Trying to put science in a classical paradigm is putting new wine into old wineskins. Modern science just does not easily fit into a classical paradigm… STEM, or science, technology, engineering, and math, is the newest acronym for what is considered a great education, and it often leads to a satisfying and financially rewarding career [...]
The chief purpose of life, for any one of us, is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by this knowledge to praise and thanks. What will you do? Editor’s Note: This address was delivered to the graduating class of Hillsdale Academy, [...]
The number of those attracted by the renewal of classical education is growing, as parents confronting the spiritual wasteland of contemporary education flock to schools producing faithful, intelligent, joyful students devoted to the true, the good, and the beautiful, and energized to proclaim them to Church and world… At a dinner celebrating Catholic classical education [...]
The classical curriculum remained the educational gold standard in nineteenth-century America. In fact, its influence grew, as women’s academies with a classical curriculum were founded all over the expanding nation… The Golden Age of the Classics in America: Greece, Rome, and the Antebellum United States by Carl J. Richard (Harvard University Press, 2009) With The [...]
In the educational world today, we ask the wrong question about how students are to become educated. Instead of asking what they should do, we should ask how students ought to be… Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join Steven Jonathan Rummelsburg as he explores how the abandoning of [...]
Today, both in our schools and wider society, the True, Good, and Beautiful are now whatever one wants them to be. There is simply no divine obligation apart from that which each person chooses to impose upon himself… Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join Stephen Turley as he [...]
The tragedy of modern education is that it has left us perilously ignorant of who we are, where we are, where we have come from, and where we are going. We are lost and blissfully unaware that we are heading for the abyss… Many years ago the English writer G.K. Chesterton claimed that the “coming [...]
The Classic Learning Test (CLT) is a new alternative to the SAT and ACT. By creating a new standard that is distinctly Western and drawn from the richness of our intellectual heritage, the CLT hopes to encourage secondary schools to return to teaching the great classics… The Classic Learning Test (CLT) is a new alternative [...]
As important as it is to use language well, it is more important to use it to move people with the truth… For two full days, with all regular classes canceled, the seniors at Wyoming Catholic College this week presented their senior orations to faculty, fellow students, board members, and guests of the College. The [...]
We want to give our students a classroom in which inciting books are talked about not as mere literature nor as historical documents, but boldly as they meant themselves to be taken: as the Word of God, or the insight of the intellect, or the wisdom of the world. And yet we want these same [...]
C.S. Lewis would not allow disagreement to become personal. He could always distinguish the man from the man’s opinion, and he knew the difference between an argument and a quarrel. Truth was ultimately at stake, and truth mattered to him… As a fellow of one of the colleges at the University of Oxford, I have [...]
The American Founders knew from history that a curriculum successful at teaching its graduates to think, communicate, and lead could produce anarchy or tyranny instead of ordered liberty, unless those skills were practiced by leaders committed to virtue and the love of liberty. The classical education of the American Founders was “Inspired by Liberty and [...]
The lack of schooling in the formation of one of every four U.S. presidents underscores the paradox that even the most humble among them were often great champions of education in general and of the liberal arts in particular… Can the liberal arts prepare citizens for leadership? Most of us in higher education want the [...]
Philosophy is many things to many people, but to me it is the art of questioning. If we can learn to ask the right questions in the right spirit, then the answers for which our hearts yearn will be given to us… “What are you majoring in?” “Philosophy.” “Oh…” Translation: “You’re one of those weird [...]