The absence of beauty in education robs students of their natural curiosity, intuition, and creativity. Beauty provides direction, order, and harmony. Humans are made to desire and perceive beauty, which itself is the mystery of God. Professor Margarita Mooney of Princeton Theological Seminary and the Scala Foundation is a dear friend and brilliant academic. Five [...]
If federal spending on wealthy institutions of higher learning can’t be trimmed, where could it be trimmed? If any belt-tightening is impossible for these universities, where in the budget would it be possible? Let’s presume for so the moment we can’t keep running up huge budget deficits and continuing to increase the public debt, which [...]
Saying that government cannot educate is not a partisan political position, but a simple statement of fact: government cannot educate, because government cannot love. Even more bluntly, government should not even try to run institutions of love, because, slowly but surely, its administrators inevitably pervert them in their desire for security or lust for power. [...]
Robert Woods’ “Mortimer Adler: The Paideia Way of Classical Education” embodies the life and educational philosophy of one education reformer. Though intended to be informative, most chapters are akin to an educator’s devotional, leaving the teacher inspired to be a more thoughtful and focused Christian tutor. Mortimer Adler: The Paideia Way of Classical Education, by [...]
Amidst the battered "Veritas" of Harvard, there are a few still heroically walking in the footsteps of their Catholic predecessors. It is ironic and risible in the extreme that the motto of Harvard University is “Veritas” because that once-illustrious institution has long since abandoned any belief in objective verity. It has ceased to seek answers [...]
This spring, two emeritus philosophers at the University of Notre Dame—Alasdair MacIntyre and David Solomon—died. No doubt the advocates of progressive “diversity” would say that these two were symptomatic of the lack of that magical quality. But what made for their diversity was a different set of gifts that enriched the University of Notre Dame, [...]
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 [...]
Beauty has an important place in the central activities of Catholic education. Learning requires discipline but deep down is a feast for the mind and heart. “Too late have I loved Thee, O Beauty, ever ancient, ever new!” St. Augustine was in his forties by the time he penned this personal lament. As readers 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 [...]
Though the approach to the mountain Weathertop is only one scene in “The Lord of the Rings,” it is a telling one. Through romance, imagery of light and color, the voluptuousness of his landscapes, and the holiness of song and poetry, J.R.R. Tolkien brilliantly reveals himself as a master of the English language and, especially, [...]