G.K. Chesterton gave an entire quarter of What's Wrong with the World to what he called the mistake about the child, and his verdict was blunt: the schoolmaster works not for the parent but against him. In this solo back-to-school episode, Joe Grabowski follows that argument through to the line Chesterton offers as the whole purpose of teaching—to pour that fiery simplicity upon the whole of life—and asks what it would take to recover the childlike wonder Chesterton insisted was education's only real aim.

What's in This Episode:

• Why G.K. Chesterton opened What's Wrong with the World with a chapter about medicine, and what a doctor's knowledge of a healthy body has to do with schools
• The chapter Chesterton titled The Outlawed Parent, where he charges that the schoolmaster works against the parent rather than for him
• The single sentence Chesterton offers as the only real aim of education, and why it is easy to miss in a book this quotable
• What Chesterton meant in In Defence of Baby Worship by a new universe inside every child's head, and why it does not make him an idealist
• The passage in Orthodoxy where Chesterton imagines God saying "do it again" to the sun every morning

Resources Mentioned:

• What's Wrong with the World
• Orthodoxy
• The Everlasting Man
• The Defendant
• Chesterton Schools Network

Chapters:

• 00:00: Introduction
• 00:30: Back to school, and what education is actually for
• 02:29: The medical mistake, and why we stopped asking what is right
• 04:47: Education, or the mistake about the child
• 07:42: Parents standing up at school board meetings
• 09:33: The Chesterton Schools Network
• 11:59: The only real aim of education
• 14:18: Keeping familiarity from breeding contempt
• 19:08: In Defence of Baby Worship, and a new universe in every head
• 21:31: The delight children take in inventing words
• 23:48: Man the sign maker, and Walker Percy on language
• 26:11: The eternal appetite of infancy

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Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

On the feasts of Saints Monica and Augustine, Grettelyn Darkey and Joe Grabowski trace G.K. Chesterton's long road into the Catholic Church, beginning with his 1903 newspaper battle with Blatchford and McCabe and ending at the sacramental hesitation that held him back until 1922. They show why Chesterton refused to hang his belief on one or two arguments, and why a man for whom every daisy was already a miracle found it hardest to meet God in one particular priest. The takeaway is a habit any reader can practice: reading the world for connections, on the saints' feasts and on every other day of the year.

In This Episode:

• Why Chesterton fits no single school. He is Augustinian, Thomistic, Franciscan, and Scotistic at once
• What Chesterton actually told McCabe about the "two great pegs" his conversion supposedly hung on
• Why fear, not doubt, marked Chesterton's final approach—and how it echoes Augustine's "not yet"
• The sacramental hurdle for a man who already found God in sunshine and daisies
• A Chestertonian habit to practice: connecting the unlikely and reading everything for truth

Resources Mentioned:

• The Catholic Church and Conversion
• Orthodoxy
• The Man Who Was Thursday
• The City of God (St. Augustine)
• Episode art image credit: Nheyob, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Chapters:

• 00:00: Introduction
• 00:33: Welcome and Today's Topic
• 01:48: Why Chesterton Resists Every Label
• 05:30: The First Conversion and the Blatchford Controversy
• 10:38: Reading from The Catholic Church and Conversion
• 12:29: Fear, Not Doubt
• 14:52: The Sacraments as the Last Step
• 17:34: Free Will and the Marriage Metaphor
• 19:39: Augustine's Search and the Grace Behind It
• 23:09: Restlessness and the Search for Peace
• 27:07: The Policeman, the Anarchist, and the Fence
• 33:35: How to Become Chestertonian

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SUPPORT:

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Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios