REASON #4: Education A classical education focuses on the study of the classical languages, Latin and Greek, and on the study of the classical civilization of Greece and Rome. But why is the word classical reserved only for the languages of the Greeks and Romans and only for their civilization? What really is so special […]
Q: Why doesn’t English grammar stick? A: Because we don’t follow the natural order: memorization in the grammar stage and analysis in the logic stage. The name grammar school comes from the early Renaissance, when the major subject of the elementary years was the Latin grammar. The young grammar student memorized Latin grammar forms—declensions and conjugations—and gradually […]
Before I began teaching Latin and writing my programs, I surveyed a number of high school Latin teachers in public and private schools to determine the common practice regarding pronunciation and macrons. The macron is the straight, horizontal line above some vowels indicating that they are long. None of the teachers I spoke to required […]
There are many twists and turns to the pronunciation history of a very old language like Latin. The pronunciation of the ancient Romans, called the classical pronunciation, was modified by Christians in the Middle Ages, when Latin became the language of the church and of the educated class. You may see this pronunciation referred to […]
Reason #3: Science In the last two issues of the Classical Teacher, I gave several reasons why Christians should read the pagans. I talked about their contributions to architecture and discussed what they knew about virtue from the natural world which God created. These were some of the more obvious reasons. But there is another […]
My view of how science should be taught was shaped partly by a walk in the woods I took one time with my husband Jim shortly after we were married. As we walked along, Jim would point casually to a tree or some other plant and readily name it and tell me something about it. […]
Because of the education meltdown in the 20th century, the art of teaching Latin, and nearly everything else, has essentially been lost. As we work to restore the content of the classical curriculum, we must also strive to resurrect the art of teaching it. Latin, as it has been taught in the second half of […]
Reason #2: Virtue In the last article, we learned that the Greeks established the first principles of architecture by studying nature. The proportions that are most pleasing to the human eye are those of nature’s greatest work of art—the human body. We learned that God gave man reason and the desire to know, but he […]
Modern languages are taught by the conversational method. If I understand this method correctly, it involves an emphasis on oral and written conversation in the classroom, supplemented with a secondary focus on grammar. Ideally this conversational instruction is augmented by travel and an immersion experience with native speakers. It could also be called the natural […]
Reason #1: Architecture The power of the word classic cannot be underestimated, communicating as it does the idea of excellence, truth, order, discipline, and beauty. The word “classic” brings to mind something that has withstood the test of time, and by virtue of this fact, participates in some way in the timeless and the eternal. And […]