Tag Archives: history

Athens & Jerusalem

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 […]

Why Caesar?

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 […]

7 Principles for Teaching Latin

principles for teaching latin

There are a lot of good reasons for thinking that Latin should be restored to its former place of honor as the basic subject in the elementary years. In previous issues of The Classical Teacher, I talked about some of these. But knowing that you should teach it and knowing how to teach it are […]

Shadow & Substance

Why Read Shakespeare

The contrast between shadow and substance singularly interested Shakespeare, as did the very nature of things themselves. He even makes use of profound concepts in logic, such as difference, property, and essence. In rhetoric, these are the topics of invention, for they concern the act of defining. So, then, let us define why we should […]

Letter from the Editor: Winter 2015-16

My wife and I live on a little hill on a country lane in Kentucky. From my front porch, which is surrounded by trees and flowers, I can see farmland for twenty miles or so. It is my favorite place to be. And my favorite thing to do is to sit there in my oak […]

Book Review: Ideas Have Consequences

  Though written in the late 1940s, Ideas Have Consequences, by Richard M. Weaver, remains more relevant and prescient than ever. The work, grounded in political philosophy, theology, virtue, and history, presents a piercing assessment of modern culture. Yet these fields are incorporated for the sole purpose of revealing the truth about our modern culture and […]

This History of Phonics

phonics

People who pay attention to education know that the question of how to teach children to read is a controversial one. But what they may not know is that it only became controversial relatively late, historically speaking. There was a time when there was no phonetic alphabet as we know it. Written language, in fact, […]

A Short History of Latin Pronunciation

There are many twists and turns to the pronunciation history of a very old language like Latin. The pronunciation of the ancient Romans, called the classical pronunciation, was modified by Christians in the Middle Ages, when Latin became the language of the church and of the educated class. You may see this pronunciation referred to […]

Greek to You… Is Classical Education Really Dead?

Greek

  Kathryn Jean Lopez: When you write about classical education, you mean more than learning enough Latin to help with the SATs. What is a classical education? Tracy Lee Simmons: This was the Humanist’s education, in the sense in which Erasmus and Thomas More were Humanists. A classical education used to mean simply a curriculum based upon […]

The Indispensable Classics of a Classical Education

This is the third and final in a series of articles describing Memoria Press’ history scope and sequence. My initial purpose for these articles was to give the reasoning behind our classical studies choices, and in particular to explain the sequence shown on our curriculum map on pages 20-21: 3rd grade Greek myths, 4th Rome, […]

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