Tag: liberal arts

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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ancient Greek goddesses of memory

The Flow of Thought, Part 2: The Joy of Memory

In my last article “The Flow of Thought, Part 1: Training the Attention for Happiness’ Sake” I drew a connection between Aristotle’s view that happiness is the chief goal of education and the findings of modern positive psychology. In Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, he reports his findings that people report being most happy when in a state of flow. Flow is his term for the experience of focused effort at some worthwhile pursuit at a level of challenge commensurate with one’s skills. Whether a hobby, work or a meaningful conversation, the experience of flow is immensely rewarding,

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Review of Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning by Douglas Wilson

Most people in the classical Christian school movement look upon Dorothy Sayer’s 1947 essay “The Lost Tools of Learning” as something of a founding document. However, the movement as it currently exists in North America stems from the implementation of that essay in the late 1980s, and is best represented in Douglas Wilson’s Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning (Crossway, 1991). Wilson had founded Logos School in Moscow, ID in 1981, a school that forms the backdrop to his book. Wilson would go on to help found the Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS) in 1993, which currently has over

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Venice, an iconic center of the Renaissance

Renaissance Education: Looking to the Past to Chart a Course for Education Today

Education in the Renaissance centered around a rediscovery of lost ideas leading to a rebirth of civilization. Looking back to Renaissance education provides insight into our own age as we reclaim the great texts and ideas lost over the past decades through waves of progressive educational reform. Rediscovering a World of Ideas Prior to the age of exploration, exploding into life after Columbus’s westward journey across the Atlantic in 1492, a different exploration of an unknown world occurred after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. For well over a millennium, the Byzantine empire was the eastern stronghold of Christendom, paralleling

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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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library interior representing the reform of education

Woodrow Wilson’s Educational Reform

Princeton is different than it once was. One man altered the small college in the heart of New Jersey, setting it on course to become one of the most prestigious institutions in America. Investigating the principles of Woodrow Wilson’s educational reform provides insight into the direction American education would go during the 20th century. As President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson’s progressive agenda saw an expansion of federal regulation of business through anti-trust legislation and of federal programs to assist farmers and labor. When his oversight of America’s involvement in WW1 is taken into account, his presidency seems a

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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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