Tag: classical tradition

Teaching Confident Faith in an Age of Religious Uncertainty

Christianity, as a global religion, is at a crossroads. On the one hand, it remains the largest religion in the world: 31% of the world’s population is Christian, and sociologists predict this percentage to increase to 32% by 2060. [1] On the other hand, the religion is experiencing notable decline in the West. In 2010, 75% of Europeans and 77% of North Americans identified as Christian, practicing or non-practicing. The percentages in both continents are expected to decrease to 65% by 2050. [2] If Christianity is projected to increase globally, but decrease in the West, in what parts of the

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The Black Death and an Educational Renaissance

An infectious disease causes a pandemic that decimates the major urban centers in northern Italy. Doctors are recognized by their masks. The economy is disrupted through the loss of a workforce. The social order is overturned. Many turn to religion as a response to the pandemic, yet dogmatic norms are questioned. The pope issues indulgences for both those who must practice social distancing as well as for those who are deceased.  The parallels are stunning. It’s truly hard to tell if we’re talking about the 14th century or the 21st century. The parallels, though, enable us to comprehend our own

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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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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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a classroom, a common setting for practicing education

Practicing Education: Growing in the Art of Teaching

When I was a child I did gymnastics, and one of the most fundamental aspects of gymnastics is practice. We practiced skills and routines, we stretched and we worked out for hours, far longer than the average sports team practices. Where your average soccer team practiced an hour or an hour and a half a couple times a week, gymnasts practice three hours at a stretch at least three times a week. And that’s at my American gym which was no doubt less intense than some. One of the biggest lessons I learned from my coach was his frequent saying,

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A few classic books illustrating less is more

Less is More: Are Fewers Subjects Better for Schools?

Chris Perrin, over at Inside Classical Ed, suggests that classical schools are offering too many classes. He champions the idea of multum non multa – much not many. Perrin writes, “To study and learn well, humans have learned that it is important to study a few things deeply, even to mastery, rather than to dabble and sample dozens of things.” Here we have a Pareto distribution, there are a few subjects that when learned maximize the entirety of a student’s learning. He points to C. S. Lewis, who as a student predominantly learned the classical authors through his study of

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The Cathedral of the Liberal Arts Tradition

Review of The Liberal Arts Tradition by Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain

Kevin Clark and Ravi Scott Jain. The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Philosophy of Christian Classical Education. Classical Academic Press, 2013. In The Liberal Arts Tradition Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain endeavor to set the record straight about what made up the course of study in the classical tradition of education. As two longtime friends and colleagues at the Geneva School–one of the early and well-developed classical Christian schools located outside of Orlando, FL–they combined their talents in rhetoric/philosophy (Kevin) and math/science (Ravi) and their mutual love of theology and the tradition to broaden the focus of the conversation about classical

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An odeon of ancient Greek where wisdom and eloquence were expressed

Review of Wisdom and Eloquence by Robert Littlejohn and Charles T. Evans

Robert Littlejohn and Charles T. Evans. Wisdom and Eloquence: A Christian Paradign for Classical Learning. Wheaton: Crossway, 2006. In Wisdom and Eloquence Robert Littlejohn and Charles Evans connect the classical tradition of education to a Christian outlook on the goals of education. Both Littlejohn and Evans are leaders and practitioners within the classical Christian movement. Littlejohn’s background is in the field of biology and after serving as a vice president at Covenant College, he now serves as head of school at Trinity Academy in Raleigh, NC. Evans is an instructor in education at Vanderbilt and Covenant College as well as

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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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