WELCOME.
If you are reading this, then you are either a RCHS student or the parent/guardian of one. In either case, welcome.
This is my thirteenth year at RCHS teaching the things I love: literature, grammar, and composition. It's both a duty and a pleasure to bring these worthy pursuits to the next generation. I like to think of myself as a guardian of Western Civilization and its traditions.
But a question I often get is, "When am I ever going to use this stuff?"
I frustrate people who want a snappy answer to this snap question when I tell them that it depends.
It depends on how you look at it. Learning to read difficult texts makes you a better reader and thinker. Improving your writing skills--always useful. Analyzing, categorizing, comparing and contrasting...will help in ways we can't always see instantly in this age of instant gratification.
But the big thing is that we spend our time looking at the best thoughts by the best thinkers in history. If you have even a speck of humility in you, you have to realize what a big deal this is. Coleridge said that poetry is the "best words in the best order," and that's what I hope to make students appreciate. It's what makes literature exciting, and a huge benefit to anyone regardless of their goals in life. An honest, dedicated study of literature makes you a better human being, and regardless of what some people would like, you can't put a price tag on that.
But what literature offers us, I feel, is a look at the things we think about most in our lives...love and loneliness, joy and despair, ambition and detachment, cynicism and idealism, life and death...all the things that make us human. And if there's something more valuable than getting a better perspective on these things, I don't know what it could be. As a fellow traveler with my students (admittedly a traveler who's been on the road a bit longer, sad to say), I'm honored to offer my services to the next generation.
This is my thirteenth year at RCHS teaching the things I love: literature, grammar, and composition. It's both a duty and a pleasure to bring these worthy pursuits to the next generation. I like to think of myself as a guardian of Western Civilization and its traditions.
But a question I often get is, "When am I ever going to use this stuff?"
I frustrate people who want a snappy answer to this snap question when I tell them that it depends.
It depends on how you look at it. Learning to read difficult texts makes you a better reader and thinker. Improving your writing skills--always useful. Analyzing, categorizing, comparing and contrasting...will help in ways we can't always see instantly in this age of instant gratification.
But the big thing is that we spend our time looking at the best thoughts by the best thinkers in history. If you have even a speck of humility in you, you have to realize what a big deal this is. Coleridge said that poetry is the "best words in the best order," and that's what I hope to make students appreciate. It's what makes literature exciting, and a huge benefit to anyone regardless of their goals in life. An honest, dedicated study of literature makes you a better human being, and regardless of what some people would like, you can't put a price tag on that.
But what literature offers us, I feel, is a look at the things we think about most in our lives...love and loneliness, joy and despair, ambition and detachment, cynicism and idealism, life and death...all the things that make us human. And if there's something more valuable than getting a better perspective on these things, I don't know what it could be. As a fellow traveler with my students (admittedly a traveler who's been on the road a bit longer, sad to say), I'm honored to offer my services to the next generation.