Category Archives: Classical Education

Abram Came Back

Abram Came Back

“I wish people would be more blunt with me,” my son said. “What do you mean?” I asked. Michael continued, “If they’re tired of talking with me, I wish they would just say so.” Subtleties escape many of us, but individuals with significant brain differences seem uniquely prone to missing social nuances. When teaching character […]

The Novel as Music

Drawing of a man in a hat. The Novel Is Music

Literature stands in intimate relationship with each of the arts, but its closest relationship is with music. The purest form of this relationship involves a composer’s timeless desire to take a poem, wrestle with it, and turn it into a song. Yet what about the novel? Can a complex narrative be transformed into music? The […]

In Defense of Literacy

In Defense of LIteracy. Books stacked on one another with pages open

In a country in which everybody goes to school, it may seem absurd to offer a defense of literacy, and yet I believe that such a defense is in order, and that the absurdity lies not in the defense, but in the necessity for it. The published illiteracies of the certified educated are on the […]

More Important Than The Cosmos Itself

More Important than the cosmos man in front of board, with equations floating around him

Education, it has been said, should knock windows into the world for us. We are born into a closed and darkened room: As the windows are opened, we see, here, man, with all his character and capacities, experiments, endless achievements, and possibilities, there, the material world itself, the elements that compose, and unexpected laws that […]

A Passionate Pursuit of Learning

Tears streamed down my face and I whooped for joy when the text came in. I had spent the morning alternating between busyness and prayer, trying not to pester my husband about the results of our son’s American Kennel Club Junior Hunt Test. Accustomed to achievement falling just out of our son’s reach, my heart […]

Consecration of Our Loneliness At Home In a Book

Consecration Of Our Loneliness

My mother was a quiet person. Her childhood copies of Heidi, Little Women, and Anne of Green Gables became mine. As an equally quiet child, such books gave me courage. I felt like Clara but admired the sturdy legs of Heidi. I sympathized with Beth but thrilled with Jo. I held the tenderness of Diana […]

How to Have a Children’s Book Club

book club

Children’s literature could save the world. I believe that. Stories and books are the primary means of passing culture on to children and have been for countless generations. If we claim to want authority over our children’s education we should refuse to relinquish the privilege of educating them to technology in our homes, cars, and […]

How to Think About Literature

Man Reading A Book Showing Us How To Think About Literature

What is the classical view of literature? In his great book on literature, The Mirror and the Lamp, M. H. Abrams observes that there are four elements to consider when discussing the different ways of viewing any kind of art, including literature. First, and most obviously, there is the artistic work itself; second, there is […]

The Age of Re-Enchantment

Re-enchantment

There is a very good reason for every Christian to know the great works of literature—and that is because the great works of literature help us to know ourselves. This is the reason that we should learn the humanities—because the humanities teach us about humanity, both our own humanity and the humanity of our neighbors. […]

The Fortitude of Junius Brutus, Founder of the Roman Republic

Lucius Junius Brutus Long before the Roman Empire, and before even the Roman Republic, Rome was ruled by “Rex Romae” – the King of Rome.   And in 534 BC it was Tarquin the Proud who ascended the throne as Rome’s seventh and final king.  Soon enough, his reign would become a tyranny – a tyranny that […]

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