Tag: Education
We’re excited that you’ve joined the conversation! At HMU, we want to continue the great authors’ conversations in a contemporary context, and this blog will help us do that. We look back to Aristotle and the early philosophers who used reason and discourse to gain wisdom and now we endeavor to do the same every day.
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September 4, 2026
Thanks to Barbara Drobot, a 2026 Fellow in Ideas, for today’s post.
For years, I believed I was teaching people how to draw. I assumed the greatest challenges were technical: controlling the hand, understanding proportion, mastering perspective, or measuring relationships accurately. Those skills matter. But after more than a decade of teaching, I realized they were not what held most people back.
The real challenge was learning how to see.
» Read more about: What Drawing Reveals About the Way We Think »
August 14, 2026
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
After Job loses everything (including his health), but before his friends come to “comfort” him, Job’s wife offers a rare sentence of advice. No other female speaks in the Book of Job so it caught my eye. She suggests that Job should end his misery. By the end of chapter 2, Job is in a truly pitiful state.
June 12, 2026
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
It’s been a few years since I have posted a summer reading list, so I thought it would be a great way to transition into this year’s summer recess. I often compile a summer reading list for myself. Sometimes I get through it and sometimes I don’t. These lists are not meant to be assignments, so I always shrug off any books that didn’t get to the top,
June 5, 2026
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
I remember being a graduate student and receiving grades with little written feedback. I often wondered if a good grade meant that the writing was good, or the ideas were good, or perhaps both. Professors do their best to balance what usually amounts to too much work, but I always wanted more advice or critiques. While the actual grade is some indication,
May 1, 2026
Thanks to Chinyere Okoh, a 2026 Fellow in Ideas, for today’s blog.
Beyond the Silence
by Chinyere Okoh
I find myself alone in a still room,
where shadows seem to stretch and exhale with me.
The quiet carries a single, fragile question that lingers in the air:
Where am I?
The voice feels both distant and familiar,
as though it belongs to me and yet echoes from somewhere beyond. » Read more about: Rebuilding Connections: Book Review of Together by Vivek H. Murthy, MD »
April 24, 2026
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
In my undergraduate coursework, I took a class on Shakespeare’s tragedies. We read Romeo and Juliet first. I will never forget my second day in that class because it was mortifying. The professor, a white-haired theatrical visiting professor from England, was only interested in how we could read Shakespeare out loud. On our second day in class,
» Read more about: An Honor That I Dream Not of: The Practice of Reading Aloud »
April 10, 2026
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
We watched Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, … and Spring for the final film in the HMU Winter Film Series. What a film with gorgeous scenery and a wonderful narrative!
As the title would indicate, the film opens in springtime. A boy forages on a mountainside while his master, a Buddhist monk, goes into town for some supplies.
February 6, 2026
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
I don’t know if anyone reads Galen anymore. I certainly never encountered his works during my education. Yet it turns out that Galen wrote a lot. In fact, he was one of the most prolific of the ancient authors. He also touched on nearly every subject. Not only did he write about medicine, but he wrote about grammar, rhetoric,
January 23, 2026
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Peter Brook’s version of Lord of the Flies opens to church bells and a stream of photos from and English boys’ school. The photos and audio include math lessons and angelic sounding chorale arrangements, which are quickly replaced by drums and a cricket match interspersed with missiles, airplanes behind Big Ben, and a chalkboard list of evacuation plans.
January 16, 2026
Thanks to Chad Greene, former Fellow in Ideas, for today’s blog.
“It’s like I said: I love this film. I’ve seen it over one hundred times.” – Phil Connors, Groundhog Day
Winter break was about to end. Spring semester was about to start.
In the third or the fourth week of the semester, it would be Groundhog Day. In the ninth week of the semester,
» Read more about: ‘To Watch a Master at Work’: Learning from Teaching Groundhog Day »