Books to Read

I’ve been reading in snatches of a page or two at a time a book that fell out of heaven into my lap at the conference this summer. If you are interested in a theological and philosophical understanding of the place of rhetoric in the Christian classical tradition, I don’t think you’ll find a book more [...]

Is this a once in a lifetime opportunity?

I’m not altogether certain but it might be. How often do you get to spend a weekend with a translator of Dante, a founder of a Christian classical college, and a group of people driven to figure out what Christian classical education is and how to implement it?
I just attended the SCL conference in Charleston, [...]

An effective Approach To Reading a Poem

Since a poem has the four qualtities identified and haltingly addressed in this post: it’s music, its imagery, its logos, and its unspeakable quality that I’ve reluctantly and insultingly reduced to its connotations, we can develop a strategy when we approach a poem that is consistent with the nature of poetry. We don’t need to [...]

The Simplified Curriculum

When we think of curricula, we tend to think of classes or subjects and materials to read or study in those subjects. That’s a very fine thing to do and we should keep doing it. I want to suggest that there might be more to think about and it’s one of those “mores” that make things [...]

Classical Rhetoric and the Good Man

“I would, therefore, have a father conceive the highest hopes of his son from the moment of his birth. If he does so, he will be more careful about the groundwork of his education.”
     Quintilian, Institutio Oratio, I, I 
I just returned from Houston, TX, where Kathleen Wrobleske hosted our mid-winter apprentice retreat and Camille Goldston hosted [...]

The War Against Grammar

At Earl Nelson’s recommendation I secured a copy of The War Against Grammar by David Mulroy. After an hour or so in its company, I am here to recommend it to you. Here is a quotation he includes in the final chapter that sums up the practical use of the disciplines and rules of grammar [...]

How Latin studies cultivate the intellect and prepare for real life

Here is R.M. Wenley in an essay entitled, The Nature of Culture Studies, published in Latin and Greek in American Education, which we consider one of the five most important books on education written in the 20th century:
Ability to write decent Latin prose, with dictionary at elbow, simply cannot be acquired without at the same time [...]

Grammar and tyranny

Here is a grammar teacher, let us call her Mrs. Malaprop.
And here is a grammar student, let us call him Billy Blood.
Mrs. Malaprop has been trained in the conventions of the contemporary University and has come to believe that correct grammar is determined entirely by the usage of the community and has no authority or [...]

Grammar, Potter, and Freedom

Alan Warhaftig has found 474 run on sentences in Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows. Given that the book fills about 750 pages, we cannot help but be astonished by such editorial carelessness. 
I’m guessing this news will find a mixed reaction. The sentimentalists will complain that Mr. Warhaftig is trying to ruin a good thing: [...]

LTW on Sale: One Week Only!

I’d better mention that the Lost Tools of Writing has been placed on a Back To School sale price. If you buy all the parts separately, it is only $147 for teacher guide, module guides, CD’s, and student workbook. If you buy them all together we lower the price to only $127.
But for THIS WEEK [...]