I begin my lectures and presentations about Ray Bradbury with a confession. The confession is simple and one of which I express a deep sense of loss and a degree of shame. I did not start reading Ray Bradbury until a few years ago. I did not read him because I judged a book by [...]
Issuing a call for true nobility, which comes from, and is found in virtue, Battista Guarino calls for a proper devotion to the humanities. The program put forth in this writing is a method that is tested by a long practice, which is contrary to the often cutting-edge, immediate, new trend, spirit of the age [...]
If one is considering the value of a Liberal Arts education on the high school or college level, it would be most helpful to articulate exactly what a liberal arts education really is or should be. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Among the very fine explanations of what a Liberal Arts education [...]
In the history of ideas, there are ideas that need to be rescued from those who should know better, but simply do not. For example, all the false views about the Middle Ages. Way too many to even get started in this blog. Interestingly, even the Renaissance has its share of misreadings. There are some Christians who [...]
by Robert M. Woods In all of our Great Books based programs we exalt the primary readings, unmediated by commentaries, critical theories, jargon ladened treatises, and a mountain of secondary works explaining what a given author meant within his work. What we generally do is encourage the students to jump right in and start swimming. By [...]
I distinctly remember reading Jacques Ellul’s books on technology, and specifically even remember where I was sitting when I read his The Technological Bluff, where he essentially argues that it is all but over and people will give over to the tidal wave of technology/technique. Here we are more than twenty years later, and if [...]
In the university where Adler would be Dean, all courses would at some point and in some way have the Socratic method as a dominant part of instruction. There would be no textbooks. There are little to no written exams, there are only verbal exams. Imagine every class, every day as an oral exam. The [...]
One of the many advantages in reading the Great Books is that truly Great books have the ability to remove us from our present moment and take us somewhere else, expose us to different ideas, issues, and landscapes, and then return us to our own. This enables us to see our own world, and more [...]
If I think about it, I am saddened that I received the invitation later in life. I wish I had received and accepted the invitation in High School, or college, or certainly graduate school. It was not all my fault, I was not told about the invitation until about twelve years ago. Since that time, [...]
Eric Voegelin Eric Voegelin (1901–1985) penned an essay entitled On Classical Studies (1973)–an essay that was shaped by the Classical west and the Christian faith and is philosophically opposed to the distortions of Enlightenment rationalism. Reading Voegelin is akin to reading Amos or Joel. But instead of ancient Israel, it is the modern [...]
Beginning with the definition of education, Eliot relates the nature of education to culture as a whole. Specifically on culture Eliot says, “if we mean that Culture is what is passed on by our elementary and secondary schools, or by our preparatory and public schools, then we are asserting that an organ is a whole [...]
Russell Kirk On occasion, someone will email me or ask me at a conference, “if there is one article or essay on the problems and solutions to modern education, that everyone should read, what is it”? Questions like this are wonderful on at least two levels–it gives me the exhilaration of mentally scanning [...]
What prompted this blog is that not long ago, a professor I have tremendous respect for stated in an interview that there are few, if any great essayist alive and writing today. If I understood him correctly, I disagree. If I misunderstood him, I apologize. In either case, I wanted to write a blog (not [...]
Of all of the readings in volume one in The Great Ideas Program, by Mortimer Adler, an introduction to the Great Books toward a liberal education, possibly the one that many would be more likely to skip and yet should read now is the The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels. You might ask why? [...]