If you were to walk into a gym today, you would see men and women doing repetitive exercises that are seemingly pointless. Take, for example, lifting weights. Someone who had never been to a gym before would be confused. “Why does he keep lifting that heavy piece of metal and putting it back where it […]
Category Archives: Spring 2015
What is the classical view of literature and art? In his book The Mirror and the Lamp, M. H. Abrams observed that art could be viewed from four different perspectives: First there is the emphasis on the universe of art, that is, the thing or idea the work is about, its subject; for example, Mona […]
There is an early Protestant whose vigorous embrace of both Christianity and humanism afforded him an intellectual and aesthetic grasp of the unity of Truth that rivals, and complements, that of the Catholic Dante. I speak of John Milton (1608-1674). Like Origen, Aquinas, and Erasmus before him, and Newman after him, Milton understood that all […]
Because our most fundamental realities are immaterial—like love and death—few artistic forms remain as capable as fairy tales and poetry for housing such depths. Fairy tales carry us from the prosaic landscape of our workaday rhythm to mountain streams of simple wonder and truth. No filter necessary to drink of this pure water, just the […]
St. John’s Academy, which is located on a little country road in beautiful St. Augustine, Florida, celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year. The school is now a fully accredited member of the Classical Latin School Association. The independent, inter-denominational school has, like many small Christian schools, struggled during economic hard times. But in recent years, the school has thrived through […]
Mt. Parnassus was considered by the ancients to be the dwelling place of the Greek god Apollo and the nine muses. They were the inspiration for almost all knowledge and expression: science, philosophy, art, music, etc. The ancients constantly looked towards Parnassus as a symbol of “poetic inspiration and perfection.” These last words are author […]
Q. Our school uses Memoria Press K-8 classical curriculum. Currently we have a child with Down Syndrome in first grade. We are looking for any help you could offer with new modifications to the existing curriculum. A. Children with Down Syndrome can vary widely in ability, but these initial thoughts might spark more ideas of […]
One Saturday many years ago, when even my oldest children were young, we had a visit from two friends, Jim and Renee. They were not quite my parents’ age, but they were old enough that they had just become grandparents. We invited them in, and, as happened when anyone entered our home at that time, […]
About a year ago, Universal Pictures released the movie Oblivion, starring Tom Cruise and Morgan Freeman. It is about a man and a woman (Cruise and Andrea Riseborough) stationed on a post-apocalyptic earth. They are charged with maintaining the drones which protect a number of orbiting installations, mining water for the human encampment now situated […]