Blog | Memoria Press

An Interview with Michelle Swope

What is the hardest thing about the different challenges you face in your life? The hardest challenges of my life are not being able to do what I dream about in my life, such as marry, drive a sky-blue bug that is a convertible, act well, sing, dance ballet professionally (Giselle in Swan Lake, Clara …

By Ryan Grigsby June 27, 2017 Late Summer 2017, Special Needs No Comments

More Important Than The Cosmos Itself

Why study literature? This question is often asked by indignant parents, who want to know why their children, destined for business, learn fancy subjects instead of things serviceable to them in life. An open and alert mind—which understands human nature and its possibilities, which can judge and sympathise, which, because of its wide survey and …

By Guest June 26, 2017 Late Summer 2017, Literature No Comments

Beauty Is Not Boring

We all do it, don’t we? We carefully defend the bold choice we’ve made to educate our children seriously and rigorously. Friends or relatives may assert that we are choosing outdated traditions, irrelevant in our techno-saturated world. Latin in elementary school? Whatever for? The Great Books? Aren’t they terribly boring? Handwriting and memory work? We …

By Carol Reynolds June 25, 2017 Late Summer 2017, Music No Comments

The Justification For Latin

The question as to the educational worth of any study must always be a pertinent one. If Latin is not of fundamental importance in the high-school curriculum, then large numbers of students are making a prodigious error in pursuing the subject, and the sooner we understand this, the better for our civilization. If, on the …

By Guest June 24, 2017 Late Summer 2017, Latin No Comments

Letter from the Editor: Late Summer 2017

In his new book, Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture, Anthony Esolen contrasts what Western culture was and what it is now by asking us to imagine a library in an old manor house. The lower half of this library would be stocked with books from modern Europe—”novels, collections of poetry, histories, biographies, travelogues, …

By Martin Cothran June 23, 2017 Late Summer 2017, Letter from the Editor No Comments

What Is Western Civilization?

One of the questions I most often hear about classical education is how it relates to Christianity. The question comes in various forms, usually something like, “What is Christian about classical Christian education?” Or, “How can I reconcile classical education with Christianity?” In fact, when you don’t say “classical Christian education” and explicity state that …

By Martin Cothran May 31, 2017 Classical Education, Summer 2017 No Comments

How J. R. R. Tolkien Used Middle-Earth to Reveal Who We Are

In his famous essay on fairy stories, J. R. R. Tolkien asserted that one of the most important facets of fairytales is that they hold up a “Mirror of scorn and pity towards Man.” The fairy story, Tolkien wrote, “may be used as a Mirour de l’Omme” (mirror of man), as something that shows us …

By Guest May 29, 2017 Literature, Summer 2017 No Comments

C’est Sa Raison d’Être

My daughter works each week in a nursing home. She helps me at home with dusting, folding laundry, and making beds. She feeds her cat and cares for the neighbor’s dog. She takes ballet, enjoys art, plays sports, listens to music, goes to the library, and takes walks with her brother. She cheers all of …

By Cheryl Swope May 28, 2017 Special Needs, Summer 2017 No Comments

Christianity & Classical Culture As the Basis for American Civilization

“We are dwarfs mounted upon the shoulders of giants,” Bernard of Chartres told his scholars in the eleventh century. The great Schoolman meant that we modern folk incline toward the opinion that wisdom was born with our generation. We see so far only because of the tremendous stature of those giants, our ancestors, upon whose …

By Ryan Grigsby May 26, 2017 Classical Education, Summer 2017 No Comments

Planting the Seed for a Life-Long Engagement with Art

We live in an era highly focused on the visual. Our lives are shaped by digital images blasted from cell phones, tablets, and massive billboards that obliterate the night sky with their intense light. Yet, despite this visual stimulus, we travel farther each day from meaningful encounters with the important human expression called “art.” What …

By Carol Reynolds May 26, 2017 Art, Summer 2017 No Comments