Eva Brann’s latest book, “Pursuits of Happiness,” is a collection of essays which range from Aeschylus to Austen, with topics spanning the nature of time itself to Sacred Scripture. Interspersed here are two parts constituting the whole of an ideal education. Pursuits of Happiness: On Being Interested by Eva Brann (640 pages, Paul Dry Books, [...]
Young people need to come into the presence of music. Without live orchestras and available concerts the real heart of music will cease to beat, and young people will be deprived of one of the most enriching experiences that I know. I grew up in post-war Britain, at a time when people were beginning to [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Graduates sallying forth from the ivied halls need to be free men and women. That is the claim and purpose of the liberal arts. Having had a significant time to ponder and pursue and practice the virtues of freedom, these students can join the ongoing conversation of the ages and continue to refine the personal [...]
Few people know that in the early 1970s a “great books” program, founded by John Senior and two other professors, flourished at a large state university in the midwest. Even fewer know of its slow demise. Editor’s Note: Robert Carlson was a student and friend of John Senior, one of three founders of the former [...]
From time to time, there is the need for sentinels of classical learning, individuals who, if one is fortunate to be around them, beckon the meandering intellect back to the pursuit of the truth, the discovery of the good, and the conservation of the beautiful. In the end, the student is invited to the quest [...]
We’ve reached a time when fewer and fewer on the outside know what the liberal arts are, or the value of them to the individual person, an organization, and the marketplace of ideas. In an age when people are so focused on science and technology via “STEM” subjects, we’ve lost our sense of wonder… On [...]
Classical educators agree on the ends of liberal education, namely, the possession of the true, good, and beautiful, wisdom, and the development of the intellectual and imaginative powers that enable their attainment. But the pedagogical means to these ends are less obvious. Here is an attempt to set out a set of principles and claims [...]
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 analyze the world. And many more… But even those vapid platitudes greatly exceed the reality of modern American [...]
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 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 [...]
It is necessary for the perfection of human society that there should be men who devote their lives to contemplation. —St. Thomas Aquinas The trouble with mere pragmatism is that it doesn’t work. —G.K. Chesterton What is education? I emphasize “is” because I am not here asking what education is thought to be, or what [...]