INSIDE A CLASSICAL CLASSROOM

Rhetoric: Tectonic Plates or Icing on the Cake?

Rhetoric: Tectonic Plates or Icing on the Cake?

Good rhetoric makes the world make sense What if we were created? What if the Creator had a purpose when He created? What if that purpose was to glorify Himself? These axioms are a nightmare to some, like famed atheist Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens argued in his book...

Of What Value Is a Dead Language?

Of What Value Is a Dead Language?

Latin’s Value in an Age of Vulgarity Those of us in the CCE movement proclaim Latin’s many practical virtues—its use as a scientific language, its correlation with high test scores, its betterment of our English vocabulary.  The reasons for returning to a Latin based...

The Trivium

The Trivium

The Latin word trivium means "the place where three roads meet" (tri + via); hence, the subjects of the trivium are the foundation for the quadrivium. There are three parts to The Trivium:  GRAMMAR: K–6th grades—content and facts LOGIC: 7–9th grades—reason and...

A RIGHTLY ORDERED RHETORIC: Jordan Peterson and Philip Wollen Videos

A RIGHTLY ORDERED RHETORIC: Jordan Peterson and Philip Wollen Videos

By CHRISTOPHER MAIOCCA   Given our infatuation with competition, titles, and trophies, it is strange that no contest or sanctioning body has arisen that can officially coronate “The Greatest Orator in the World.” We know, for example, who the world’s strongest...

Make way, Polar Express, the Grandfather Express is here

Make way, Polar Express, the Grandfather Express is here

CNNBy Ryan Prior CNN recently reported on a unique way one grandfather is helping his grandkids to get a classical Christian education -- The Grandfather Express. The Hayes have five children and 10 grandchildren, ages two to ten, all of whom live within 20 minutes of...

The Unfortunate “Liberal Arts Education”: What’s in a word?

The Unfortunate “Liberal Arts Education”: What’s in a word?

  There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it . . . —C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Dig up a treasure, and you have to clean off some mud. The first words I heard when I asked, “What is classical Christian education?”...

From Prep School to Church Basement: Peter Baur’s Story

From Prep School to Church Basement: Peter Baur’s Story

Winter 2018 In the early 1990's, the "good life" found Peter Baur working as an admissions officer at his alma mater, the 150-year-old, top-rated preparatory school in the state of Pennsylvania. His institution was among the elite power-schools that broker entrance...

The Revival of Learning – Classical Schools in Modern America

The Revival of Learning – Classical Schools in Modern America

National AffairsIan Lindquist In a recent article for National Affairs titled "Classical Schools in Modern America," Ian Lindquist recounts the history of classical schools in the U.S. and their surprising growth. Classical Christian education is meeting head on the...

Dripping in Spit: How Music Shapes Our Affections

Dripping in Spit: How Music Shapes Our Affections

Music shapes affections more than we know. I remember when this truth hit me between the eyes for the first time.    My First Punk Rock Concert On a sweltering evening in the early nineties, my roommate and I decided to escape the heat of our dorm with an evening...

In Defense of the West

In Defense of the West

By KATHARINE SAVAGE Where I live, mention the Great Books or the Western tradition, and you are likely given a polite sneer, at best. At worst, you’ll hear the all too familiar string of adjectives: “racist,” “post-colonial,” “bigoted.” And this is a real conundrum...

Powerful and Dangerous: Men Are Not Angels

Powerful and Dangerous: Men Are Not Angels

Men are not Angels Thomas Hobbes, describing a condition without government called the “state of nature,” said that the life of man without authority is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Human beings are naturally ambitious, greedy, interested in their own...

Bach to Thankfulness: Why We Study the West’s Greatest Music

Bach to Thankfulness: Why We Study the West’s Greatest Music

By JARROD RICHEY The year was 1824 when then 15-year-old Felix Mendelssohn was given by his grandmother a copy of the score of Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. Little did he know that five years later that same gift would introduce a more lasting global...

Luther’s Transformation of Western Civilization

Luther’s Transformation of Western Civilization

"EVERYONE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS OWN FAITH, AND HE MUST SEE TO IT FOR HIMSELF THAT HE BELIEVES RIGHTLY.” --Martin Luther Literacy in the West From the start of the reformation in 1519, literacy rates across the West skyrocketed. See the interactive literacy rate chart...

The Formation of the First “University”

The Formation of the First “University”

By ANTHONY M. ESOLEN The first time I visited the Sistine Chapel, I didn’t know much about Christian painting.  I did know a lot about the faith, though now I see that I was just starting on that journey.  I remember there were crowded lines down the stairs, and...

Christ, the Crux of Human History

Christ, the Crux of Human History

By DR. BRIAN A. WILLIAMS “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? … For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and...

IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD—A REVOLUTIONARY IDEA LOST

IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD—A REVOLUTIONARY IDEA LOST

By LOUIS MARKOS Plato's Idea of Standards “Behold,” wrote the ancient Greek philosopher Plato some 2400 years ago, “we are deceived about the very nature of the world in which we live. We are like men who have been imprisoned since birth in the deep belly of a cave....

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