“Hands-on learning” is one of those buzz words that educators like to use a lot. It implies that students are doing something concrete, real, useful, engaging—that they are using all of their senses. Hands-on learning suggests that students are using what they have learned rather than just memorizing and regurgitating. Schools love to provide pictures […]
Category Archives: The Classical Teacher
In Pearl S. Buck’s short story, “A Field of Rice,” Wang Sun, a Chinese villager in the early 1950s, is in a situation in which he is told to do something he knows won’t work. Mao Tse Tung has taken over China, and he has sent functionaries out to every village to tell the farmers (who […]
Have you ever found yourself having a hard time responding to someone in an argument and not exactly knowing what the problem is? Many times, the problem is that your opponent is making an assumption that you have not identified. And many times, it is this very assumption that is at issue. If you knew what it was, you could attack it and […]
The 5 Little Lashbrooks And How They Grew by Martin Cothran Once upon a time, in a beautiful valley in central Pennsylvania, there lived two young girls who loved animals, flowers, cooking, gardening, painting—and books. And writing. And music. Oh, and also sitting around having deep conversations with friends and going on walks in the countryside. At least […]
This is the third and final in a series of articles describing Memoria Press’ history scope and sequence. My initial purpose for these articles was to give the reasoning behind our classical studies choices, and in particular to explain the sequence shown on our curriculum map on pages 20-21: 3rd grade Greek myths, 4th Rome, […]
For most classical educators, teaching history chronologically means covering the eras of history in three cycles, each cycle in increasing depth, and each cycle corresponding to one stage of the trivium. Here is a typical sequence of historical eras covered chronologically within each four year cycle: Old Testament and Egypt Greece and Rome Middle Ages, […]
We have a tendency to put academic subjects into separate and unrelated categories which have little to do with each other. We have our curriculum chart where we put things such asReading, English, Math, Science, each one dealing with a different skill and a different body of knowledge. Logic seldom finds a place in our lists, although it may be […]
by Peter Kreeft The content of the curriculum of a classical Christian school, on primary, secondary, or college levels, is similar to the core of the “arts and sciences” core of a university, which was developed from the medieval curriculum of the “seven liberal arts” of the “trivium” and the “quadrivium,” which was invented by […]
The Four Principles of Latin Study In the last issue of the Classical Teacher, I gave some principles of Latin instruction as set forth in Charles Bennett’s 1911 book, The Teaching of Latin and Greek. This book, though long out of print, contains what I believe to be very sound insights into the teaching of classical […]
Benjamin Disraeli was one of the great 19th century prime ministers of Britain. His wife once revealed the confusion we all feel about the subject of history when she famously stated that she “could never remember who came first, the Greeks or the Romans.” Since American schools have largely ignored ancient and world history in […]