education

I watched TheOdd1sOut's How to Find Inspiration¹ and remembered the most important lesson I learned from my high school English teacher:

Short is good. Short is hard.

The teacher² didn't exactly put it like that. But he harped on something nobody else did: writing concisely.

Every week we would read a work of American literature. And every Friday we'd turn in a one-pager encapsulating our knowledge of the book. I was an odd duck for how much I enjoyed the game: no playing with margins or font sizes. I had to cram an entire book into one page, double-spaced, with 1" margins, a title line, and a byline.

I remember spending Thursday nights honing my text, usually down to around 500 words. We would get a slight bonus for conveying more with fewer words.

That's surprisingly difficult for teenagers conditioned to churn out a specific word count. TheOdd1sOut commiserates:

From the Vatican Information Service:

"It is no exaggeration", the Pope added, "to say that providing young people with a sound education in the faith represents the most urgent internal challenge facing the Catholic community in your country".

"First, as we know, the essential task of authentic education ... is not simply that of passing on knowledge, essential as this is, but also of shaping hearts. There is a constant need to balance intellectual rigour in communicating ... the richness of the Church’s faith with forming the young in the love of God, the praxis of the Christian moral and sacramental life and, not least, the cultivation of personal and liturgical prayer".

Read the full article here: The Catholic Identity of Educational Institutions.