Category: Classical Education

When do you really know what something is?” When your philosophy teacher asks this, your gut reaction is to roll your eyes and say, “Here we go again.” Or you get up and walk out. Or—and this is the best option—you say, “Hmm. I’ve never thought about that.” Thinking deeply about thinking is what philosophers …

If you were to ask most classical educators what classical education is, you would find them hard-pressed to give a short, coherent answer. That is the way with a lot of movements: It’s easy to get swept up in the enthusiasm, but when asked to formulate what it is that excites you, it’s hard to …

Modern educators love to talk about “critical thinking skills,” but not one in a hundred even knows what he means by this term. Every time our country goes through an education reform spasm-which it has experienced about every twenty-five years since the 1920s- the education establishment trots out a set of slogans that always sound …

In thinking about Mrs. Lowe these last two weeks, I was reminded of the Parable of the Sower from the Gospel of Mark. Good seed was thrown four places, the last of which was onto good soil. In chapter 4, Jesus says that the good seed that fell in good soil “produced grain, growing up …

At the toddler stage, teaching art to kids is easy: Throw on a smock and get out the finger paints. They need no inspiration. They have a visceral connection to their self-expression in color. But as children grow, their relationship to art changes. Art is no longer simply a reflection of their own self-expressions. But …

Cheryl Joy Lowe was born the second daughter of Harold and Evelyn Vittitow on August 6, 1945. She was born on Gaulbert Street in Louisville’s West End, in a neighborhood where houses were full of stay-at-home moms and children ran the neighborhood safe and free. There, she began, but dropped out, of kindergarten. This is …

Given as the Opening School Ceremony address for Highlands Latin School’s 2016-2017 school year, August 29, 2016. Welcome, parents, teachers, and students, to the 2016-2017 academic year. It is a joy and privilege to address you at the beginning of this, our seventeenth year. We thank God for this sultry summer morning, for Highlands Latin …

In Walter Isaacson’s 2008 biography of Albert Einstein, he quotes the great scientist as saying, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Einstein was certainly an example of this maxim, with many of his scientific discoveries having resulted from his own thought experiments. But this maxim applies even more so to the newest object of Isaacson’s …

In a blog post published at her website, “The Argument Against Raising Well-Rounded Kids,” homeschool writer Penelope Trunk argues, well, against raising well-rounded kids. I myself am in favor of raising well-rounded kids. In fact, not only am I in favor of raising well-rounded kids, I have actually done it. And one of the things …

In his Autobiography, G. K. Chesterton tells the story of having only recently come to public attention as a result of a running debate on the pages of The Clarion with that newspaper’s editor, Robert Blatchford. Blatchford was a proud and voluble atheist who had issued an open challenge to readers to respond to his …