Part of the Teaching Sovereign Knowers Collection

In recent years, a number of HeightsCast guests have touched on the same resounding theme: the modern creep of curiositas and acedia, both considered classical vices. But where there are two vices, Aristotle encourages us to look for a virtue at the Golden Mean.

Mr. Michael Moynihan, head of The Heights upper school, finds it in studiousness. Adding to his collection of work on Teaching Sovereign Knowers, this episode unpacks Michael’s essay “Intellectual Virtue and Personal Sovereignty,” available on the Heights Forum. In it, he speaks to the why and how of pursuing studiousness as an intellectual virtue. For this, as with all virtues, allows us to stand before reality in an intentional way.

• 3:43 Curiosity as an intellectual vice?
• 7:55 Acedia at the other end of the spectrum
• 10:15 Golden mean: studiousness
• 14:36 When is it curiositas, when is it engagement?
• 16:37 Studiousness as a virtue—of sorts
• 23:09 Standing before reality in an intentional way
• 26:23 Seeking the golden mean: sticking to a plan
• 29:21 Using “Great Books” well
• 34:46 Orienting students to the golden mean

• Intellectual Virtue and Personal Sovereignty by Michael Moynihan
• The Idea of a University by John Henry Cardinal Newman

• Headmaster’s Lecture at The Heights School (October 5, 2024)
• The Art of Teaching Conference at The Heights School (November 13-15, 2024)

• Teaching Sovereign Knowers Collection by Michael Moynihan
• On Hope and Despair featuring R. J. Snell
• Forming Deep Workers featuring Cal Newport

The vision of “man fully alive” involves a man motivated by faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these, St. Paul tells us, is love.

Our guest today, Mr. Tom Steenson, is a long-time teacher of the Heights fifth grade and also the upper school class History of Western Thought. He brings his experience and broad readings to bear on the question: How can we impart lessons of authentic love to rambunctious twenty-first century boys in a way they’ll actually internalize? Tom’s practical ideas span younger and older students, framing the endeavor as forming the boys for love by love.

• 2:47 Teaching love to younger students
• 6:11 Teaching love to upper school students
• 11:26 Turning self-focus into self-knowledge
• 16:20 Images of love in the curriculum
• 19:36 Love and masculinity
• 23:47 Love in imitation of God
• 26:06 Passionately loving the world
• 31:00 Faith, hope, love: the greatest is love
• 34:46 Affirmation of their goodness

• Augustine’s Confessions translated by F. J. Sheed
• Phaedo by Plato

• The Art of Teaching Conference at The Heights School (November 13-15, 2024)

• The Man Fully Alive: On Our Vision featuring Alvaro de Vicente

In classrooms where the students can read for themselves, reading aloud often falls off the daily schedule. But it’s a ritual well worth keeping—for the sake of literacy, the moral imagination, classroom bonds, and so much more. Long-time Heights teacher Tom Steenson encourages the teachers tending that flame, or wanting to rekindle it, in their own classrooms.

• 2:08 Goals of reading aloud in the classroom
• 4:44 The artist sees, then helps others to see
• 11:47 Books that aren’t landing
• 15:10 The read-aloud routine, scene-setting
• 18:35 Reading in a high school classroom
• 22:27 Separating instruction from narrative
• 24:59 The effect on teachers

• Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation by Josef Pieper
• The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
• Augustine’s Confessions translated by F. J. Sheed
• Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nihm by Robert C. O’Brien
• The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

• The Art of Teaching Conference at The Heights School (November 13-15, 2024)

• Classroom Ambience by Joseph Bissex
• The Read-Aloud Family featuring Sarah Mackenzie
• Stop Telling Your Son to Read: How to Inspire a Love of Reading featuring Tom Longao
• How to Master the Art of Reading Outside by Tom Longano

As we embark on a new school year, we are full of resolutions for the family routine. How will we order our week to support the highest goods? How will we fit it all in?

Not to be overlooked while charting the course: our keeping of the Sabbath. Last April, author and teacher Daniel Fitzpatrick released his book Restoring the Lord’s Day: How Reclaiming Sunday Can Revive Our Human Nature. Daniel sits down with us at HeightsCast to discuss the book, which examines the cultural drift away from a sense of Sabbath, why we should restore this God-given rhythm to our lives, and the scriptural support for how to do it.

Chapters:

• 4:09 Inattention to the Sabbath: modern or ageless?
• 7:54 Acedia, primary vice against the Sabbath
• 12:32 Challenges of the five-day work week
• 17:24 Festivity and sacrifice
• 21:56 The draw of sports as they relate to beauty
• 24:30 The good, UNrestful activities of Sunday
• 31:09 Practical advice for young families
• 35:38 Preparing on Saturday
• 40:44 Concluding the Sabbath
• 43:22 Reckoning with the necessity of labor

Links:

• Restoring the Lord’s Day: How Reclaiming Sunday Can Revive Our Human Nature by Daniel Fitzpatrick
• Joie de Vivre: A Journal of Art, Culture, and Letters for South Louisiana edited by Daniel Fitzpatrick
• Grace Fitzpatrick Art, Byzantine iconography by Grace Fitzpatrick

Featured Opportunities:

• The Art of Teaching Conference at The Heights School (November 13-15, 2024)

Also on the Forum:

• Work and Acedia: On Our Original Vocation featuring R. J. Snell
• Leisure and Acedia: On Contemplative Homes in a Frenetic Age featuring R. J. Snell

“Picture yourself here.”

“Become all you can be.”

“This will be the best four years of your life.”

The college pitch to high school seniors is alluring—though it doesn’t sketch a very clear life plan for a young person entering higher education. As Heights Headmaster Alvaro de Vicente points out, a successful time in college can be measured in growth: Are you physically, spiritually, and intellectually stronger by the end of these four years? In order to answer yes, students will need to embark upon college with a plan and a healthy way of measuring those dimensions of growth.

This week on HeightsCast, Mr. de Vicente shares incredibly practical advice for spending the college years well, drawing on a letter he sent this summer to the newly graduated Heights class of 2024.

• 1:45 The best four years of your life?
• 6:44 Old truths remain fresh
• 9:17 College success measured by growth
• 12:05 Five battlefronts, five tools for success
• 12:36 One: Shower and eat breakfast
• 15:30 Two: Look at your day as a 9-to-5 job
• 19:26 Mr. de Vicente’s study plan
• 25:32 Three: Find the right peer group
• 30:04 Four: Chart a path for spiritual growth
• 32:00 Five: Have a mentor
• 35:27 A reasonable study load, being effective without overloading
• 41:26 Laptop distractions in class
• 44:25 Breaking out of the “self-focused” college attitude
• 50:40 A truer pursuit of happiness

• The Art of Teaching Conference at The Heights School (November 13-15, 2024)

• Considerations for College-Bound Students featuring Dr. Peter Kilpatrick of The Catholic University of America
• The College Experience featuring Dr. Jonathan Sanford of University of Dallas
• Rethinking College: Why Go? How? When? featuring Arthur Brooks

Charlotte Mason’s simple framework for a teacher calls him a “guide, philosopher, and friend.” It’s a lovely image—but what does that practical application look like? At the Forum Teaching Vocation Conference last winter, Heights teacher Tom Cox unpacked each of these terms citing ancient wisdom and loads of modern classroom experience.

• 6:09 Charlotte Mason and the teacher as guide, philosopher, and friend
• 7:44 Guide: one who has been there before
• 10:53 Communicating the “why”
• 14:18 Philosopher: starting in wonder, ending in wisdom
• 15:59 A storyteller stirring up wonder
• 20:01 Friend: beginning with a mutual love of something
• 22:28 Modeling friendship with fellow faculty
• 23:57 St. Aelred of Rievaulx’s qualities of friendship
• 24:19 Dilectio, outward benevolent acts
• 24:54 Affectio, interior feeling
• 26:29 Securitas, freedom from anxiety
• 27:42 Iucunditas, pleasantness
• 30:00 Orient towards hope: begin and begin again

• Grammaticus.co, Tom Cox’s website featuring Latin and history courses, his blog, and podcast
• The Plutarch Podcast by Tom Cox
• Spiritual Friendship by Aelred of Rievaulx

• The Art of Teaching Conference at The Heights School (November 13-15, 2024)

• Living the Teaching Vocation by Michael Moynihan
• Teaching and the Vocation to Fatherhood featuring Tom Steenson
• On Preparation for Teaching: Six Attributes of Great Teachers featuring Colin Gleason
• The Teacher as Liberal Artist featuring Tom Longano

In his address to the Forum’s Mentoring Workshop held in June, our Head of Lower School Colin Gleason helpfully reframed just what mentoring is—and what it can’t be. Though images of the sculptor, the director, and the master often accompany this rough term of “formation,” Mr. Gleason reminds us that we are really more akin to gardeners, who attend to a living creation with its own freedom and will. So, how can we appreciate this situation and best work with it for the good of our mentees?

• 1:29 Neither the model nor the molder
• 3:39 We cannot ‘do’ the formation
• 5:56 Freedom to choose the good
• 10:19 “Thou mayest” (not thou shalt) “triumph over sin”
• 15:54 Exercising freedom requires formation
• 16:49 Manners: what the act looks like
• 18:57 Reasons: the intention behind the act
• 21:38 Images: how a person chooses the act
• 23:36 A mentor as such an image
• 25:49 Loving the good
• 29:51 Loving the person

• He Knows Not How: Growing in Freedom by Julio Diéguez
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck
• Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
• Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf by Ben Hogan
• InSideOut Coaching: How Sports Can Transform Lives by Joe Ehrmann

• Seeing Our Boys with Loving Eyes: Not Projects but Persons featuring Tom Royals
• Why Boys Need Mentors featuring Joe Cardenas and Alex Berthé

In June, the Forum hosted a Mentoring Workshop for men across the country (and beyond) to consider the whys and hows of mentoring young boys into young men into men fully alive.

It’s always best to start by defining terms. And so, the opening lecture for the workshop weekend featured Dr. Joseph Lanzilotti, theology scholar and upper school teacher at The Heights School, explicating the kind of Christian anthropology that precedes a mentoring relationship. In other words, how are we to understand what man is before we try to help him grow? For our benefit, Dr. Lanzilotti maps out this profound philosophical concept using St. Augustine’s simple and most famous line: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

• 2:07 St. Augustine’s “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you”
• 4:56 What is man? Who is man? What is his telos?
• 7:54 Pope St. John Paul II’s “adequate anthropology”
• 8:38 Finding an adequate anthropology in St. Augustine’s restless heart
• 10:05 Fecisti nos: you made us
• 13:33 Ad te: for yourself
• 17:27 Inquietum cor nostrum: our hearts are restless
• 22:19 Donec requiescat in te: until they rest in you

• Confessions by St. Augustine
• I Burned for Your Peace: Augustine’s Confessions Unpacked by Peter Kreeft
• Gaudium et spes by the Second Vatican Council, promulgated by Pope St. Paul VI
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
• Address to the Pontifical Council “Cor Unum” from January 2006 by Pope Benedict XVI
• Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis

• Starting a Mentoring Program by Joe Cardenas and Nate Gadiano
• Mentoring without a Program: On Teaching the Whole Person featuring Joe Cardenas

Note from producer: This conversation was originally published on March 23, 2021, but has been updated and republished on June 13, 2024.

As we look forward to the wide expanse of summer, one thing certainly on our minds is how we can support our sons’ friendships in the absence of school. Turns out, we needn’t look further than our own living rooms. In fact, welcoming our children’s friends into our homes may be the healthiest place for authentic, lifelong friendship to grow.

In a timely rebroadcast from 2021, Assistant Headmaster Tom Royals helps parents to see their homes as a venue for hospitality—one that integrates our children’s social lives with the culture of the home. He especially highlights a vision for hosting teens, who often stray away from home-based gatherings just when it’s most beneficial.

• 01:45 Begin Interview
• 02:28 Parents building a culture of home gatherings
• 06:50 Hosting high schoolers, knowing your home
• 11:24 Co-ed hosting
• 12:56 Spontaneous hosting
• 15:05 Parents working with parents
• 16:12 Crucial years: establishing this culture before they launch
• 18:14 Hospitality and the temperaments of your children
• 20:24 The example of Fr. Robert Kimball
• 25:28 The role of the father
• 29:01 Parental presence at teen gatherings: freedom and formation
• 33:07 Modeling friendship, hospitality

• Friendship and the 21st-Century Boy featuring Alvaro de Vicente
• Family Culture featuring Alvaro de Vicente
• On Friendship after Senior Year featuring Dave Maxham

Where to begin with the lofty, almost nebulous virtue of magnanimity—what St. Thomas Aquinas called “stretching forth of the soul to great things”? Of course we want to raise great-souled children, who even outstrip us in their vision of the good and their commitment to serving it. But words alone will fail to impart such a personal and complex mission.

At last April’s Fatherhood Conference at The Heights, Headmaster Alvaro de Vicente tackled the challenge of how to teach magnanimity to our children. Following Fr. Carter Griffin’s keynote address, Mr. de Vicente laid out the map: the obstacles we must navigate, the targets of opportunity we must seize, and the tools to pack for the mission.

• 4:30 Defining magnanimity: a vision of and commitment to the good
• External challenges to teaching magnanimity:
  • 6:37 Identity culture
  • 7:43 Sexualized culture
  • 9:09 The “second-hand smoke” of culture
  • 10:20 Materialism and affluence
  • 13:18 Entertainment culture
  • 16:01 Moral relativism
• Internal challenges to teaching magnanimity:
  • 19:23 Selfishness, “I deserve”
  • 22:33 Anxiety
  • 24:26 Personal weakness
  • 26:26 Playing the wrong role: acting coach, not director
• Opportunities for teaching magnanimity:
  • 28:08 Dealing with our own anxiety
  • 31:32 Communicating with God and spouse about each child
  • 33:42 Emotional presence at home
  • 37:50 Expressing affection
• Ways to discuss magnanimity with your child:
  • 40:00 Positive framework for “the talk”
  • 40:52 Examples of virtue
  • 44:36 Through sports
  • 47:00 Dependable routines
  • 47:50 Financial awareness
  • 48:59 Forming a boy’s intellect with conversation
• Your best resources:
  • 51:38 Friendship with like-minded parents
  • 52:14 Online resources, podcasts
  • 52:52 Spiritual direction53:46 Hope in God’s grace

• Magnanimity and the Great-Souled Man featuring Fr. Carter Griffin

• Mentoring Workshop at The Heights School (June 13-14, 2024)
• The Art of Teaching Conference at The Heights School (November 13-15, 2024)
• Leaders Initiative now accepting applications

The modern instinct with free time is to fill it. Whether in our own lives or in the lives of our children, we imagine that something productive or mindless is the antidote to an uncommitted hour. Middle school teachers Kyle Blackmer and Shane O’Neill encourage us to think differently.

This week on HeightsCast, the duo shares practical reasons and methods for protecting our family’s free time, which helps to cultivate interests, relationships, and the wellbeing of the whole person. They speak especially to our role as parents, teachers, and coaches: to clear the way of obstacles and model our own good use of free time.

• 3:27 Good free time
• 5:33 Role of parents in a child’s freetime: not entertaining but spreading a feast
• 7:34 Sunday as the day of rest
• 10:03 Leisure not as a thing “to do”
• 12:17 The Sabbath and sports
• 17:10 Overscheduling as an obstacle
• 22:42 Wasting time vs. free time
• 25:57 Cultivating interests, fostering friendships
• 30:53 Consumerism as an obstacle
• 35:20 Why free time is ultimately valuable
• 42:06 Modeling healthy free time

• Leisure: The Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper

• Leisure and Acedia: Contemplative Homes in a Frenetic Age featuring R. J. Snell
• A Summer Fully Alive by Nate Gadiano
• What Is the Difference between Free Time and Leisure? by Joseph Bissex
• Friendship for the 21st Century Boy featuring Alvaro de Vicente