Classical Education News & Articles | May 2024
In addition to reviewing books, ClassicalEd Review provides our readers with a monthly compendium of recent articles and news stories related to classical education and the liberal arts.
Classical Education’s Regime Question
By John Peterson | The American Mind
The truth that education is inherently political is what unites AGOGE, a fellowship of classical educators I recently helped found with friends and compatriots in the movement to renew classical education in America. As we wrote in our joint statement, classical education “is at odds with modern education politically.” The ideology being forwarded by public schools and institutions is inimical not just to the Western political and religious traditions, but to what is healthy and normal for human beings.
Education for Political Animals
By Nathan Gill | American Reformer
A certain wing of the classical movement seems bent on reducing education’s transcendent purpose to an etherealized platitude. The argument goes something like this: education is about forming students’ souls through “truth, goodness and beauty,” not about preparing them for citizenship or vocations. It’s about “human formation,” not about instilling a particular kind of culture – especially if that culture would be in conflict with the zeitgeist.
Do Alternatives to Public School Have to Be Political?
By Daniel Mollenkamp | EdSurge
When Mysa School started about eight years ago, the microschool movement was new.
The Extinction of the Political Animal
By Jacob Howland | UnHerd
For the past few years, scientists have warned that a human-driven mass extinction of animal species has begun. The focus falls mostly upon land-dwelling vertebrates, but fails to mention one critically endangered species: homo politicus, threatened on all sides by the collapse of its native habitat, the public square.
Repeal and Replace Today’s Education Cartel
By Scott Yenor | Law & Liberty
We need to rethink how K-12 interlinks with undergraduate education and how undergraduate education interlinks with professional training.
Inside the New Wave of Old-School Education
By Julia Steinberg | The Free Press
Amid growing claims that schools indoctrinate students, ‘classical education’—which teaches kids to think critically and master old books—is making a comeback.
Classical Education Is Taking Off. What’s the Appeal?
By Rick Hess | Education Week
Classical education has seen remarkable growth in recent years. Since the pandemic, hundreds of new classical schools have opened. Across the nation, it’s estimated that there are around 1,000 classical schools in operation today. These schools have tapped into a population of families attracted to their “back to the future” emphasis on the great books, traditional virtues, and the foundations of Western civilization. But it’s not always clear what this translates to in terms of pedagogy or practice. What’s driving the appeal?
The Beautification of Classical Schools
By Jeremy Wayne Tate | First Things
The great irony of many classical schools is that while the coursework is beautiful, the classrooms are often banal. Teaching in dingy church basements was a sad necessity at the beginning of the classical school movement, which worked overtime to open schools and meet demand. But now, decades later, there is another classical school movement sweeping the country, and this time it must raise its ambitions: Classical school buildings should reflect the beauty of the curriculum they teach.
Christless Classical Curricula
By Helen Freeh | The Imaginative Conservative
If faith cannot be included within classical charter schools because of secularist State requirements, then what is the purpose of such education?
How Catholics Can Save American Education
by Jeremy Wayne Tate | Real Clear Education
I was a teacher and then worked in test prep before starting the Classic Learning Test. Before and especially since then, I’ve reviewed a lot of high school curricula, particularly from Catholic and/or classical high schools, which tend to get some flak for their focus on things like Latin, rhetoric, and philosophy. When people argue over the point of including classes like “An Overview of Medieval Mysticism” in a high school curriculum, it’s never long before someone says something like, “Oh, come on! When are they going to use that in real life?”
Does the Church Have a Teaching on “Classical Education”?
by Arthur Hippler | The Imaginative Conservative
One of the more remarkable trends in the past five years in Catholic education is the noticeable increase of schools embracing a “classical education.” Ten or twenty years ago, the Catholic classical school was a start-up by disgruntled laity. Now one can find here and there whole diocesan school systems that have embraced the classical model. But does this classical model somehow make the school more “Catholic”? Does the teaching authority of the Church somehow endorse one curricular approach over others?
Whatever Comes, Get Wisdom: AI, the Future, and Our Chief End
by Owen Anderson | Christ Over All
As a professor at Arizona State University, I have access to many valuable AI resources. ASU has been pushing to lead the way in the use of AI in the classroom. Last semester, I took a course for instructors on how to use AI to improve classroom instruction. The first weeks of the course were about the different kinds of AI and how they work. As we got into the specific applications to the classroom, I have to admit I was skeptical. This is especially true because I teach philosophy and rely heavily on the Socratic method and group discussions. This means that I am already doubtful about the ability to translate such a course into an online setting.
Why Engineers Should Study Philosophy
by Marco Argenti | Harvard Business Review
The ability to develop crisp mental models around the problems you want to solve and understanding the why before you start working on the how is an increasingly critical skill, especially in the age of AI.
Yes, Social Media Really Is a Cause of the Epidemic of Teenage Mental Illness
By Jon Haidt | After Babel
For centuries, adults have worried about whatever “kids these days” are doing. From novels in the 18th century to the bicycle in the 19th and through comic books, rock and roll, marijuana, and violent video games in the 20th century, there are always those who ring alarms, and there are always those who are skeptics of those alarms. So far, the skeptics have been right more often than not, and when they are right, they earn the right to call the alarm ringers “alarmists” who have fomented a groundless moral panic, usually through sensational but rare (or non-existent) horror stories trumpeted by irresponsible media.
The Tailspin of American Boys and Men
by Brenda M. Hafera | The American Conservative
Many boys and men are struggling to flourish in their roles as sons, students, employees, and fathers, and to achieve the sense of purpose that comes from being rooted within marriages, communities, churches, and country.
Why America’s Kids Need To Learn From the Founders via “Classical Schooling”
by Kevin D. Roberts | The Heritage Foundation
The numbers are in: Parents are fed up with failing government-run schools.
The Fierce Urgency of Tao
by Jonah Goldberg | The Dispatch
When the truth is subjective, contests of tastes are really just contests of power.
Can the Tao Save Western Civilization?
by Hunter Baker & Andrew T. Walker | National Review
The recent embrace of Christian apologist C. S. Lewis’s framing of objective truth by some non-Christian ‘Taoevangelists’ is welcome, but may not be enough.
Rediscovering the True, Good, & Beautiful
by Joseph Woodard | The Imaginative Conservative
The everyday conversation of a free society depends on trust in our commonsense experience of reality. Contemporary errors about the True, Good, and Beautiful are not simply mistaken explanations. They are lies, distorting and misrepresenting the experiences themselves, and cannot explain our real experience of Transcendence.
A New Lost Generation: Disengaged, Aimless, and Adrift
by Robert Pondiscio | The Thomas B. Fordham Institute
More than a quarter of America’s school-aged children were absent from school 10 percent or more of the time last year. There’s no shortage of explanations on offer for this surge in “chronic absenteeism,” mostly blaming the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath: lockdowns; lowered expectation; health and hardship; bullying and school safety issues. Remote learning and “Zoom school” made attendance optional, which is a hard habit to break.
Work and Leisure: A Pieper Primer
by Christine Norvell | Front Porch Republic
No other author has so immediately affected my perspective on work as Josef Pieper. In my mind, work was separate from the rest of life. Working hours have always been a discrete part of my day since I took my first job as a teenager. Maybe this division is inherent to American culture and how I grew up, but in Pieper’s mind, work is part of our response to the gift of life.
We’re All Reading Wrong
by Alexandra Moe | The Atlantic
To access the full benefits of literature, you have to share it out loud.