As the New Year’s holiday passes and Christmas is nearly over, it’s almost time to start heading back to my day job.
While I’ve been busily shopping for, parting out, and filling orders for LEGO® parts, I’m also getting ready to head back to my day job. I’ve been teaching in some form or another for a long time now. The last several years I’ve been teaching at a local university. Until last May, this teaching was part of my graduate assistantship, but now I’m lecturing as an adjunct. Not as many people seek jobs teaching like this – being temporary has some significant inconveniences, but it works very well for us. As a fringe benefit, I also use that degree I got at the end of 30th grade.
First Day of School
This semester, I get to teach one of my favorite classes – logic. Logic has plenty of technical apparatus and fun games with goofy symbols. The right page from the textbook can convince anyone you’re smart. But more importantly, logic helps us to make sure we are training our hearts to aim at the right things. As C.S. Lewis writes in The Abolition of Man, “the head rules the belly through the chest”. And so logic trains the intellect, making us better able to shape the emotions. And in turn, the emotions constrain the animal instincts of the belly.
Of course, selling LEGO® elements is part of education around here too. We started this enterprise as a way of teaching certain basic skills neglected by many school curricula. But I’m enough of a teacher at heart that I dearly enjoy having a classroom too.
