Why Should Christians Read the Pagan Classics? REASON #8: Philosophy Philosophy is a deep subject that can be quite intimidating. Modern philosophy is so esoteric that few can understand or relate to it, but classical philosophy is different. As with so many things, if you go back to the beginning and learn first principles, you […]
Category Archives: The Classical Teacher
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 […]
In the first part of this article, we discussed the origins of the modern Natural/Direct Method of teaching Latin in the unsuccessful attempt to teach modern languages by downplaying the traditional student memorization of the complicated grammatical forms and the emphasis on written translation exercises in favor of conversational methods of instruction and student response. […]
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 […]
Parents of struggling students ask common questions such as these: “Should I bring home my special-needs son and teach him alongside my other children? How would I modify the materials? How would I arrange for his therapies? Can my special-needs child study Latin? I already feel like giving up!” Bringing your special-needs or struggling student […]
Our educational establishment is very good at making promises, but not very good at keeping them. Every couple of years, a new initiative is launched to give us hope that things will get better. The initiative is launched amidst great fanfare, agreements are signed, money is exchanged, meetings are held, acronyms are assigned, and for a […]
Reason #7: Religion Saint Augustine in his Confessions tells us that after many years of wandering in the desert of indecision, it was Cicero who led him to Christ. Cicero’s Hortensius set him on the path to Christian conversion by implanting in him a longing for the immortality of wisdom. The text of Hortensius did […]
Sometimes our study of literature resembles a kind of clinical laboratory lesson. We encircle the text in our white coats, ready to dissect the story like a dead animal. Or, if this sounds too invasive or scientific, then we analyze the text in order to extract the “Elements of Literature” (the title of a recent big-press […]
In the world of education, there are many temptations that would lure us to our destruction, and none greater than the siren song of education technology. The computer is, of course, only one form of education technology, and education technology is anything but new. Those of us educated in the 60s and 70s will remember […]
With one exception I have never heard anyone speak seriously and comprehensively about the disadvantages of computer technology, which strikes me as odd. After all, anyone who has studied the history of technology knows that technological change is always a Faustian bargain: Technology giveth and technology taketh away, and not always in equal measure. A […]