Author Archives: Cheryl Swope

Welcome Home

Welcome Home

Classic works of children’s literature might be greater than the Great Books. Few of us can tackle Rabelais or Rousseau, but most of us can appreciate Heidi and Homer Price. Classic children’s stories welcome us to partake with wonder and wisdom. This is not to say that those of us who can read the Great […]

The Pleasure of Becoming Educated

We live in the lake community where my husband spent summers as a boy. He and his boyhood friends built forts, acted out The Hobbit with homemade swords, and tested many brave and boyish notions. Once, after reading about regalia wings, the boys hoped to fly winged bicycles by launching them off a big wooden […]

A Conversation with Andrew Kern

Cheryl Swope: Andrew, you have devoted much of your adult life to classical education. Why? Andrew: When I started, it was because I smelled something beautiful. It sang to me. I thought, “That makes sense. That’s the kind of education I want for my children.” I think you could say I pursued classical education on […]

Tenderness

Written years ago on April 24, just after Michael & Michelle turned thirteen. We rose on schedule, accomplished our morning jobs, and began schooling at 8:25 a.m., as is our custom. I gave an overview of our day and week with our visual schedule and calendar. I read our daily Bible lesson as my children […]

Letter From the Editor Winter 2021

SCJ Letter to the Editor

Letter from The Editor Winter 2021 C. S. Lewis says, “the right defense against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments.” How do we inculcate just sentiments in our children’s minds? In our own minds? We can do this with good books. Good books impart just sentiments and soothe parched thinking. It is said that […]

Primrose Went to the Party

When I learned that this issue of The Classical Teacher would focus on fairy tales, I sought in-house counsel. My daughter readily climbed up on a chair, grabbed a book from her tottering stack, and produced a worn collection. Bookmarked by a thin clear “glass” wand, such as a fairy godmother might wave over one’s […]

Dappled Things

Dappled Things

“Michelle.” I whispered hurriedly to awaken her in the dark. “We must leave home earlier than planned. Snow and ice are coming.” Up she scrambled, softly so as not to awaken her twin brother in the next room. Quickly donning the travel clothes we had laid out the night before, Michelle met me downstairs. With […]

As Much of Infinity as My Intellect Could Apprehend

Infinity

On the Feast of St. John the Evangelist in 1571, a baby boy named Johannes Kepler came into the world. Born prematurely, he was weak and sickly as a child. By the time he was born he had two brothers and a sister. When Johannes was five years old, his father left the family. When […]

Letter From the Editor Summer 2020

SCJ Letter to the Editor

I received a lovely note the other day thanking me for an article Cheryl Lowe—not I—had written. With two people in one publishing house named Cheryl, things can become confusing. Let there be no mistake: I was but a quiet mother of toddler twins in Missouri when Cheryl Lowe founded Memoria Press in 1998. Two […]

Little by Little, We Teach

“Above all things one should train and exercise a child’s memory. Whether children are naturally gifted with a good memory or, on the contrary, are naturally forgetful, the memory should be trained. The natural advantage will be strengthened, or the natural shortcoming made up. The former class will excel others, the latter will excel themselves.” […]

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