It can be said of Cicero and his role within the West that, in hindsight, he becomes a figure much larger than he himself actually was; he is a touchstone, a fountainhead, a rock upon which we can place our fondest and dearest dreams. How do I define the Natural Law? Taking my cue from [...]
Now we’ve always been a happiness oriented culture. “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and so forth. Right? But it’s taken a particularly interesting turn: the topic of “meaning” and “meaning in life” is coming to the fore. People, more and more, are talking about not just sheer contentedness, but what it is for [...]
For a thousand years, liberal education shaped the moral imagination of succeeding generations, almost unaware that it was freeing them from the coercive obsessions of their political masters. Reading classics like Anne of Green Gables, Farmer Boy, or To Kill a Mockingbird, some parents meditate on the adolescents portrayed—teenagers eager to master the virtues of [...]
For the classical educator, there are many educational goods to be achieved from reading Plato’s "Republic" with students because it is a dialogue that invites us to wonder about the most important questions humans can possibly ask: What is Reality? What is the Good? Does it exist? Can we know it? Why should we care? [...]
The disastrous and destructive consequences of reductionist and relativistic education can be seen in multifarious ways, all of which are made manifest in the decay and decomposition of the modern West. We are no longer able to think outside of narcissistic or ideological boxes; we are no longer able to love self-sacrificially. The following is [...]
In “How to Keep From Losing Your Mind,” Deal W. Hudson sets out to not merely defend—in a traditional and philosophical sense—Western thought but also to share the beauty of culture and the approach he took as he was writing, namely that of “a mounting sense of joy.” How to Keep From Losing Your Mind: [...]
Free citizens are necessarily invited to follow the Delphic injunction, “know thyself,” that is addressed to all mankind; and their success or failure in responding to this invitation is crucial for the preservation or loss of their liberty. Liberal education is the distinctive educational tradition of the West; so, too, is liberty our distinctive political [...]
What kind of education would enable a child to progress in the rational understanding of the world without losing his poetic and artistic appreciation of it? Beauty in the Word: Rethinking the Foundations of Education by Stratford Caldecott (178 pages, Angelico Press, 2012) Stratford Caldecott’s Beauty in the Word is like no book in the genre of [...]
Like the person who ascends out of Plato’s cave, you too are now obliged to go back down and help others to ascend, to draw others from shadows and images into the truth. Who raises the bar? The servant of others. Many have raised it for you, but you are challenged to go forth to [...]
It is the virtues—through God’s grace—that keep us on the straight and narrow path of morality, dignity, and freedom. And J.R.R. Tolkien, arguably the greatest mythmaker of our era, illustrated seven of these virtues in his books about the history of Middle Earth. To the headmaster, administration, faculty, parents, and, especially, to the Ascent Classical [...]
I’ve recently returned from my first-ever visit to Australia. In its wake, I am basking in the afterglow of the experience, as well as enduring the jetlag of its aftermath. The purpose of the visit was a speaking tour to promote the need for a restoration of classical education. Its instigator and organizer was Tim [...]
The task of conservation, in our present day, necessarily entails supporting liberal education. Those conservatives who do not support it will fail to conserve our Western identity. That is to say: they will fail to conserve anything significant, no matter how many tributes they pay to some abstract ideas of “freedom” or “liberty.” I’d like [...]
Taken together, Louis Markos' "Passing the Torch" and Michael Ortner and Kimberly Begg's "The Catholic School Playbook" provide invaluable assistance in navigating the turbulent educational waters of our troubled times. They are also a sign of hope and a source of encouragement, and so are the hundreds of newly founded classical academies that are springing [...]
America’s Christian culture began to erode at the turn of the 20th century, with the rise of bureaucratic public schools. The belated Christian reactions to this were homeschooling, parent-led Christian schools, co-ops and pods, and now classical charter schools. Yet, when set alongside their agnostic fellow citizens, Next-gen Christians have proven equally susceptible to loneliness, [...]