Category: Classical Tradition

STEM careers scientist in a lab lost in flow of thought

The Flow of Thought, Part 4: The Seven Liberal Arts as Mental Games

There’s a lot of talk these days about the war between STEM and the liberal arts (which we are meant to understand as the humanities generally). Often this gets posed as a trade-off between a utilitarian education—training our future engineers, scientists and programmers—vs. a soft education in human skills and cultural awareness. Given the hype for STEM, defending the value of the humanities (as Martin Luther did, for one) is an important move in the broader education dialogue. And it’s one that’s not very hard to make, when there are articles like this one on how Google was planning to

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artist working

Training in the Arts vs. Teaching Sciences

I have previously written on the classical distinction between an ‘art’ and a ‘science’, but I recently discovered some interesting confirmations of it in Plato and John Milton Gregory (two otherwise widely divergent figures in the history of education). In particular, the chief take-away for teachers is a clearer awareness of when you are focused on training students in an art vs. teaching them a subject. To summarize the distinction, Aristotle defined the intellectual virtue of ‘art’ as a “state of capacity to make [something], involving a true course of reasoning” (Nichomachean Ethics VI.4, 1140a). The painter makes paintings, the

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child coloring with crayons

Educating Future Culture Makers

An experienced educator once taught me that every pedagogy, or method of teaching, assumes a particular view of students. Each view, in turn, is founded on premises about the nature of these students, their capabilities, and, perhaps most broadly, their purpose for existence. It is these driving premises that subconsciously guide the hand of the teacher, including how to use class time effectively, what skills to focus on, and which curriculum to implement. As classical educators seeking to retrieve the treasure trove of wisdom and insights about education from the western tradition, we do well to proclaim the Judeo-Christian view

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Girle reading Oxford English Dictionary in the flow of thought

The Flow of Thought, Part 1: Training the Attention for Happiness’ Sake

It may seem strange to look to modern psychology for support of classical education. After all, it’s the vagaries of modern thought that have got us into this educational trouble in the first place. The abandonment of tradition, the scientism and revolutionary overhaul of religion have all taken their toll on the proper training of our children. However, there’s always a diamond in the rough, a silver lining to every “sable cloud”. I recently found such a rare jewel in the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Besides being one of the best written books I’ve read,

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Plato and Aristotle in the Lyceum

Why Study Western Civilization?

The classical Christian movement has at its core a commitment to teaching Western civilization. Even though we teach Western civ, its distinctive qualities are not always clear. As a result, many educators (even within the classical movement) question why we would teach Western civilization. Here I will lay out what I think are the three key pillars of Western society. My hope is that with greater clarity about what Western civilization means, there will be deeper conviction to instruct our students to promote and defend its values. So what do we mean by Western civilization? Today we equate the “West”

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Aristotle close-up as famously portrayed by Raphael with arm stretched forward indicating his engagement in the human world of moral excellence, virtue and habits

Excellence Comes by Habit: Aristotle on Moral Virtue

All too often we are inclined to think of excellence as the product of good genes and good fortune rather than our personal habits. The fates bestow their blessings indiscriminately and haphazardly, and the talented and successful are the lucky recipients of excellence, while the rest of us are mired in mediocrity. Those who rise to the top, the outliers, as Malcolm Gladwell calls them, were born that way, or else became that way because of a combination of heredity, privileged upbringing and opportune circumstances. As we’ve mentioned before (Aristotle and the Growth Mindset), while the great philosopher Aristotle doesn’t

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The Liberal Arts of the Classical Tradition

The Classical Distinction Between the Liberal Arts and Sciences

One of the encouraging recent developments in education is the recovery of the classical educational tradition of the liberal arts and sciences amongst Christian classical schools. Of course, we’re already laboring upstream, since to most people the term ‘liberal arts’ simply refers to general studies or the humanities. However, even the Christian classical school movement hasn’t always held on to an important classical distinction, the distinction between an ‘art’ and a ‘science’. As a movement of classical Christian schools, we’ve talked a lot about the liberal arts, especially the trivium, and more recently the quadrivium or mathematical arts. Recent books,

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