Socrates in front of the Academy in Athens

The Flow of Thought, Part 8: Restoring the School of Philosophers

In my last article, The Flow of Thought, Part 7: Rediscovering Science as the Love of Wisdom, I made a case for the value of re-envisioning natural science as philosophy. While science might never come to mind today when philosophy is discussed, this was not always the case. The association of Solomon with the type of wisdom that includes nature lore provides a biblical example. Likewise, the great philosopher Socrates was mocked in his own day by the playwright Aristophanes for having his head in the clouds of speculation about the natural world. Although this claim was untrue—Socrates was almost

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art of learning chess

The Art of Learning: Four Principles from Josh Waitzkin’s Book

My mother-in-law feeds my addiction to books. For over a decade she has worked at a used bookstore, and often shows up at family events with a stack of books for me to add to my personal library. She now also supplies my friends and my school. Jason was recently the beneficiary of her generosity, inheriting a slew of Hebrew resources–much to his enjoyment as he begins teaching an Intro to Hebrew class. At Christmas, my mother-in-law got me a brand-new copy of Josh Waitzkin’s book The Art of Learning. Since then I have been devouring the book, and there

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Charlotte Mason and the Liberal Arts Tradition, Part 1: Mapping a Harmony

“What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” the church father Tertullian skeptically asked. Tertullian was writing at a time in which church leaders were weighing the pros and cons of mining the Greco-Roman philosophical tradition for insights they could utilize in the development of a distinctively Christian philosophy.  Similarly, within the Christian classical school movement, some have asked, “What has Charlotte Mason to do with Dorothy Sayers?” In other words, can the pedagogical insights of the British educator Charlotte Mason be conducive for classical education today? Where is there harmony? Where is there discord? While a full treatment of this

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scientist with chemicals in flasks

The Flow of Thought, Part 7: Rediscovering Science as the Love of Wisdom

In this series we’ve been finding arguments for a classical education from the unlikely realm of positive psychology, particularly Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi’s classic Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. After connecting the concept of flow with Aristotle’s link between virtue or excellence and eudaimonia (happiness or flourishing), we’ve been racing through aspects of the liberal arts tradition, in a sort of running commentary on Csikszentmihalyi’s chapter, entitled The Flow of Thought. I’ve already treated science briefly under the heading “The Seven Liberal Arts as Mental Games.” That’s because the quadrivium, or four mathematical arts, included not only arithmetic and geometry, but

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writing with black ballpoint pen

The Writing Process: Sentences, Paragraphs, Edit, Repeat

Why do we need instructions on a shampoo bottle? After only a few training exercises, any three-year-old can operate a shampoo bottle. Yet every bottle of shampoo I can find has instructions. The sequence, “lather, rinse, repeat,” became such a well-known instruction that it took on meme status in culture. Brian Regan has taken on a similar set of instructions on a Pop Tarts box. If you haven’t enjoyed his take on the ridiculous nature of obvious instructions, you should take a moment to watch it here on YouTube before proceeding. I will wait. (And while you’re there, you might

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Charlotte Mason and the Power of Ideas

As Charlotte Mason observed, there is nothing quite like the experience of being struck by an idea. The experience is equivalent to being the recipient of some unexpected treasure. Ideas loosen our grip on holding a thin view of the world. They open our minds, especially through narration, to connections previously gone undetected and stir our imaginations to explore further up and further in. Ideas light the fire beneath us to learn, search, and discover. I’ll never forget when as a child I encountered the idea of the Roman Empire. In the family room we had an entire bookshelf dedicated

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open journal

The Flow of Thought, Part 6: Becoming Amateur Historians

I’ve never been one for journaling. It’s not for lack of trying or admiration for the idea behind the practice. But keeping a journal and writing down my thoughts about myself or what I experienced that day just never caught on for me. I was almost tempted to say that it would have felt too egotistical to me to record my everyday feelings and happenings, but that’s not entirely the truth. I’ve had plenty of egoism to support that; it’s more that the trivialities of most days didn’t strike me as worthy of that sort of memorialization. And so, not

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monopoly game with dog in the dog house

School Is a Game: Finite and Infinite Games in Education

This is a website about education, particularly pertaining to thinking about education differently. Jason, Kolby and I really enjoy discussing educational philosophy, and hopefully you, our readers, enjoy and benefit from our peculiar take on education. In addition to being educational philosophers, we are also teachers – educational practitioners. What we talk about in our weekly posts we are also trying to live out in the classroom every day. Even though we write from a place of deep thought about educational ideals, sometimes the reality of the daily classroom means we get to workshop how those ideals play out with

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True Mastery: The Benefits of Mixed Practice for Learning

“Practice, practice, practice.” This mantra for learning is proclaimed across companies and schools, athletics and the arts. The widely held belief is that the key to mastering a particular skill or gaining new knowledge is relatively straightforward: Practice.  Now, to be sure, practice is important, especially if it rises to the threshold of “deliberate practice,” an intensive approach which Patrick lucidly explained in a past article. He himself warns, however, that the repeated rehearsal of skills can be futile if the three other components of deliberate practice are not in play. Patrick writes, “ We need to be careful with

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journal on the table for reviewing the year

20 of the Most Memorable Maxims from 2019 Educational Renaissance

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

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