Having written about education in general and classical education in particular for over 30 years, I have addressed one issue more than any other: what classical education actually is—what it is, what it is for, what it consists of, and how it is conducted. The question of whether someone’s definition of classical education is correct […]
Category Archives: Classical Education
Lost in the dark forest of his life, standing at the threshold of his cosmos-spanning journey through Hell, Purgatory, and the Paradiso, Dante finds beside him his guide: Virgil. Not an apostle, nor a saint—indeed, not even a Christian—but a pagan poet from ancient Rome, now leading the medieval pilgrim soul toward the vision of […]
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In the Theaetetus, Socrates describes himself as a midwife of the mind: The difference is that I attend men and not women, and that I watch over the labor of their souls, not of their bodies. Theaetetus 150b. Socrates, however, declared himself “barren of wisdom” (150c). Yet he is one of the greatest teachers in […]
Sapere aude—dare to know. With this bold exhortation, Immanuel Kant claimed to have summoned an entire age to ‘intellectual awakening.’ It was the clarion call of the Enlightenment, a command for mankind to liberate itself from the presumed shackles of authority and immaturity and to begin thinking independently. In the philosophical revolutions of the seventeenth […]
Lately, I have found myself increasingly involved in the pioneering adventure of helping to start new schools and colleges in the classical liberal arts tradition. I am on the boards of both Rosary College and another college, the name of which I am not yet at liberty to disclose. The former is a two-year undergraduate […]
A Meditation upon the Meaning and Purpose of Education All civilized people have a great and healthy respect for the Great Books of civilization, those seminal tomes which have helped define who we are, why we are, and where we are. Our culture would be impoverished without them. Indeed, it would be rendered penurious in […]