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 [...]
The three vows of the Benedictine monk are obedience, stability, and conversion of life. In our own ways, we can follow this example, making it real by paying attention to prayer, cracking the books in solid study, and rolling up our sleeves in the honest, hard work of rebuilding what has fallen into despair [...]
There is a secret to the art of education, but it is an obvious secret. Despite the whirlings of the world, education is straightforward: It engages the good, the true, and the beautiful in the context of basic and natural human interactions and for the sake of human happiness. As an action exercised by [...]
Reading James Joyce and John Senior together will illuminate the modern world and point toward a path of how to thrive within it. Both represent a quest for the real: one through the symbolic mediation of literature and the other through its poetic embodiment in our daily lives… (essay by R. Jared Staudt) John [...]
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 [...]
John Senior’s great contribution was to forge a middle way between indoctrination and the chaos of complete relativism. Instead of indoctrinating students, the classical knowledge of a Christian culture provided the tools and the framework for true education… John Senior and the Restoration of Realism by Francis Bethel (Thomas More College Press, 2016) It was [...]
For some years now, there has been a genial quarrel between those who use e-readers like Nook and Kindle and those who prefer real books with actual pages. John Senior, if he were alive today, would undoubtedly denounce my Kindle. Dr. Senior was the most prominent of the founders of the Integrated Humanities Program [...]
The ordinary daily life of men in Christian culture, who work not only in the sweat of their brows, but for the love of their families, there is also love of work. When men cut wood or go to war or make love to their wives, and when women spin or wash and reciprocate [...]
‘Do what thou wilt’ includes willing to do what thou shouldst not. The Liberal takes a stand in No Man’s Land between ‘the law that is in my members’ and ‘the law that is in my mind.’ In that precarious and self-righteous place, doing what thou wilt is separate from the good. By doing [...]