Waiting for Godot to Leave

I love my Homeschool Connections students, who are generally bright, creative and engaged with the material I'm teaching. However, something disappointing occasionally happens when I ask for an essay from even the best of my students.  If I ask for a brief essay answer on a quiz, and ask for the student's reaction to what is most challenging or surprising or mysterious about the material we're reading, they frequently speak intelligently and from the heart.  But if I ask for an essay that's more formal, they gird up their loins, take a deep breath, and spew out BS. Sometimes it's halfway decent BS.  Sometimes the essays are well structured and written without glaring errors in grammar or punctuation.  But the more formal the essay, the more I get the Party Line.  And the Party Line for Devout Catholic Homeschoolers goes something like this ... What this course has taught me is the dangers of gay marriage and how we will all go astray unless we believe in God an...

John Henry Newman on a problem he noticed roughly 200 years ago ... It is very much the fashion at present to regard the Saviour of the world in an irreverent and unreal way—as a mere idea or vision ... [offering] vague statements about His love ... [and] while the thought of Christ is but a creation of our minds, it may gradually be changed or fade away. ... so this is not a new problem. Against this vagueness and blur, in opposition to the Unreality of Jesus the Nice Guy, Newman suggests something that most Catholics would consider novel.  He says to know this Person Jesus, you could simply read the Gospels. ... when we contemplate Christ as manifested in the Gospels, the Christ who exists therein, external to our own imaginings, and who is as really a living being, and sojourned on earth as truly as any of us, then we shall at length believe in Him with a conviction, a confidence, and an entireness, which can no more be annihilated than the belief in our senses. It is impossible...

I found this poem about the internet.  It's by  Hendrik Mans .    ... The web is ADVE RTISE MENT all of humankind’s knowledge at ADVE RTISE MENT your fingertips. THE 10 MOST HORRIFYING THINGS YOU CAN EAT

This is from Eric Voegelin's lecture "In Search of the Ground". One should be aware that we always act as if we had an ultimate purpose in fact, as if our life made some sort of sense. I find students frequently are flabbergasted, especially those who are agnostics, when I tell them that they all act, whether agnostics or not, as if they were immortal! Only under the assumption of immortality, of a fulfillment beyond life, is the seriousness of action intelligible that they actually put into their work and that has a fulfillment nowhere in this life however long they may live. They all act as if their lives made sense immortally, even if they deny immortality, deny the existence of a psyche, deny the existence of a Divinity—in brief, if they are just the sort of fairly corrupt average agnostics that you find among college students today. One shouldn’t take their agnosticism too seriously, because in fact they act as if they were not agnostics!

To explain why we can't communicate requires some skill in communication. I'm going to try to paraphrase an essay by Eric Voegelin.  But every time I enthusiastically share Eric Voegelin quotes with a friend, I lose that friend.  There seems to be something intimidating in the way Voegelin writes that makes people's eyes gloss over.  So here, in essence, is what Voegelin says in his essay "Necessary Moral Bases for Communication in a Democracy", with as few direct Voegelin quotes as possible. Voegelin says that there are three types of Communication - Substantive, Pragmatic and Intoxicant. Intoxicant communication is communication used as a drug.  Bad TV shows, most pop music, pornography - any kind of communication that people use not only as diversions, but as pain killers to plug the holes of their misery. Pragmatic communication is any kind of communication that tries to get another person to do something.  Propaganda is the most obvious example...

Here's how arguing on the internet goes. A: The sky is blue. B: How dare you! Prove it. A: Look at the sky. What color do you see? B: White. A: Those are clouds. B: Got ya! A: No, you don't "got me". You're looking at the wrong thing. Let's try this. What color is that shirt you're wearing? B: Blue. A: Look at the sky. That open part next to the clouds. Is not that the same color as your shirt? B: Are you saying the sky comes from Wal-Mart just like my shirt? You are a idiot!

This is from a post on my old blog ... Since I'm currently a judge in a one-act Catholic play writing contest, I don't want to say too much about the plays I'm reading.  But I have seen enough to know how to write a really bad play. And I'm passing that advice on to you, dear reader! Make sure your script contains NO comedy whatsoever - nothing the least bit funny, or if something almost-funny sneaks in, make it very predictable and stupid. Put a homeless man in it so the audience has someone to feel sorry for. Set the play at Christmas or in a foxhole during a war or in an abortion clinic.  Or better yet, at a makeshift abortion clinic in a foxhole on Christmas Eve. Handle exposition awkwardly.  For example, in the first few lines, have one of the characters say,  "Remember when that meteorite hit our house and you bravely struggled to pull me out and save our four children and the reporter from the liberal paper made fun of you because you were Christian and -...