Lost Innocence: Let’s Give Children a Childhood
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“Why do some children’s authors wish to promote sex, orgies, drugs, and violence? Is there not enough such obscenity in our adult culture – our movies, our music, and our books – without letting it ooze over into children’s literature?” - Intellectual Takeout
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It’s time to revisit Fahrenheit 451
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“…it tells the story of a dystopian society where all books are banned and people pass their time staring at screens while barely talking to one another. Sound a little like 2019?” - Washington Examiner
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Is technology killing students’ ability to read classical literature?
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“Even if they read well, technology has harmed many of them: shortened attention spans, a compulsion to overshare every trivial detail of their lives, an expectation that they be entertained at all times, and an exaggerated focus on themselves.” - Homer Meets Generation Z
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In Praise of Useless Reading
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“One of the great reasons to read works of the imagination is to overcome our habitual disposition toward utility.” - Jessica Hooten Wilson
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America’s Reading Crisis Is Much Worse Than You Think
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“But in 21st-century America, where both our culture and our church relies on this written word so heavily, being unable to read means missing out on a lot.” CT
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A Call to Travel Sufficiently Far from Home
Reprinted with permission from Dan Miller’s book Spiritual Reflections.
Have you come to prize the importance of journeying sufficiently far from home? To illustrate negatively, do you not bristle at the thought of a privileged young woman, growing up in a mansion, residing in an exclusive suburban neighborhood, attending posh private schools, who never leaves her comfortable surroundings? Would not this woman be aided by the experience of volunteering to scoop soup at a rescue mission, or by distributing medical supplies to refugees in a war torn country overseas, or something? If this member of the privileged class never leaves her comfort zone—never witnesses poverty and suffering firsthand—will she not nurse in her mind a distorted view of the world?
Conversely, consider a poverty stricken inner-city youth whose neighborhood is crawling with vice and whose chances of ever leaving his environment are bleak. Do we not readily commend the opportunity for such a youth to visit a rural farm or to attend a youth retreat in the Rockies, or something of the sort?
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