In this episode of The Open Door, panelists Jim Hanink, Mario Ramos-Reyes, and Christopher Zehnder focus on the trials and triumphs of contemporary education. Our special guest will help us “stay real.” Larry Carstens has taught English at the high school and college levels for thirty years. His observations have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, First Things, and the New Oxford Review. He works in the Los Angeles area, where he lives happily ever after with his wife and children. With them especially in mind, he recently authored Our Forebears in the American Story and World History. Our questions will include the following and, gentle auditors, you are invited to add your own.

1. Were you to write an essay titled “Apologia of an Independent Teacher” (and someone suggested that you do so), what topics and events and personalities might you discuss?

2. Is teaching, for you, a career or a vocation?

3. How is it that you teach at public, rather than Catholic, schools?

4. You are a member of an influential teachers’ union. What’s that been like?

5. In what ways have your students changed over the past three decades?

6. In what ways have your fellow teachers changed over the past three decades?

7. Do you have any experience with homeschoolers or homeschooled children?

8. Rumor has it that you are a devotee of Shakespeare and an appreciator of Churchill. Can you tell us why?