IN DECEMBER 1998, Warner Brothers and director Nora Ephron produced a wildly successful romantic comedy in which a spunky independent book seller takes on the owner of a Barnes and Noble-esque book chain, only to fall in love with him over the then infant internet. Of course, I’m referring to You’ve Got Mail, starring Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, and others. And while Ephron’s film was primarily an overly saccharine sweet story about the sometimes unexpected nature of falling in love and finding a soulmate in unexpected places, the film’s most interesting subplot concerned the cutthroat business of retail book selling. As [...]

“There never was a time when those that read at all, read so many books by living authors rather than books by dead authors. Therefore there was never a time so completely parochial, so completely shut off from the past.” T.S. Eliot  “It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.” C.S. Lewis on avoiding chronological snobbery   In the first half of [...]

Recently I blogged about the mistake of always trying to make learning fun. But since I generally ride a horse by falling off first one side and then the other, I am reminded that the opposite of always trying to make learning fun is thinking that it must always be as dry as dust. What we are talking about here is facts! Or maybe some might phrase it as “back to basics.” Charles Dickens immortalized this attitude in Hard Times with his Gradgrind character: “Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted [...]

As Christmas approaches, most of us are no doubt busy decorating our homes and preparing for the glorious celebration of the Incarnation of our Lord and Savior. As part of that preparation, we will bring a tree into our homes and decorate it.  You may have wondered why decorating trees is part of our Christmas celebration. Perhaps you have even feared that Christmas trees detract from honoring the true meaning of Christmas. Sometimes the claim is made that Christmas trees have pagan origins.  Although there were many ancient pagan rituals which included the use of live trees and evergreens during [...]

Radio stations across the nation have been playing Christmas music nonstop since Thanksgiving. Now, six days into December, you might already have reached the end of your tolerance for “Santa Baby” and “Baby, It’s Cold Aside.” By next week, even renditions of “Away in a Manger” and “Silent Night” might leave you secretly wishing for December 26 to arrive. Pause a minute. Turn off the radio. Pull up the words of your favorite Christmas carol and read them silently. Now let’s take a trip back in time. The Medieval church told the Christmas story through chants and choruses written in [...]

The Classical Bloggers Collaborative is an effort at community, conversation, and contemplation. The writers you meet here are  teachers, consultants, homeschooling parents, business owners, and curricula developers – each of us, in our own settings, seeking to ascertain more deeply what classical education is and how it is best taught. We are not content with our world’s educational status quo and therefore we seek change. But if change is to come we must come to an effective, wise alternative.  And that’s where the conversation and contemplation come in. The writings you find here comprise our attempts at discovering what that alternative should [...]

On the November 1st edition of his radio program, Rush Limbaugh responded to a woman with a classical studies degree who was complaining (via a sign at a protest) that she could not get a job.  This led Limbaugh to suggest that perhaps she should not have taken a classical studies degree in the first place, wondering aloud why someone at her college didn’t tell her it was a worthless degree.  He then debunked the notion (apparently believed by too many college students) that a college degree of any sort guarantees a high-paying job. Well.  As you might guess, I [...]

If we decide to take classical education as our model of teaching does that mean that some modern teaching ideas and methods are anathema to us?  Yes.  I thought it would be interesting to explore some of these negative methods in the next few weeks. The biggest idea and most compelling is that “learning can be fun.” No doubt learning can be fun which is why this idea is a stumbling block. It is especially easy for teachers of large groups to feel the need to throw out a wide net and FUN is the widest net of all.  The [...]

Reading is an extraordinarily complicated intellectual act, which leads some people to think that it can only be taught by experts. In this it parallels, motherhood. However, both reading and motherhood are both too complex for experts for the simple reason that expertise implies that you have identified the way things work regardless of context. The expert fails at both reading and motherhood because he looks in the wrong place. I will focus on reading. Reading has to do with the soul engaging and grasping the idea (logos) of a text, not remembering the content that embodies the idea. But [...]

Bill is a coal miner.  His father was a coal miner, and his grandfather was too.  He is him coming out of the mine one day, with his fellow workers in their hard hats, grinning, looking forward to lunch. But last year, Bill turned 22, and began to think that the mines were not as safe as they should be for the men who worked in them.  He thought that if they were designed differently, he might be able to reduce the number of cave ins, so he began to think like an engineer, and learned quickly that he didn’t [...]