In 1990, the Kentucky Legislature passed the most sweeping school reform legislation ever attempted by a state. Along with a massive tax increase (don’t you just love those?), the measure promised to shake up the state’s education system and, presumably, improve it. Several years into the reform effort, there was no question about things being […]
Tag Archives: grammar
REASON #4: Education A classical education focuses on the study of the classical languages, Latin and Greek, and on the study of the classical civilization of Greece and Rome. But why is the word classical reserved only for the languages of the Greeks and Romans and only for their civilization? What really is so special […]
Q: Why doesn’t English grammar stick? A: Because we don’t follow the natural order: memorization in the grammar stage and analysis in the logic stage. The name grammar school comes from the early Renaissance, when the major subject of the elementary years was the Latin grammar. The young grammar student memorized Latin grammar forms—declensions and conjugations—and gradually […]
Why a Knowledge of Grammar Is Indispensable for an Understanding of Logic I meet a lot of homeschool mothers at conventions all over the country and one of the most common questions I get is this: “What do you do for a critical thinking skills program before we do your logic program in the seventh grade?” […]
Because of the education meltdown in the 20th century, the art of teaching Latin, and nearly everything else, has essentially been lost. As we work to restore the content of the classical curriculum, we must also strive to resurrect the art of teaching it. Latin, as it has been taught in the second half of […]
Modern languages are taught by the conversational method. If I understand this method correctly, it involves an emphasis on oral and written conversation in the classroom, supplemented with a secondary focus on grammar. Ideally this conversational instruction is augmented by travel and an immersion experience with native speakers. It could also be called the natural […]
Memoria Press has come a long way over the past 15 years. I still remember when all we were was Cheryl (mom), Brian (son), and me, and all we had to offer was a little blue book called Latina Christiana. As you can see from this, our newest catalog, we have a few more things […]
Progressive education began its destructive march through schools at the turn of the century, and the first thing it corrupted was Latin. In his book The Teaching of Latin and Greek, published in 1911, Dr. Charles Edwin Bennett describes the changes in Latin textbooks that had occurred over the previous two decades and contrasts them with the successful classical methods […]
I went to my hotel after a long day at a homeschool convention. It was late, and I was hungry. So, after checking in, I decided to walk to a Subway I had seen to get a sandwich. By the time I walked out of the hotel lobby, clouds had moved in, and the rain […]
Have you ever read Good-bye Mr. Chips or Anne of Green Gables? If so, you may have noticed that the students seemed to spend a lot of time studying Latin grammar and that this study was completed before high school. In fact, this is where the name “grammar school” came from: from the days when the most important […]