Tag: classical tradition

A Poem for Advent

With the Christmas season now in full swing, there tends to be a strong focus on the joys of being young. This is notably displayed in the excitement our culture generates around shopping and gift-giving, particularly for children. Movies like Home Alone, Elf, and A Christmas Story feature the idea of youthfulness prominently in their plots, and in some way or another, cast an adult or elderly person as the antagonist. The wonder and joy of Christmas, it would seem, is reserved for a particular age. As Christians, we need to resist this inclination. One way we can preserve the

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The Search for Great Teaching: A Comparison of Teach Like a Champion 3.0 and Christopher Perrin’s Pedogogical Principles

One interesting addition to Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion series in his third edition (Teach Like a Champion 3.0) is his notion of a mental model. He introduces the idea like this: “In a typical lesson you decide, often quickly. Then you decide, decide, and decide again. You are a batter facing a hundred pitches in a row…What do you need to decide quickly, reliably, and well, while thinking about other things under a bit of pressure in the form, of, say, twenty-nine restless students, twenty-five minutes’ worth of work left to get done, and a ticking clock to

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Preserving the Inheritance: Christian Education in the Post-Christian West

In The Air We Breathe (The Good Book Company, 2022), author Glen Scrivener explains how western society came to believe in the core values we now take for granted: equality, compassion, consent, enlightenment, science, freedom, and progress. He contends that belief in these values is not self-evident, trans-cultural, or historically necessary. So where did these values come from? His answer: Christianity.  It is a great irony, therefore, that even while western society continues to secularize, leaving belief in the Christian faith behind, its moral instincts remain largely unchanged. Westerners do not question the existence of human rights. Nor do they

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Towards a Philosophy of Nature Study

And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. Genesis 1:11-12 (ESV) Our modern world does not know what to do with nature. As a result, neither do our schools. For some, nature is a victim of humanity, a primordial entity (Mother

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Love the Lord Your God With All Your Mind

And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”  And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”  Luke 10:25-28 ESV What does it mean to love God? How are we to

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“Education is an Atmosphere”: Foundations for a Christian “Paideia”

‘Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life’––is perhaps the most complete and adequate definition of education we possess. It is a great thing to have said it; and our wiser posterity may see in that ‘profound and exquisite remark’ the fruition of a lifetime of critical effort. Charlotte Mason, Parents and Children, p. 33 So writes Charlotte Mason, educational philosopher and herald for a new-but-old way of approaching education. Many would follow in her footsteps, championing the simplicity of the notion that an endeavor as complex as education can be defined using three basic elements: atmosphere, discipline, and life. 

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Expanding Narration’s History in the late Middle Ages: Bernard of Chartres from John of Salisbury’s Metalogicon

This is the third blog article expanding the short history of narration I laid out a year ago. In the last two I expanded my treatment of John Amos Comenius to engage in detail with the passages from The Great Didactic and the Analytical Didactic that recommend activities that Charlotte Mason would have called narration. As I have searched for teaching practices in the classical tradition, I have tried to be fairly precise in what would qualify as “narration”. In my book A Classical Guide to Narration I defined “narration” as a long-form imitative response to content that a teacher

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Educating in Desire for the Kingdom

In the Christian, classical renewal movement we often draw the distinction between an education focused on information and an education focused on formation. Education in information focuses on the dissemination of facts, critical thinking skills, and beefing up the intellect, while education for formation prioritizes the process of developing a certain type of person. Both information and formation are important, of course, so which is right?  Well, that depends on what humans essentially are. If humans are, at core, cognitive creatures, then it makes sense to focus exclusively on the intellect. This was the predominant view of modernism. Influenced by

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Quintilian

Why the History of Narration Matters, Part 2: Classical Roots

In my last article I shared the first piece of why the history of narration matters: it has the potential to break down the barrier between the Charlotte Mason community and classical educators. There are some notable exceptions who have tried to cross the aisle, but for the most part these two groups have kept to their own camps — some have even had cutting critiques of the other side to share. And of course, we may be each other’s best critics in a way that would be good for both of us. But for that to happen Masonites would

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an old and traditional school room

Why The History of Narration Matters, Part 1: Charlotte Mason’s Discovery?

I’ve decided to put the series on Bloom’s Taxonomy vs. Aristotle’s Intellectual Virtues on hold for a couple months after contracting with Classical Academic Press to film two courses in December for ClassicalU: one on narration and another on Charlotte Mason’s philosophy for classical educators. So I’m returning to the topic of narration and Charlotte Mason to help me deliberately prepare. (By the way, if you have suggestions for what topics you’d like to see tackled or questions you’d like answered in either of these courses, email us at educationalrenaissanceblog@gmail.com!) It’s been some time since I’ve written explicitly on narration for

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