Tag: common arts
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Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 6: The Transcendence and Limitations of Artistry
In this series on apprenticeship in the arts we have laid out a vision for the role of the arts in a fully orbed classical Christian education. We began by situating artistry or craftsmanship within a neo-Aristotelian and distinctly Christian purpose of education: namely, the cultivation of moral, intellectual, and spiritual virtues. Then we explored…
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Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 5: Structuring the Academy for Christian Artistry
In the previous article we explored the need to counter the passion mindset of our current career counseling by replacing it with a craftsman mindset drawn from a proper understanding of apprenticeship in the arts. Apprenticing students in various forms of artistry (including the liberal arts) constitutes the role of the Academy that is most…
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Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 4: Artistry, the Academy and the Working World
In his book So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love, Cal Newport argues against the well-known Passion Hypothesis of career happiness. He describes the Passion Hypothesis as the idea that “the key to occupational happiness is to first figure out what you’re passionate about and…
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Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 3: Crafting Lessons in Artistry
In the previous two articles in this series exploring Aristotle’s intellectual virtues, I laid out a fivefold division of the arts and a teaching method for training in artistry. My guiding hypothesis is that rethinking education through the Aristotelian paradigm of intellectual virtues will combat some of the typical problems of modern education. Bloom’s Taxonomy…
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Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 2: A Pedagogy of Craft
In my previous article in this series on Aristotle’s intellectual virtues, I discussed the general nature of artistry or craftsmanship under the heading of apprenticeship. Aristotle’s virtue of techne, often translated ‘art’, points to our human capacity to make things, to produce things in the world. Words like ‘artistry’ or ‘craftsmanship’ help to convey in…
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Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 1: Traditions and Divisions
The previous two articles have paved the way both for our discussion of Aristotle’s intellectual virtue of techne, artistry or craftsmanship, as well as the intellectual virtue of phronesis, practical wisdom or prudence. In a strict sense, the analogy between artistry and morality is aside from our central argument, which consists in working out 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…
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Handwork: Fostering Excellence Through the Habit of Creating
Guest post by Joleen Steel, Classical Christian Educator and Director of Camping Stick Kids We are what we repeatedly do; excellence, then, is not an act but a habit. Aristotle What do you find yourself repeatedly doing? In this digital world, it is easy to immerse ourselves in the repetition of scrolling through social media…