In 1975, the Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe stood before an audience at the University of Massachusetts and took aim at one of the established masterpieces of English literature. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, he argued, had made Africa into little more than a backdrop: a place of darkness and voicelessness against which the European could […]
Category Archives: Reading
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 […]
Education, Medieval philosophy, Modernity, Reading, Thomas Aquinas, Uncategorized
A Tale of Two Thomases
13
May
May
In Knowledge Worthily Received, we considered the paradox that Socrates considered himself “barren of wisdom”—yet was able to help bring forth knowledge in his students. We considered the temptation of “easy knowledge,” of the illusion of learning without struggle. We recalled St. Thomas’ claim that truth, properly speaking, is in the mind—with the peculiar result […]
The traditional approach to reading and spelling instruction began to change about 150 years ago during the Romantic era. Among other things, Romanticism emphasized imagination, creativity, and individuality. The “whole language” or “look-say” method of reading was advocated by Horace Mann, who wrote about phonics: “It is upon this emptiness, blankness, silence and death, that […]
I teach philosophy, and my students often come into my classes with the expectation that the texts we read will be difficult, dense, and impossible for them to fully comprehend. They’re right. If you can read a text breezily, in a reclining position, with a drink in one hand, and come away with confident assurance […]