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 […]
One of the things that makes me smile in life is standing in front of novice Latin students and listening as they recite declension endings, their Ss slurring because of missing teeth, their eyes straining upward, and heads nodding as they grasp for the mental picture they have of those ten little endings. I also […]
I was talking with a couple of fellow teachers at an end of school party recently. One of them, a student at a local seminary, told me about a Greek professor at another prominent protestant seminary, the author of a widely used Greek textbook, who had gotten in a car accident and lost part of […]
Critics of traditional American education have correctly observed that it focuses on the same 200 years of American history every year in K-8, and covers all the rest of the 6000 years of human history in one year of high school. Clearly this is a plan that has produced generation after generation of historically illiterate […]
The heart of a classical education is the cumulative study of Latin and the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome. In the Western tradition, education has always been synonymous with classical education. It began with the Greeks and Romans, was preserved and expanded by Christians during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and continued unabated until […]
That the greatest publishing event in history should turn out to have been a children’s book about an English orphan boy training to be a wizard has, depending on who you are, been a cause for celebration—or a matter of concern. There are parents whose children wait for months for the next volume in the […]
By Eben Dale There are two basic Latin pronunciations used in the United States—Ecclesiastical (Italianate) and the Reformed Classical. Whether the magnificence, beauty, and power of Vergil’s poetry is best captured by the Reformed Classical pronunciation or the Ecclesiastical pronunciation is a matter of opinion. But pronunciation of Latin should not be a point of […]
Winners of the 2007 Scripps National Spelling Bee and the 2007 National Vocabulary Championship cite textbooks published by Memoria Press as keys to winning. Textbooks written by Cheryl Lowe and Martin Cothran were key tools used by the winners of both the 2007 National Spelling Bee and National Vocabulary Championship to prepare for the competitions. […]