Should pleasure define our sense of beauty or should beauty define our sense of pleasure? This is the essential cultural question of The Divine Comedy, and that of our lives as well. Every person follows one or the other of its directives. The world treats beauty as the outgrowth of personal preference. Its definitions of […]
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 […]
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 […]
We late twentieth and early twenty-first century Americans are the first people in history who do not know poetry. Every civilization prior to our modern American civilization has read and heard and memorized poetry. This was still done in schools when I was young. We use poetry to a certain extent every day, of course, […]
By Andrew Kern The classical purpose for teaching literature is the same as the classical purpose for teaching anything: to cultivate wisdom and virtue so that the student is better able to know and enjoy God. Classical literature exposes the student to models of virtue. It also places demands on his intellect, thus developing his […]
The great books speak to us of honor and love and sacrifice; but they do not always speak in familiar phrases. They do not tell us what we already know. Transcending current opinion and fad, through symbol and metaphor they reveal a clear and uncluttered access to the realities that determine our lives. Sometime back, […]