Should the Bible be read literally or literarily? This question must not only be asked but answered if the Bible is to be read in conformity with the twin demands of faith and reason. As is often the case, it will serve us well to begin by defining our terms. What’s the difference between reading […]
As classical educators, we recognize that we seek for our students (and ourselves) not simply knowledge, but wisdom. Our goal is to master not simply our content, but our character. Refinement in both thought and deed is the ultimate reward of education. Of course, we can never fully know what the head or heart of […]
Walker Percy once speculated about a world in which the problem of death had been resolved, the eventual result of which was that everyone killed himself out of misery. For most people the quantity of life seems secondary to its quality. Mere survival may be adequate for beasts, but it is not so for rational […]
Classic works of children’s literature might be greater than the Great Books. Few of us can tackle Rabelais or Rousseau, but most of us can appreciate Heidi and Homer Price. Classic children’s stories welcome us to partake with wonder and wisdom. This is not to say that those of us who can read the Great […]
Stories travel from a writer’s mind to the heart and imagination of a reader. In the Western tradition, the written or spoken word serves as the primary vehicle for conveying stories. Yet the visual and performing arts excel at telling stories too, and a combination of the two often makes a story more expressive and […]
I don’t remember the time or the day I heard it. I have no recollection of the person who read it to me or the place in which it was read. I assume it to have been my mother, but I don’t know that. It is one of the many things whose mental origins are […]
Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding. — Proverbs 4:7 Ancient cultures had a special wisdom literature, such as Proverbs or Ecclesiastes in the Bible, a literature which gives direct, sage counsel. To a great extent, however, all of ancient and medieval literature counts as wisdom literature. […]
“Language is a technology, invented to take information in your head and put it in other heads.” It is with this most unromantic premise that I set off with my students to discover the Latin tongue. Worry not that such meager ceremony should christen my charges’ maiden voyage to those Lavinian shores. I do not […]
In Natalie Babbitt’s Tuck Everlasting, which is set in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a twelve-year-old girl named Winnie Foster is dissatisfied at home in her little village of Treegap. She is tired of being cooped up and considers running away. One day, while wandering in the woods, she meets a boy named […]