This course will offer an overview of teaching through the reading of classic texts on how best to teach and learn. It will cover the three modes of teaching, their origins in Aristotle’s rhetoric and their modern manifestation in Mortimer Adler’s “Three Columns.” The student will also learn the best method of approach to the teaching of certain specific subjects such as the basic skills of reading, mathematics, and penmanship; classical languages; the trivium subjects of grammar, logic, and rhetoric; as well as the proper teaching of the humanities and the natural sciences. Participants will also gain a basic knowledge of important modern pedagogical debates, with an emphasis on the debate between traditional education and modern progressivism.
520 – Order and Inspiration: An Introduction to Classical Pedagogy
