A couple of years ago, I was sitting down on a Sunday morning reading my local paper. I was reading a story about the “new” things happening in education. One of the “new” things happening, said the story, was that they were going to start getting rid of “rote memorization” and putting more emphasis on […]
Two Views of Education If you were to walk into a public school primary classroom one day, and into the same grade level classroom in, say, a classical Christian school, you would see two entirely different things. And you wouldn’t have to wait to notice some of the differences. There would be certain things evident […]
Core Standards and the Next Generation Science Standards have become a heated topic of discussion among professional educators as well as homeschoolers. Memoria Press does not align its program with these standards for several reasons. The first is that they are not as academically rigorous as the implicit standards behind Memoria Press’ Classical Core Curriculum. […]
“Get ready for the newest round of permissivist education” It was called the “Best Novel of the Century” by the Library Journal in 1999. Oprah Winfrey, whose good taste in books belies her otherwise mischievous cultural influence, has called it “our national novel.” And it won the recent Publisher’s Weekly poll which asked the question, “What […]
It is not an exaggeration to say that the Greeks invented education as we know it: To them, schooling was a means to pass on their culture. For the Greeks, the primary instrument for this purpose was one book in particular: Homer’s Iliad. It was their national textbook. From it they learned who they were […]
In my last article, I ended with the question of the teacher’s role in learning. Does the teacher need to be an entertainer? How does the teacher motivate and make learning engaging and satisfying for students? Teachers are often blamed for the lack of learning, along with the lack of interest and motivation in their […]
At a recent education convention, I was struck by the mind-boggling array of educational materials available today. “Of the making of many books there is no end” as the Book of Proverbs says. In today’s world of the internet and instant printing technology, this expression has a whole new meaning. Our ability to create textbooks, […]
Several years ago, a prominent homeschool personality, let’s call him “Mr. Jones” (The names have been changed to protect the mistaken), wrote a broadside in a popular magazine against classical education, leveling a number of charges against it. These arguments were representative of the criticisms you sometimes hear from those who have a misapprehension of […]
The nation is discontented with itself and with its education. It is probably too discontented. Self-criticism is a constant trait of the Anglo-Saxon, and his dark views of himself are always to be accepted with reserve. What is the cause of them? The classics are favorite scapegoats. And this view is the more odd, because it is […]
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 […]