Erasmus, Ideas, and the Soul

It is scarcely possible even to hope that all men should be good; but it is not hard to pick out from so many thousands of them one or two who stand out in virtue and wisdom, through whom in a short while a great many others could be made good. And later: The examples [...]

How to Teach

A word is the seed of an idea. You plant it in the soil of the soul. If the soil is ready to receive it, it will spring to life giving understanding. If the soul is not ready, the seed must be protected and nourished until the springtime of the soul.

Progressive Education Analyzed from a Christian classical perspective

You can imagine that if the Progressive theorist reduces method to only scientific experimentation, the child to merely a material being who responds to material and efficient causes, knowledge and knowing to nothing more than an interactive process, virtue to unstable values rooted in environmental interactions, meaning to consequences, then, along with all these reductions, there must also be an alteration in teaching.

A few Ideas about Ideas

Without understanding an idea, we cannot have discretion. Unless we contemplate an idea we cannt understand it. We contemplate ideas when we see them embodied in paintings, music, stories, lessons, etc. The structure of a lesson is itself the structure of the idea taught.

What’s the Big Idea?

The driving impulse of the CiRCE Institute is to figure out what Christian classical education is and to learn how to apply in it ever more complete, authentic, and integrated ways. In my studies and reflection, one astonishing thing has become astonishingly clear to me. Christian classical education is the education of the idea, whereas [...]