explore tangents as they arise (and, based on my frequent use of em dashes and parentheses, you can imagine I go off on them frequently), and generally take the time to enjoy the music, which the students seem to be doing.

I don’t have much more to add that I didn’t write a year ago.  Britten ingeniously weaves a whopping thirteen variations on a Henry Purcell theme, featuring nearly every instrument in the orchestra—including the percussion section!—in solo or soli.  Even the neglected double basses get some love with a melody of their own.

With that, here is 31 August 2020’s “Benjamin Britten’s ‘The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra’“:

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TBT: First Week of School in The Age of The Virus

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School is back, and while I’d like to think The Age of The Virus is in its twilight death throes, the powers-that-be seem intent on foisting fearmongering variants upon us, no doubt as a pretext to strip us of more of our civil liberties.

Regardless, we’re starting back normally this year—as normally as possible—with a whopping 408 (and counting) students.  Considering we had fewer than 100 students a decade ago, that’s a pretty huge change.

Hopefully we won’t have any major outbreaks this year, as we largely avoided last school year.  We managed to get through with only a few isolated cases among students and faculty, and finished up with life largely back to normal in the final two months of the year.

It’s interesting looking back to the beginning of last school year and seeing how the year progressed.  The fiasco of using Loom lasted about two weeks for yours portly; I quickly reverted to using the desktop version of Google Meet to record my lectures.

I’m also relieved that I won’t be livestreaming classes anymore.  I don’t have anything to hide; it’s just a huge hassle getting online kids logged in, much less engaged.  There’d frequently be times when I was ten minutes into class and a student would log in after being marked absent; sometimes I wouldn’t catch that the student had entered class, and the student would then complain about the absence.

More frequently, students would log in the moment I’d sent the attendance e-mail to the registrar, so I’d have to resend the e-mail.  Sometimes the registrar wouldn’t see that second e-mail, and I’d get a call in the middle of class asking if the “missing” student had logged into class.

Those were minor issues when compared to bigger problems with the online platform—students suddenly switching to distance learning on test days, for example—but still headaches.  It probably cost a good five-to-ten minutes of class time just to take attendance.

Well, here’s to the normal amount of craziness and bureaucratic overreach of the typical school year.  With that, here is 28 August 2020’s “First Week of School in The Age of The Virus“:

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Back to School 2021

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Well, after starting back to work Monday a week ago, we’re finally back at school today.  We’re one of the latest schools to start back in our area—my county’s school district started back classes last Monday, and Florence County schools resumed on 2 August 2021—but it still seems too soon.  The Florence start date seems insanely early as far as I am concerned, but they’re transitioning to a semi-year-round model, in which the students will get a week off in October and February, as well as some other juicy breaks.

Of course, any time off is never quite enough, is it?  I often find myself thinking, “if I only had one more weekend to finish this up” or “I really need another week of break so I can work on writing.”  That said, during the peak of The Age of The Virus in 2020, when I had virtually limitless free time, I didn’t complete any of the big projects I had set aside for myself.  That puts to the lie the idea that more time necessarily means getting more done.

Indeed, I often find that I am more productive when working against a deadline.  As I’ve gotten older and more experienced—albeit not much wiser—I’ve learned to plan ahead, and to churn out a great deal of work in long stretches of focus, in order to save me some time later.  That’s a necessity with my crazy schedule, and helps keep me from getting caught flat-footed by some unanticipated deadline or task too often.

Regardless, school is starting back today, and things are (mostly) back to normal—no more remote learning, no students tuning in from their cars or bedrooms to class, no more mandatory masks (again, mostly) [update:  we have received word that we are starting the year with masks—nooooo!].  I’m hoping it’s going to be a normal-ish academic year.

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Progress Report: Teaching in The Age of The Virus

The Portly Politico3 Comments

Progress reports go out to students today at my little school, so I thought it would be a good time to provide an update of my own now that we’re nearly a month into the school year.  I posted about teaching in The Age of The Virus after the first day and the first week, and now I have a much better perspective on how the year is unfolding.

As a refresher, my school is doing mostly face-to-face instruction, but with some students doing distance learning.  Students have the option to go to distance learning pretty much at will (for example, I had one student who stayed home today with a cold, but who tuned into my music appreciation course), and can return to school at any time.  Students engaged in distance learning are required to attend during the scheduled class period.

The caveat to that general rule pertains to international students.  We have a number of students overseas who, because of new restrictions due to The Virus, are stuck in their home countries.  Many of those students’ classes are late at night, or even in the very early morning, after accounting for the time difference.  It’s a long way from South Carolina to Vietnam.

What that means is that we have to teach our regular classes; livestream them; and record those livestreams, making the recordings available after the class.  It sounds easy enough—so long as everything works perfectly.

That’s turning out to be the fly in the pancake batter.  As one of our dedicated science teachers said—the lady who troubleshoots our woeful technological glitches—“I can livestream, or I can record.  The trouble is trying to do both.”  Amen to that.

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First Week of School in The Age of The Virus

The Portly Politico1 Comment

We’ve gotten about one week of school in the books.  So far—as far as I know—there have been no major outbreaks of The Virus among our students or staff.  I noted last Friday that our plethora of new policies were, fortunately, not quite as difficult to implement as I feared.

I wrote at the time that the “real test will be next week—our first full week of school.”  So with one (very long) week in the books, how are we holding up?

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