The end of the year is a good time to take stock and review how far we’ve come. These last few days I’ve been doing this, both for myself through rereading my bullet journals, but also for Educational Renaissance by rereading all the old articles of 2019 in search of gems of wisdom.
Along the way, I was impressed by the unity of thought among the Educational Renaissance writers, as well as the presence of quite a few memorable maxims in the midst of all that dense (or playful) educational theory and practice.
A maxim is usually defined as a short pithy statement that expresses a general truth or rule of conduct. Since many of you have joined the Educational Renaissance community in late 2019, I thought a review of some of the most memorable maxims of 2019 might inspire you to read through old articles to find something of value for your educational work as you enter 2020. Now admittedly, some of these “maxims” are pithier than others, and I had a lot of high quality contenders with 29 articles to date, so it was very hard to decide on the best ones. I’ve put them in order of the sequence in which they were published.
But before our list of maxims we have a few announcements to share with the community as we close out the year.
End of 2019 Announcements
As a team we reviewed our work since August in a meeting last week and one of the things we were most proud of was keeping our commitment to produce a quality new article every week. With the demands of teaching and administration and our standards for quality, this was no easy feat, even with the three of us now laboring away together. Our goal has been to publish every Saturday morning to give you a consistent source of inspiration every weekend to prepare you for the next week of educational work. If you aren’t receiving our weekly updates, be sure to sign up for that through our pop up form.
For 2020 we’ve got a lot of exciting plots and plans for promoting a rebirth of ancient wisdom about education in the modern era. For instance, Patrick is working on a new eBook on implementing habit training in the classroom. This will be a great pairing with Jason’s very successful eBook on implementing narration. Likewise, Jason plans on turning his Flow of Thought series into an eBook and continuing to write and share more on narration through other venues, and either through revising the narration eBook or turning it into a full length treatment of the practice. Kolby’s still thinking through options for a longer work and connecting with venues. Lastly, earlier this month we had our first podcast recording session and had a blast recording together a long discussion on the idea of an educational renaissance and a short discussion of Aristotle on excellence. We don’t plan to launch the podcast for some time, but stay tuned for more announcements about that in the coming months.
Please let us know of any exciting ideas or suggestions you have for Educational Renaissance as a community member. We’d love to work toward building more of a community around our unique message of ancient wisdom for the modern era. If you haven’t followed our page on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter, take a moment to do that, and share articles and resources you really like through social media; it really helps us get the word out. And now without further ado…
20 Memorable Maxims from 2019
1. Like “the air we breathe” the culture and curriculum of a school can either endorse the beauty and dignity of self-mastery, or subtly undercut it through neglect and cynicism.
-From Educating for Self-Control, Part 1: A Lost Christian Virtue
2. The classical tradition made virtue the main goal of education and let the chips fall where they may on less important matters.
-From Educating for Self-Control, Part 2: The Link Between Attention and Willpower
3. We want a sense of satisfaction and great mastery to propel students to see that hard work can be meaningful and satisfying rather than an obstacle to a trivial reward.
-From Overcoming Procrastination
4. Freedom and obedience are not dichotomous, but flow from each other.
-From Authority and Obedience in the Classroom: Reading Charlotte Mason’s Philosophy of Education
5. The customs and culture of a school or home are not a neutral factor in a child’s education, if moral excellence is our goal.
-From Excellence Comes by Habit: Aristotle on Moral Virtue
6. Knowledge of God is not just first in sequence, but first in rank of importance.
-From Easier Than You Think, Yet Harder Than You Think: Teaching the Bible to Children
7. The training of the mind through the classical liberal arts and sciences is thus the antidote to the natural disorder of the mind.
-From The Flow of Thought, Part 1: Training the Attention for Happiness’ Sake
8. Starting a new chapter is an excellent time to take stock of your core principles.
-From New to School: 5 Principles for Starting the Year Well
9. Only after developing due reverence for a child’s existence-as-person, can we then properly ascertain methods for her education.
-From Educating Future Culture Makers
10. A strong pedagogy trains students to become independent learners as they engage in deliberate practice rather than simply fact-crammers for an upcoming test.
-From Strategic Instruction: Optimizing Classroom Instruction for Small and Large Classes
11. Too many classroom “learning activities” focus too much on what the teacher is doing as entertainer, while students sit back passively.
-From The Flow of Thought, Part 3: Narration as Flow
12. There is no standardized test for faithfulness. Faithfulness is a quality that is measured in time spent being obedient to a calling.
-From Liberating Education from the Success Syndrome
13. Of course, the highest intellectual motive is that of curiosity, which should be aroused and cultivated in any way possible.
-From Attention, Then and Now: The Science of Focus Before and After Charlotte Mason’s Time
14. But we must not forget, as Luther cautions us here, that the greatest asset of any society is not its physical infrastructures or technological developments, but the minds, hearts, and souls of its members.
-From Why Luther Believed Christians Should Study the Liberal Arts
15. Habit training as a spiritual exercise enables us to live in Christ, to have Christ as our habitude.
-From Christ Our Habitation: A Consideration of Spiritual Habit Training in Education
16. Thinking along the lines of the liberal arts is more like a mental game than a utilitarian bid for power, money or success.
-From The Flow of Thought, Part 4: The Liberal Arts as Mental Games
17. When we apply ourselves to deep and meaningful work, getting in the flow and cultivating valuable skills along the way, a certain lasting joy and fulfillment is the result throughout the process.
-From In Search of Happiness, Part 1: The Road of Virtue
18. Meaningful, complex and important work requires the kind of attention that can cut through distraction.
-From Habit Formation: You, Your Plastic Mind, and Your Internet
19. The move of turning conversation into a learnable skill puts it back in the realm of education, where it ought to have stayed.
-From The Flow of Thought, Part 5: The Play of Words
20. The behaviorist can with consistency treat children as mere animals to be poked and prodded with carrots and sticks, but the Christian must lead souls and inspire hearts.
-From Marketing, Manipulations, and True Classroom Leadership
Hope you enjoyed these memorable maxims! Let us know which is your favorite in the comments, and be sure to share quotes and articles with your friends and colleagues.