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 […]
One of the ways we can understand ourselves better is to look at the metaphors our culture uses. Medieval and ancient peoples drew their comparisons from nature. Today we often look at things in terms of machines or computers. We tell our unmotivated children they need to “get it in gear.” When we forget something […]
Phonics instruction nearly disappeared in the 1930s, and only started making a comeback in the 1970s. Now, there are so many phonics programs to choose from it’s enough to make your head spin. How do we know which one to choose? A systematic, logical approach to phonics is the best way to teach students to […]
When you know the notes to sing, You can sing most anything. Do you recall these lines from the song “Do-Re-Mi”? In the course of this beloved song from The Sound of Music, the von Trapp children are taught to sing. Of course, actual children could not spring from musical ineptitude to artistic mastery in […]
“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.” […]
Around 400 A.D., a deacon from Carthage named Deogratias asked St. Augustine, then Bishop of Hippo in North Africa, for his advice on how to teach the faith to those who came seeking to become Christians. Other Christians often sent catechumens (new Christians learning about the faith) to this particular deacon because he was known […]
Mortimer Adler was one of the great contemporary classical thinkers. He was best known for his involvement in the Great Books movement, and more particularly for his editorship of Encyclopedia Britannica’s Great Books of the Western World series in the 1950s and 1960s. He became the chairman of the board of editors of Encyclopedia Britannica […]
When I was eight years old, my parents bought me a bicycle for Christmas. It wasn’t anything like my old bicycle, which had only one gear; my new bicycle had five. I couldn’t have told you then why five gears were better than one. To me it was like five pancakes being better than one […]
Western civilization is often seen as the fusion of the cultures of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome, baptized in the blood of Christ to form what is known as Christendom. The faith of Christendom, its theological foundation, springs from Jerusalem and the Jewish covenant with God fulfilled in Christ. The rational grounds for Christendom, its philosophical […]
The Founding Fathers were of varying backgrounds and disparate political beliefs, but they shared two characteristics that distinguished them from other men of their time—and from most men of any time: wisdom and virtue. And it is for this reason, beyond just wanting to become familiar with who they were and what they did, that […]