Reading and Writing

We live in an increasingly technological age.  More than ever, success necessitates a strong technical skillset– one borne of mathematical capability and scientific reasoning. If students are to take fight in the modern, digital world, then a robust STEM education can be the wings on which they soar.  

 

And yet, a student equipped with a merely technical education is like a bird with strong wings but no eyes.  An education with only nominal reference to literature, philosophy, and history is at best impoverished, and, at worst, dangerous.  Within such a framework, even a conscientious and hardworking student is blind to the myriad challenges that have beset even the greatest women and men throughout history.  Such a student is apt to repeat the mistakes of the past.

 

We are living in a rapidly evolving world, ever more dominated by technologies that, from a moral and psychological perspective, we are only just beginning to understand.  In a few years, the best and brightest of our children will grow up to become the thought leaders of our increasingly complex civilization.  The moral, ethical, and social questions that await them will be at least as challenging as the ones that each of us confronts today.

 

As I have moved through the inevitable stages of adolescent and adult life, my best decisions have been guided by my reading of the greatest works of all time.  In the darkest moments, I have turned to great thinkers for guidance:  Marcus Aurelius, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Whitman, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Plato, Aristotle, Twain, Emily Dickinson, Mary Oliver.  The lessons I have learned, and continue to learn, from my study of these great minds have given me courage, clarity, and perhaps most importantly, a sense of belonging.  A sense of the human experience that transcends culture and time and place. These brilliant minds reach out across generations, offering up the wisdom of so many epochs:  The incalculable mass of all human musings over millennia, distilled to an essential collection of texts.  The Great Conversation.

 

So I ask you this:  What great works might your child never encounter? What vital lessons of history might escape them in the clamor for technological know-how?  What invaluable wisdom might never flash before their eager eyes?

 

That flash is the beginning of my work.  I aim not only to introduce young people to a rich world of thought that they might otherwise never encounter, but also to induct them into that Great Conversation.  Reading is the invitation.  Writing is the RSVP.

 

Through careful, attentive tutelage, your child will learn to engage with the world's greatest thinkers.  They will learn the alchemic interplay of writing and reading and speaking.  They will play with ideas, daring to test new theories against ancient wisdom.  All the while, they will learn to defend their positions robustly.

 

More than ever, young people need a space to take intellectual risks, and the time to practice developing cogent intellectual arguments.  

 

In short, I aim to induct young people in to the dialectical process, so that they may become not only informed, but also capable and wise.

 

It is my deep honor to do this work, one student at a time.

 

"To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.  This is to have succeeded." Ralph Waldo Emerson.