Blog | Memoria Press

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

The Two Ways We Argue

Each of us in our daily lives hears a lot of arguments, and all of them are different. But, in one respect, there are only two basic ways to argue. We might call these two kinds of argument “arguing forward” and “arguing backward.” The First Way: Modus Ponens Arguing forward involves beginning with a principle …

By Martin Cothran May 24, 2017 Logic, Summer 2017 No Comments

Lost in Translation

Parents often ask classical educators, “What good is Latin going to do for my child? Is spending all those years on a dead language really going to educate my child?” We trip over ourselves in pointing out the many benefits of learning Latin. It trains students to think logically, to better understand grammatical concepts, and …

By Paul Schaeffer May 23, 2017 Latin, Summer 2017 No Comments

Letter from the Editor: Summer 2017

Most people think topsoil is just dirt. But it is far more than that. When people lived closer to the land, they knew this, but now farming is mechanized and we have an industrialized food system. To most people, this all seems just fine. Food is easy to get—and cheap. What else matters? What few …

By Martin Cothran May 22, 2017 Letter from the Editor, Summer 2017 No Comments

A Defense of Penmanship

In a world dominated by science and technology, the value of legible cursive penmanship must be defended. Why indeed spend time on developing a beautiful cursive hand today? Training in Accuracy and Discipline Penmanship, both manuscript and cursive, is an important part of education. Neat, legible penmanship is an important factor in the development of …

By Cheryl Lowe May 4, 2017 Penmanship No Comments