Tag: habit training

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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Fostering Grit Through Charlotte Mason’s Practice of Habit Training

We write and speak often at Educational Renaissance about the importance of cultivating good habits (you can listen to our podcast on habit training here). Habits are, as Charlotte Mason put it, the railways of the good life (Home Education, p. 101). A person with good habits experiences a life of ease, while a person missing such habits often finds life burdensome and difficult.  By “ease” I don’t mean easy, of course. I mean smooth, orderly, peaceful, and effective.  For example, the habit of timeliness is indispensable for a life of ease. Imagine how difficult life is for the person

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Cultivating the Discipline of Study

Our world is restless, this much is clear. As I have observed in previous blogs, the speed of the modern world is only accelerating as new technologies allow people to access whatever they seek at unprecedented rates. Surfing the web, in particular, has never been easier, and with it, the vulnerability to succumb to the siren’s song of amusement. Amusement is a passive state of entertainment. At its core, it is a form of distraction. People seek amusement when they are bored, when they seek to delay or avoid more difficult tasks, or when they have simply grown habituated to

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Practicing in the Dark or the Day: Well-worn Paths or Bushwalking, Artistry and Moral Virtue Continued

In my last article we explored the analogy between Aristotle’s intellectual virtue of artistry or craftsmanship (Greek: techne) and moral virtue, taking our cue from the Nicomachean Ethics book II. Along the way we discovered the foundation for these two types of excellence in habit development or the neural networks of the brain. Excellence, according to Aristotle, comes by the type of practice or exercise that works along the lines of nature. The modern Copernican revolution of neurobiology confirms this thesis by revealing the role of myelin, a white fatty substance that is wrapped around neural circuits that fire together.

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After the Black Death . . . What?

It was a little over a year ago that I wrote “The Black Death and an Educational Renaissance” about how the Black Death serves as an analogue to the Coronavirus. In that article I argued that the Black Death initiated a series of societal changes that eventually led to the Renaissance. I particularly noted how education took on a more prominent role broadly in society. Despite a general decline in population, universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, and Paris saw an increase in enrollment. In light of potential parallels between the transformative effects of the Black Death and Coronavirus, I put

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Moral Virtue and the Intellectual Virtue of Artistry or Craftsmanship

It might seem strange after the paradigm delineated above to focus our attention back on intellectual virtues alone, just after arguing for the holistic Christian purpose of education: the cultivation of moral, intellectual and spiritual virtues. But it is impossible to do everything in a single series or book. The cultivation of moral virtues requires a book of its own, at the very least, and the same can be said of spiritual virtues. And there have in fact been many authors that have treated these subjects admirably, even if they have not always traced their practical implications for teaching methods,

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Exploring Educational Alternatives: A Comparison of Charlotte Mason and Maria Montessori

The early 1900s was a watershed moment in education. The second wave of the Industrial Revolution brought about what we might call the educational-industrial complex. Here I intentionally draw upon Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1961 Farewell Address when he warned against the disastrous potential of the military-industrial complex. Looking back over the previous decades of global warfare, he saw how the industry-fed war machine would never be satiated. Something like this happened in the field of education. Industry, an expanding economy and globalization demanded of education a new kind of production-line format. School buildings began to resemble factories graduating a populace

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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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Creating a Culture of Mentorship

In Episode 10 of the Educational Renaissance podcast, we took a deep dive into what Charlotte Mason means by atmosphere, one of the three instruments of education. One of the ideas that surfaced was the concept of mentoring. In today’s article I want to extend that discussion to look at some recent research on student mentorship as well as draw on some biblical concepts to round out our understanding of what it means to create a culture of mentorship in schools. Mentoring as a Program When we think of mentoring programs, we often picture something like Big Brothers Big Sisters

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Enjoying the Bible as Literature: 5 Strategies for Engaging Students in Reading the Canon

Guest article by Heidi Dean of Christian Schools International (See Jason’s article on CSI “7 Steps to Narrating the Bible”!) In biblical studies we seek to cultivate the habits of reverence, humility, submission to the text, and other qualities of faithful scholarship. But I propose another goal should rise to the top: enjoyment. The enjoyment that students have in reading a novel, or an eerie poem, or an adventure epic.  When students are engaging with the Bible, we should hear laughter and gasps. We should see quizzical eyebrows and wide-eyed shock. I love to see students jumping out of their

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