Classical Education

Four Sides of a Cube: The Way of Great Books

We turn to the Great Books so that the encounter with them might do for us what they did for past generations. We turn to them as world makers, that they might aide us in understanding the world they were instrumental in bringing about, our world...

The Cave and the Consumer

Whether the wisest should rule has always been a vexed question, largely because the wisest are least likely to seek (or be granted) the power and prominence that accompany the highest position. But even being educated—simply...

Have We Misjudged Machiavelli?

Machiavelli can enter public debate not merely as a wicked man concerned only with power and political maneuvering, but as a philosopher with myriad insights to offer modern politics, politicians, and even apolitical members of the public... Be Like...

Ideology and the Humanities

Ideologies are mind-traps: They are constructed in such a way that they prejudge the motive of opposition to their systems. The great aim of liberal education is to liberate students from mere unexamined opinion into genuine thought... Some people...

The Liberal Arts vs. Progressive Education

Search the web and you will find any number of lofty “purposes of education:” Education enables us to develop to the fullest. Education cultivates the human mind with values and principles. Education teaches us to think and...

The New Barbarism? Learning in Twenty-First Century Schools

We are racing through the twenty-first century with our schools following the culture, rather than education molding the culture through our youth... Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to join Tony Williams as he discusses how our school system has...

The Profoundly Humane Vision of “Groundhog Day”

The protagonist of the film Groundhog Day discovers that what makes life worth living is not immediate gratification, or moral autonomy, or flippant cynicism, or self-deification, but rather encountering those things that give meaning and purpose to our lives...

Final Exams and the Last Judgment

Like it or not, final exams provide a better analogy to the Last Judgment than one would like to think: All that was hidden comes to light... Finals: the very word does something alarming to the...

How Music and Memorization Can Save Our Failing Schools

While the common-sense approach to early childhood education was standard practice for centuries, it has been abandoned in recent years. Shunning rote learning, we have instead told young children to draw on their own (limited) experience or feelings when completing school assignments... We all want the...

Democracy and Liberal Learning

We are the heirs to Great Ideas, Great Books, and a Great Conversation committed to understanding the story of humanity. The challenge for those living in the largely democratic West is to maintain the idea that a society committed to freedom is a society committed to the value of...

Tenure and the Common Good of the University

The university is ultimately designed to give students what is needed, rather than what is wanted or merely useful. University administrators should remember the fundamental link among tenure, the possibility of great teaching, and the keeping intact the whole that is the university...

What Is Unique About St. John’s College?

Join The Imaginative Conservative's Winston Elliott as he talks with Christopher Nelson, president of St. John's College, about his service at St John’s, and about the unique kind of liberal arts education offered there. President Nelson discusses the mission of St. John's College, the role of the...

On Music and Metaphysics

Please join Peter Kalkavage as he discusses the metaphysics of music: music's role in the liberal arts, the paradox in the union of rational and irrational, order and feeling in its composition, and music's connection and reflection of the deeper order of the natural...

Literature & the Foundations of the West

The questions for the West have now become: What it is that we should remember and teach? What are the elements of Western civilization that might sustain what is left and reconstruct what has been damaged or destroyed?... Today's offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the...