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

Aristotle’s Virtue Theory and a Christian Purpose of Education

Up till now in this series I have evaluated Bloom’s taxonomy and mostly used Aristotle’s intellectual virtues as a foil in my critique. And so while I have, to a certain extent, defined and described Aristotle’s five intellectual virtues, alongside offering an outline snapshot of a classical Christian educational paradigm based on them, my explanations have been mostly ad hoc, more to tantalize than to contextualize and fully explain.  This has been a deliberate rhetorical and pedagogical move: an attempt to begin with what is near at hand and understood by modern educators, before exposing its weaknesses and proposing a

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Human Development, Part 3: Get in the Zone

It is a dangerous thing to become a Jedi padawan. The training and trials are extremely difficult; one might say almost impossible. Qui-Gon Jin tells Anakin Skywalker, “Anakin, training to be a Jedi is not an easy challenge, and even if you succeed, it’s a hard life” (from Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace). As difficult as the training might be, there is even greater danger in not fully completing one’s Jedi training. You are liable to lose a limb. Both Anakin Skywalker and Luke Skywalker lose their right hands when they face Sith Lords before being fully

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Life in Plato’s Republic, Part 2: Building the Just City

“Don’t you know that the beginning is the most important place of every work and that this is especially so with anything young and tender? For at that stage it’s most plastic, and each thing assimilates itself to the model whose stamp anyone wishes to give it.” Plato, Republic, Book II Welcome back to my series on Plato’s Republic! As I shared in my first article, I’m producing this series for two reasons. First, I want to make Plato more accessible to everyone. Part of preserving the western intellectual tradition, or at least, not losing it, entails cracking open the

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What Bloom’s Left Out: A Comparison with Aristotle’s Intellectual Virtues

In the last three articles in this series, I laid out the good, the bad and the ugly of Bloom’s Taxonomy. After the last two posts it is perhaps worth reaffirming the value of Bloom’s project. While I ultimately believe that Bloom and his colleagues may have done more harm than good, I do affirm the importance of clear objectives in education. The clarity and focus of their project, which raised the issue of teaching objectives in a unique way in the history of education, leaves a real and positive inheritance to the discipline. Moreover, I am convinced that where

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Human Development, Part 2: All the World’s a Stage

That one essay – you know the one that got this whole educational renewal movement going – needs to be reevaluated. I am talking about the essay “The Lost Tools of Learning” by Dorothy Sayers. Her approach reminds me of Galadriel’s speech in the prologue to The Lord of the Rings movies, “Much that once was is lost. For none now live who remember it.” Someone who remembers the way things were must pass that knowledge down or else it is forever lost to the detriment of future generations. “And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost.”

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Life in Plato’s Republic, Part 1: Is Justice Worth it?

“Whether we like it or not, whether we know it or not, we are all more or less Platonists. Even if we reject Plato’s conclusions, our views are shaped by the way in which he stated his problems.”1  In today’s article, I begin a new series on Plato’s Republic. I’ve been wanting to start this project for some time now for two reasons.  First, I want to make Plato more accessible for everyone. The philosopher is a seminal figure in the history of ideas. Without his writings, it is difficult to know where western civilization would be today. In particular,

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Human Development, Part 1: What Do You Have in Mind?

A sound pedagogy requires a good understanding of anthropology (the study of human beings including our nature, our biology, our behavior and our social patterns) and of epistemology (the study of the nature of knowledge and how humans experience and acquire knowledge). One way these key areas of study (anthropology and epistemology) converge pertains to the development of children. We have a general understanding of the child as a small and vulnerable human being that undergoes tremendous transformations from birth to adulthood. Considerable philosophical, psychological and scientific work has been done to help us gain a clear understanding of the

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Christian Education and the Calling of the Church

Every Christian family has to make the difficult decision at some point where to send their children for school.  With the widespread availability of public education over the last hundred years, the conventional option for some time now has been public schooling. Here the cost for admission is free and the overall education they receive is, generally speaking, adequate. However, more recently, some parents have developed concerns about this option as secular and progressive principles have increased prominently within state legislation. For example, the Illinois State Board of Education recently passed rules requiring teachers to align their lessons with “culturally

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Bloom's Taxonomy

Breaking Down the Bad of Bloom’s: The False Objectivity of Education as a Modern Social Science

In the first two posts of this series (which I am reviving after a 6 months long hiatus) I proposed replacing Bloom’s Taxonomy of educational objectives with Aristotle’s intellectual virtues. The major flaw in Bloom’s taxonomy, which is a hierarchical categorization of educational goals in the cognitive domain, is that it privileges the bare intellect over the heart, like so much of modern education. Even if Bloom and his university examiner colleagues proposed an affective and psychomotor domain as well, and had the modest goal of improving clarity and communication among teachers, curriculum planners and educational researchers, still they codified

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