This week on HeightsCast, we feature a recording of the first Heights Lecture event of the new school year, featuring Alvaro de Vicente:

What is optimism? Is it naive to be optimistic? How is optimism related to hope? How, in the end, do we raise sons who can look life's challenges squarely in the face with the the hint of a smile on their lips, knowing that all is in good hands? Join our Headmaster, Alvaro de Vicente, for an evening lecture on how to raise optimistic, hopeful young men.

Our time, like most all others, has its challenges. Spend an evening with fellow parents interested in keeping their sons' visage fixed firmly on the fullness of reality, and the opportunities of the present moment.

Bad news is all around us. It always has been. It always will be. As if personal and family challenges weren’t enough, we have an attention economy that seems dead set on giving a generation of young people chronic anxiety about seemingly cataclysmic events. How can we prepare our children to handle bad news? Quite simply, by handling it well ourselves, remaining saintly and cool under fire. How do we do that? Listen in to learn more.

Additional Resources:

• Mr. Mehan’s Mildly Amusing Mythical Mammals
• Dr. Mehan’s piece in the Washington Examiner

1. How can parents discern if a smartphone would be beneficial for their son? 
2. When is the right time to entrust him with this powerful tool? Under what circumstances? 
3. Will waiting to give your son a smartphone render him ill-prepared for college and beyond?
4. More provocatively, is it correct to assume that holding off on the smartphone is merely delaying the inevitable?

As Mr. de Vicente explains, parents’ discussions of these questions ought principally to consider their son’s level of self-mastery. Like any tool, if a smartphone is to be of help rather than harm, the user must be prepared to use it and not be used by it. 

On a practical level, the two basic questions to be asked are:

1. What are my son’s current needs? 
2. Can my son master this piece of technology? 

To answer the first question, Mr. de Vicente suggests that parents consider: 

1. The purposes of technology: communication, information, organization, and entertainment.
2. The possible (objective) needs of the boy: calling, texting, GPS. 
3. What tool--whether a smartphone, flip-phone, or some other device--will satisfy the specific needs without being detrimental to the boy’s ultimate good.

In order to answer the third point, it is helpful to look at whether a boy has demonstrated self-mastery in the following areas: 

1. Property: clothes, school materials, sports equipment.
2. Spaces: room, bed, closet, desk. 
3. Time: morning and evening routines, weekends and holidays.
4. Urges: speaking, food, desire to have a phone.

While no-one is perfect, if a child has not displayed a certain level of self-mastery in these areas of his life, it will be hard for him to use a smartphone well. Indeed, it is far easier for a boy to put a shirt on a hanger or make use of a calendar than it is for him to resist the algorithms of technologies whose aim it is for him to be unable to. If he does not do the former, one ought not assume he will do the latter.

In the end, using smartphones well is not a matter of learning how to navigate technology per se, which is a skill that is not learned with much difficulty. It is, rather, a matter of developing self-mastery, which is a virtue that requires both time and perhaps more than little toil. 

Show Highlights 

• How to develop a personal philosophy of technology 
• In general, what is a good approach to smartphones?
• Questions parents should ask themselves when deciding whether their child needs (and is ready for) a smartphone
• What are the purposes of a phone? 
• Are all needs equal?
• How do you know if your child is capable of mastering a smartphone? 
• What parents can do to limit bad uses of technology 
• Does a high schooler need a smartphone in order to be prepared for college? 
• Is there a right age to give your child a smartphone?
• Challenge the assumption that the smartphone is inevitable for everyone 
• Some alternative phones to the traditional smartphone 
• What to do if a parent has mistakenly given their child a smartphone

Also from The Forum 

Digital Minimalism: Creating a Philosophy of Personal Technology Use

Digital Minimalism: Creating a Philosophy of Personal Technology Use, Part II

1. How a traditional approach to education can embrace the advances of modernity without losing its roots.  
2. The ways in which modernity, properly contextualized, can help correct certain biases latent in classical thought. 
3. The role of professional preparation in a liberal arts education.

Whether or not one’s work is clearly connected to the classical ideal of contemplation, the goal of education converges in the heart of a man who knows he is a son of God; and who, like the Son of God, sanctifies his ordinary work.

Show Highlights 

• Is the Heights a classical school? 
• How does the Heights fit into the classical school movement? 
• The role of professor John Dewey in progressive educational trends. 
• How Dorothy Sayers’ speech on “The Lost Tools of Learning” sparked a revival in traditional education. 
• Ought from an is? How our anthropology informs our education
• The baby in the bathwater: some positives of mainstream education today viz. the acquisition of professional skills.
• How modern thought corrects some shortcomings of the classical tradition.
• The vision of St. Josemaria and what this means for education at The Heights.
• How education can help students to passionately love the world.
• Sanctification of ordinary work and divine filiation. 
• Work as a sharing in the home of Nazareth.
• Is professional work a distraction from contemplation? 
• The teaching vocation 

Suggested Reading 

The Lost Tools of Learning by Dorothy Sayers 

Passionately Loving the World by St. Josemaria Escriva