May 1, 2022
The tacit curriculum of a school is what it teaches through its culture. Kevin Davern, Headmaster of The Avalon School, and I talk about the play between the spoken and tacit curricula at Avalon (and to some degree at Brookewood). We talk about the origin of the tacit curriculum in the personalities of teachers, the values that give rise to the school in the first place, and features of school culture. For me, the fruits of that tacit curriculum have been important to the growth in my own sons in their comfort with themselves and their confidence in taking risks and solving problems as well as in their ethical compass and experiences of the Faith.
April 2, 2022
Fr. José Medina talks with me about attention. What makes certain words move people? Fr. Medina says, after St. Augustine, that you will not learn anything you do not love. We begin by talking about cultivating attention as a habit of mind, and our conversation goes from there to all kinds of places: our classes, fasting, love, various gospel readings, the archetypal hero, Luigi Giussani, Simone Weil, Sherwood Anderson, and poetry.
March 13, 2022
David Booz returns to the podcast to discuss Flannery O'Connor's The Violent Bear It Away.
February 12, 2022
Rich McPherson, Brookewood Headmaster, sits down with Cherie Walsh to discuss the many benefits of small schools.
December 26, 2021
David Booz, Brookewood Theology Chair, and Andrea Francois, Lower School + 6 Director, discuss with Cherie Walsh their readings of Shusaku Endo's novel Silence and Martin Scorsese's 2017 film adaptation of the novel. Issues include the problem of innocent suffering--and, relatedly, God's alleviation of suffering vs. His accompaniment--and the role of Judas in the story of Christ. The novel and the film also highlight the problem of hubris as Rodrigues sets himself up in place of Christ.
November 17, 2021
Brookewood's Head of School, Richard McPherson, talks with Cherie Walsh about one his favorite Catholic thinkers and writers, G.K. Chesterton.
November 17, 2021
Brookewood Life of the Mind podcast premieres with a conversation between Brookewood Assistant Head of School, Cherie Walsh, and Brookewood's Upper School theology teacher, David Booz, on reading Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov.
