Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by Mike St. Thomas
Contemplative Pedagogy: Notes on Educating Screen-Addled Students
As summer winds down we are sharing a few essays from our archives. This piece was originally published in March of 2021. ** Not long ago I taught a summer class in creative writing to middle schoolers. On one sun-drenched day, I took the class outside to wander through our campus and down to our stretch of shoreline on Narragansett Bay. Their task was to find a natural object that drew their attention—a tree, a stone, a shell—and write a descriptive poem about it.
American Students Are Starving for Fiction and Poetry
Several writers have recently called attention to the decline of literature in American schools. Nathan Heller’s much-circulated New Yorker article “The End of the English Major” examined the slow death of fiction and poetry in colleges and universities. In the New York Times, Pamela Paul responded to Heller by blaming the Common Core for killing high schoolers’ desire to read. In the Atlantic, novelist Katherine Marsh lamented the lack of stories being read to America’s elementary students.
Ron DeSantis Doesn’t Believe in Democratic Education
Ron DeSantis’s efforts to make Florida’s classrooms more conservative have been well documented and rightfully criticized. There was last year’s “Stop WOKE Act,” then the planned conservative takeover of the New College of Florida, and soon after, the state’s decision not to teach AP African American Studies.
The High Cost of How We Work
The End of Burnout Why Work Drains Us and How to Build Better Lives by Jonathan Malesic University of California, 269 pp., $27.95 For a 1,500-year-old enterprise, Benedictine monasticism has seemed awfully relevant of late. Perhaps this is not surprising—St. Benedict’s communities, rooted in an intentional balance of prayer and work (ora et labora) largely unchanged since the sixth century, provide an attractive alternative to our frenetic modern life.
American Contrapasso
Contrapasso functions as one of the guiding principles of Dante Alighieri’s Inferno. Literally meaning “to suffer the opposite,” the term, coined by Dante himself, explains the appropriateness of the punishments endured by each resident of hell. For getting caught up in the sin of lustful passion, Paolo and Francesca are swirled around by strong winds.
In this prequel to ‘The Great Gatsby,’ Nick Carraway finally gets his chance to shine.
Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway, the main character of "Nick," in the 2013 film adaptation of "The Great Gatsby." (Photo Credit: IMDB) In the spring of 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote to his editor Max Perkins to tell him that his next novel would have “a catholic element” in it. As he began work on the novel, Fitzgerald centered its opening episode on a Midwestern boy’s confession and reception of the Eucharist.
Something to Write Home About
Uprooted Recovering the Legacy of the Places We’ve Left Behind by Grace Olmstead Sentinel, 256 pp., $27 Love for a particular place is essential to write well about it. The cultural memoir, which blends autobiography with criticism, seems a natural vehicle for this kind of devotion. One of the most widely read cultural memoirs in recent years, J.D. Vance’s 2016 Hillbilly Elegy, achieved its success in no small part because of the author’s love for the people of the Rust Belt and Appalachia.
Breaking Bread
Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind by Alan Jacobs (Penguin Press, 192 pp., $25) If nearly fifteen years of teaching high schoolers have taught me anything, it’s that the key to a successful classroom is tension. I don’t mean the kind of nervous tension that is palpable during a high-stakes test or the kind of purposefully induced discomfort that occurs when teachers force a discussion before their students are ready for it.
Thanksgiving 2020 Sucks. And We Should Be Thankful For It Anyway.
History is a long series of inflection points where advances take place overnight and catastrophes are averted by razor-thin margins. For instance: You may never have heard of Vasili Arkhipov or Stanislav Petrov, but you owe your life to these two men who, in two completely unrelated instances that took place 21 years apart, singlehandedly stopped the United States and the Soviet Union from annihilating each other (and probably the rest of the world) in a nuclear holocaust.
With ‘Missionaries,’ Phil Klay Looks at the Wounds of War
Missionaries by Phil Klay Penguin, 407 pp., $28 What does it mean to win a war? George W. Bush was roundly mocked for his premature “Mission Accomplished” declaration in 2003, but Barack Obama’s claim, as he withdrew troops in 2011, that “after nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over” proved to be just as toothless.
American Purpose
You've successfully subscribed to American Purpose Great! Next, complete checkout for full access to American Purpose Welcome back! You've successfully signed in. Success! Your account is fully activated, you now have access to all content. Success! Your newsletter subscriptions is updated. Newsletter subscriptions update failed. Success! Your billing info is updated. Billing info update failed.
The Errors of Rationalism
Who Are We? The Errors of Rationalism Mike St. Thomas A new novel by Christopher Beha catalogues them one by one—and reminds us why human beings are worth writing about. Published on: July 19, 2020 Mike St. Thomas is the head of the English department at the Portsmouth Abbey School in Rhode Island. tweet facebook google+ email print
Review: What lapsed Catholic writers can teach us about our faith
I once found myself in a conversation with a lapsed-but-still-curious cousin about the persistent pull the Catholic faith exerts on individuals in what appears to be a post-religious age. Given the unambiguous evil we face daily (in the church and the world), why do people still want to believe? As a way of responding to her, as is my custom in these kinds of conversations, I recommended books.
The Limits of Decadence
End Times The Limits of Decadence Mike St. Thomas In The Decadent Society, Ross Douthat argues that today’s West is characterized more by enervation than outright depravity. But in order to emphasize the sustainability of decadence, Douthat has to keep insisting things really aren’t that bad . . . yet. Published on: March 18, 2020 Mike St. Thomas is the head of the English department at the Portsmouth Abbey School in Rhode Island. tweet facebook google+ email print
Losing Religion in Flyover Country
Mark B. Gibson/The Dalles Chronicle via AP During my years as a graduate student in Missoula, Montana, I was struck by the dynamic between the writers in the university's M.F.A. program and the native Montanans who constituted most of the student body. While the hipster poets disdained anything that smacked of conservatism, they seemed perfectly at home adopting the accoutrements of working conservatives from the Mountain West.
Finding Faith and Losing Religion in Flyover Country
Secular Religion Finding Faith and Losing Religion in Flyover Country Mike St. Thomas Meghan O’Gieblyn’s new essay collection cuts to the heart of America’s cultural divide—and reveals the ties that bind secular progressives and fundamentalist Christians alike. Published on: April 5, 2019 Mike St. Thomas is the head of the Humanities program at the Portsmouth Abbey School in Rhode Island.
Surviving Survivalism
The book-blurb version of Educated ends here, a Hillbilly Elegy-meets-Pygmalion tale of an improbable intellectual coming-of-age. However, Westover digs deeper in this memoir. She wants to tell the story of her soul, not her accomplishments, and she writes surprisingly little of her life at Cambridge. Instead, like a tongue probing a sore tooth, her narrative returns to Buck’s Peak, where her identity still lies. How can she break from her family without losing herself?
To Think or Not to Think?
Life of the Mind To Think or Not to Think? Mike St. Thomas Alan Jacobs’s latest book is a guide for thinking seriously in an age of distraction—but it falls prey to the very kind of habits which he aims to counter. Published on: July 17, 2018 Mike St. Thomas is the head of the Humanities program at the Portsmouth Abbey School in Rhode Island. tweet facebook google+ email print
St. Midas’s Prep
In a memorable Saturday Night Live sketch from the 1990s, a father, mother, and teenage daughter sit down to what soon proves to be a dysfunctional dinner, as pleasant conversation turns into a screaming match in which the dad, played by Will Ferrell, desperately asserts his authority by yelling, “I am a division manager!... People are scared of me!...
Borne Back into the Past
History remembers F. Scott Fitzgerald as the author of The Great Gatsby, but that reputation arrived posthumously. While he was alive, his 1920 debut novel This Side of Paradise was his calling card. Its descriptions of the loosened morals of his generation established the twenty-three-year-old writer as the voice of the Jazz Age, and its publication convinced Zelda Sayre to offer him her hand in marriage.
Remembering John T. Noonan
Writing in Commonweal in 2009, Cathleen Kaveny said Noonan’s “contributions to both the bench and the academy are prodigious” and wrote of his work that it “provides the concrete evidence that demonstrates the truth of Alasdair MacIntyre’s tradition theory with respect to theology and to law.
Pedagogy of the Distracted
A teacher myself, I came to this book armed with a major objection: Baker is a substitute teacher, not a full-time one. The students in his care do lots of busy work, but that’s what teachers assign when they write “sub” plans. By the very nature of his position he shouldn’t be able to see what really happens in a classroom.
Show More
loading
Actions
Is this you?
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.Get in touch with Mike
Contact Mike, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack