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So What if Beethoven was Deaf?

People often tell me they are teaching classical music through “Composer Studies,” choosing one composer at a time, listening to his music, and reading about his life. But are biographies necessary or even a good tool for teaching the arts? Let me offer an example to explain why I am likely to say “no.” Almost …

By Carol Reynolds June 6, 2018 Art, Summer 2018, The Classical Teacher No Comments

Wardrobes are for Grown-Ups Too

By any stretch of the imagination, and by any criteria, the Chronicles of Narnia are among the most popular books ever written. Several major surveys of the bestselling books of all time place The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in the Top Ten, a few places below The Lord of the Rings by C. …

By Joseph Pearce June 5, 2018 Literature, Summer 2018, The Classical Teacher No Comments

Evangelium Aeternum

One evening my son came to me beaming: “Mom, you have to read this!” Earlier he had been “in a mood,” so I had sent him to his room with clear instructions: “Do not to speak to anyone the rest of the night until you have read two chapters of your C. S. Lewis literature …

By Cheryl Swope June 4, 2018 Special Needs, Summer 2018, The Classical Teacher No Comments

Humanism Is Not the Problem

What precisely is Western culture? In a nutshell, it is the civilization that derives from the cultures of Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem, that was conquered and transformed by Christianity, and which has been handed down through the centuries by an education system which in more recent times has been referred to as “classical education.” These …

By Martin Cothran June 1, 2018 Classical Education, Summer 2018, The Classical Teacher No Comments

Athens & Jerusalem

In God’s providence, Christianity was born at a time when Greek and Roman thought dominated the ancient world and influenced everyone and everything—including the Jews and Judaism. Christendom, the culture of Christians after Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, was the product of Christians making sense of both Greek and Jewish heritages. Christianity in the East …

By Guest May 31, 2018 Classical Education, Summer 2018, The Classical Teacher No Comments

Why Caesar?

Why is reading Julius Caesar‘s account of his conquest of Gaul the next logical step for a student who has completed a study of grammar forms and basic syntax? There are sound reasons that Caesar’s Commentarii De Bello Gallico (Commentaries on the Gallic War) has traditionally been the preferred choice for the first immersion in …

By Guest May 30, 2018 Latin, Summer 2018, The Classical Teacher No Comments

Stephen Hawking’s Many Universes

Stephen Hawking once pronounced that he thought his brain was little more than a computer and that, because of this, he was unafraid to die: “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story …

By Martin Cothran May 30, 2018 Logic, Summer 2018, The Classical Teacher No Comments

Letter from the Editor: Summer 2018

What does reason have to do with faith? What does the intellectual have to do with the spiritual? What does philosophy have to do with Christianity? These are questions that Tertullian, one of the early fathers of the Church, summed up when he asked, “What hath Athens to do with Jerusalem?” Tertullian’s question seems to …

By Martin Cothran May 29, 2018 Letter from the Editor, Summer 2018, The Classical Teacher No Comments

Three Blind Mice

They all went after the farmer’s wife, Who cut off their tails with a carving knife … Not any more, it seems. Apparently, in today’s politically correct world, toddlers aren’t supposed to hear about tails being cut off with carving knives. (At least so it appears, based on a doctored rendition of “Three Blind Mice” …

By Carol Reynolds April 5, 2018 Music, Spring 2018, The Classical Teacher No Comments

The Four Causes of Classical Education

When do you really know what something is?” When your philosophy teacher asks this, your gut reaction is to roll your eyes and say, “Here we go again.” Or you get up and walk out. Or—and this is the best option—you say, “Hmm. I’ve never thought about that.” Thinking deeply about thinking is what philosophers …

By Paul Schaeffer April 5, 2018 Classical Education, Spring 2018, The Classical Teacher No Comments