Tag: wisdom
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Educating for Truth
I recently gave a short talk at my school’s curriculum night on the practical value of a classical education. In many ways, it was a recapitulation of the blog article I wrote a few weeks ago. I identified two popular ways of thinking about education today–both geared toward practical aims–and then argued that classical education…
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A Synthesis of Ancient and Biblical Wisdom: Book Review of Jonathan T. Pennington’s Jesus the Great Philosopher, Part 1
If you attended the Society for Classical Learning conference this past summer in Charleston, South Carolina, you may have attended the plenary session with Jonathan T. Pennington. He presented on “Jesus the Classical Educator.” The presentation was drawn from his new book Jesus the Great Philosopher. I think this is a really important book that…
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Is Classical Education Practical?
Is classical education practical? I suppose it depends on what we mean by the question. In modern times, a practical education is usually synonymous with one focused on job preparation. Students are educated in order to join the workforce and be economically successful. But job preparation is not the only way an education can be…
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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…
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Aristotle’s Virtue Theory and a Christian Purpose of Education
Up till now in this series I have evaluated Bloom’s taxonomy and mostly used Aristotle’s intellectual virtues as a foil in my critique. And so while I have, to a certain extent, defined and described Aristotle’s five intellectual virtues, alongside offering an outline snapshot of a classical Christian educational paradigm based on them, my explanations…
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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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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…
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Breaking Down the Bad of Bloom’s: The False Objectivity of Education as a Modern Social Science
In the first two posts of this series (which I am reviving after a 6 months long hiatus) I proposed replacing Bloom’s Taxonomy of educational objectives with Aristotle’s intellectual virtues. The major flaw in Bloom’s taxonomy, which is a hierarchical categorization of educational goals in the cognitive domain, is that it privileges the bare intellect…
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Educating for Resilience in a Coddling Culture
In The Coddling of the American Mind (Random House, 2018), authors Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt make a forceful critique of the way Americans today go about raising and educating their children. Their point isn’t complicated: parents and teachers, in general, overprotect children from the challenges and rigor of everyday life. As a result of…
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Training the Prophetic Voice, Part 6: Classical Rhetoric for the Modern World
In my last post, I explored the concept of internalization. Students need to internalize the truth in such a way that it impacts their lives personally. Obviously this will look different for each individual, so there is no formula. I like to think of each person as embarking on a journey during which they will…