Tag Archives: virtue

Humanism Is Not the Problem

Humanism statue

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 […]

The Four Causes of Classical Education

Four Causes

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 […]

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 […]

What Is Classical Education? (Winter 2014)

Most of us, most of the time, do not know what we are doing. It’s not that we can’t tell where we were on a certain date, or what we had for dinner last night, or who we had a meeting with this morning. It’s not even that we are incapable of performing our tasks. […]

From Latin Student to Latin Teacher: This is not a test…

“Look, Mom, I’ve finished memorizing the first declension!” I was in third grade and ecstatic. My two older sisters had been studying Latin with Cheryl Lowe for a year or two already, and I was anxious to prove I could do it too. “Then let’s hear you recite it,” was my sister’s reply. “A, ae, […]

Letter from the Editor: Winter 2014

Sandwich

I was attending an education conference a while back and decided that I wanted a sandwich for lunch, so I walked into a nearby mall and found a popular sandwich chain store. I ordered a Chipotle Steak and Cheese with Avocado. “What kind of meat would you like?” she asked. “Uh, well, I think this […]

Man & Men

man

There is a passage in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings in which Aragorn asks for some leaves of athelas, a healing herb brought by the Men of the West into Middle Earth, and which is now called “kingsfoil.” Minas Tirith, the chief city of Gondor, is celebrating its successful defense against the […]

How to Teach Virtue

virtue

Why Telling Stories to Our Children is the Best Kind of Character Education … In After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre observes that in all classical and heroic societies, “the chief means of moral education is the telling of stories.” In a real sense the heroes of the Iliad and the Odyssey were the moral tutors of […]

Why Study Latin and Greek?

By Andrew Campbell The ancients did not press practical arguments too far. As Aristotle said, “To seek utility everywhere is most unsuitable to lofty and free natures.” Yet the pragmatic benefits of classical education are the ones our modern society is likely to look for first. Fortunately, they are abundantly available to answer some of […]

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