Five Defenses of Classical Education in a Time of Civil Unrest

By |2020-09-23T15:11:06-05:00September 23rd, 2020|Categories: Civil Society, Classical Education, Education, Liberal Learning|

Classical education is in a unique position to acknowledge in humility that every person is a sinner, and that some people and institutions in the West have been monstrously evil. Yet the Western heritage includes that which can never itself be complicit in evil: the true and the good, those inexhaustible resources that set us [...]

Does Classical Education Promote Diversity?

By |2020-08-24T16:47:29-05:00August 24th, 2020|Categories: Classical Education, Classical Learning, Classics, Education, Liberal Learning|

Today we are not inclined to ask who said something, but to ask to which identity group the person who said it belongs. This is profoundly opposed to the spirit of inquiry that classical education proposes to students—a spirit that seeks truth, beauty, and goodness. Though classical learning is gaining steam again in many parts [...]

The Unique Advantages of Latin and Greek

By |2020-08-19T14:02:23-05:00August 20th, 2020|Categories: Classical Education, Classics, Education, Intelligence, Language, Liberal Learning, Music|

In order to reap the full rewards of a classical education, schools should prize the classical languages as highly as they do the mathematical arts. The qualitative and the quantitative are essential aspects of human understanding, without which no one may be fully educated. Every rule has a story. Perhaps you have read an old [...]

Why Academics Should Consider Classical Education

By |2022-09-17T18:45:17-05:00August 12th, 2020|Categories: Classical Education, Classical Learning, Education, Liberal Arts, Liberal Learning, Modernity|

Academics who are interested in understanding the world in which we live, producing good citizens, and thinking beyond their own disciplinary cage should reconsider throwing all their eggs in the university basket and give serious attention to the possibility of taking up a post in an institution of classical learning. Prior to the pandemic, the [...]

Hybrid Home Schools and Civil Society

By |2020-07-28T11:28:57-05:00July 31st, 2020|Categories: Civil Society, Classical Education, Community, Education, Family, Liberal Learning|

As states and localities battle over issues from how or even whether to re-open schools, all the way to defining the circumstances under which small children will be required to wear masks, a devolution of decision-making is certainly welcome. Hybrid homeschools can provide many more families with a way to both get past virus-related issues [...]

Odin on Classical Education

By |2020-06-02T02:35:09-05:00June 3rd, 2020|Categories: Classical Education, Classical Learning, Culture, Education, Humanities, Liberal Learning, Myth, Virtue|

Schools now attempt to produce students who will contribute to the workforce and, really, nothing more. Students are now frequently viewed as tools for the end of GDP; this demeaning use of a person shows that a pragmatic notion of education entirely misses the mark. Birth to school. School to college. College to job. Job [...]

An Apologetic for Home Education in the 21st Century

By |2020-05-29T11:05:51-05:00May 25th, 2020|Categories: Classical Education, Coronavirus, Education, Homeschooling, Liberal Learning|

In the greatest of ironies, a recent issue of “Harvard Magazine” has condemned parents being at home with their children all day, even while the governments across America have now required it for the past several weeks due to the COVID-19 pandemic. My efforts to recast homeschooling in a less-threatening light are rooted in two [...]

Why “Western Civ” Is Losing Its Appeal

By |2020-05-18T08:09:17-05:00May 17th, 2020|Categories: Books, Civilization, Classical Education, Culture, Education, Great Books, Liberal Arts, Literature, Modernity, Western Civilization, Western Tradition|

The Western canon as typically presented is increasingly unable to rally the enthusiasm even of devoted admirers of Western civilization, who recognize the commonly proffered canons as, at best, an impoverished rendition of Western culture and, at worst, a perpetuation of the very same cultural forces that are at the source of its decay. The [...]

Why Are the Classics Necessary?

By |2020-05-04T17:15:34-05:00May 4th, 2020|Categories: Classical Education, Classics, Liberal Arts, Literature, Timeless Essays|

Our need for the classics is intense. Yet any defense of them in our time must come from a sense of their absolute necessity—not from a desire to inculcate “cultural literacy,” or to keep alive a pastime for an elite, but to preserve the full range of hu­man sensibility. What is needed is to recap­ture [...]

Pointing to the Real: A Guide for Catholic Teachers

By |2020-06-16T10:23:26-05:00May 2nd, 2020|Categories: Catholicism, Classical Education, Culture, Education, Liberal Learning|

Clear, deep, and accurate thinking about reality, both natural and supernatural, is the essential skill the student must develop. However, without the help of dedicated and proficient teachers and a robust community of learning, it is quite difficult, if not impossible, to acquire true knowledge of both self and creation. We may assert without any [...]

Are the Great Books Enough to Revive Our Education System?

By |2023-08-31T19:18:23-05:00April 30th, 2020|Categories: Classical Education, Culture, Education, Liberal Learning|

Intended originally to transform a largely agrarian population into efficient industrial workers, the progressive system of education has had its day. In response, over the past forty years, there has been an explosion in homeschooling and classical schools, which propose a variety of ways of moving forward by retrieving the wisdom of the past. This [...]

A Childish Fear of Western Civilization

By |2020-04-26T12:00:25-05:00April 26th, 2020|Categories: Classical Education, Culture, Education, Humanities, Western Civilization, Western Tradition|

The dissolution of Western Civilization has left a vacuum in the college curriculum. Western Civ was once used to tie other disciplines together, to supply a forum for discussion of the Big Questions, and to provide students with a sense of purpose. By joining that great debate, students become part of an ongoing conversation about [...]

Does the Church Have a Teaching on “Classical Education”?

By |2020-04-04T17:37:50-05:00April 4th, 2020|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Classical Education, Culture, Education, Liberal Learning|

One of the more remarkable trends in the past five years in Catholic education is the noticeable increase of schools embracing a “classical education.” Ten or twenty years ago, the Catholic classical school was a start-up by disgruntled laity. Now one can find here and there whole diocesan school systems that have embraced the classical [...]

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