We classical educators tend to be a bookish lot. We like Cicero and Shakespeare. We like Latin and Greek. We like musty bookstores with alleyway entrances in Edinburgh. We use a picture of the library at Trinity College Dublin as the desktop background on our computers. We like traditional school uniforms and Gothic arches. We […]
In 1704, Jonathan Swift wrote a tongue-in-cheek story about the battle between ancient and modern books— between the proponents of a broad education that includes literature and history on one side, and the proponents of what would be the equivalent today of an education focusing on science and math and engineering and technology. The quarrel […]
Eleanor Bates Moody, a student at Westminster School in Alabama, selected the topic of “Classical Christian Education & Autism” for her senior thesis. Her questions were so thoughtfully and carefully prepared that we decided to share the interview she conducted with Cheryl. EBM: Why is classical Christian education a great option for the average child? […]
“I wish people would be more blunt with me,” my son said. “What do you mean?” I asked. Michael continued, “If they’re tired of talking with me, I wish they would just say so.” Subtleties escape many of us, but individuals with significant brain differences seem uniquely prone to missing social nuances. When teaching character […]
“What are we going to do about school for her?” This was among the first questions my husband and I asked each other as we processed the news of our daughter’s genetic diagnosis. Louisa’s arrival had been a joyous occasion. As parents of four boys, we were excited to welcome a daughter into our family. […]
Literature stands in intimate relationship with each of the arts, but its closest relationship is with music. The purest form of this relationship involves a composer’s timeless desire to take a poem, wrestle with it, and turn it into a song. Yet what about the novel? Can a complex narrative be transformed into music? The […]
In a country in which everybody goes to school, it may seem absurd to offer a defense of literacy, and yet I believe that such a defense is in order, and that the absurdity lies not in the defense, but in the necessity for it. The published illiteracies of the certified educated are on the […]
Stories help us chart a course through the often wild and dangerous geographies of being human. They give us direction— direction toward what, of course, is in large part at the discretion of the tale. This is the inherent potency of stories: Powerful stories compel us toward a version of ourselves either virtuous or vicious. […]
Education, it has been said, should knock windows into the world for us. We are born into a closed and darkened room: As the windows are opened, we see, here, man, with all his character and capacities, experiments, endless achievements, and possibilities, there, the material world itself, the elements that compose, and unexpected laws that […]
Tears streamed down my face and I whooped for joy when the text came in. I had spent the morning alternating between busyness and prayer, trying not to pester my husband about the results of our son’s American Kennel Club Junior Hunt Test. Accustomed to achievement falling just out of our son’s reach, my heart […]