Imagine three schools serving different neighborhoods in the same community. Each school has a competent teacher taking 10th graders through Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. Upon closer inspection, we will see that the students in these classrooms, though working...
Discussions about what “canon” of books a school should read often focus on theoretical topics such as the purpose of reading, the criteria that define a “great book,” and how we should think about whether the standards for a book’s canonicity are universal or...
Let us now tackle how best to create a great discussion. How can a discussion leader build an environment where participation is encouraged and the three main obstacles to student participation are overcome? Leaders can adopt certain behaviors that will go a long way...
Classroom teaching falls into two categories: active and passive. Both are necessary, but research and experience suggest that active teaching is more effective and provides important benefits. For high school and college classes, the two approaches to teaching are...
Originally published in Classis 2011 Volume XVIII, No. 1 By Ben House Only twelve percent of adult Americans read poetry, according to a recent statistic.1 Several of my students, my eleven-year-old son, and I fit into an even smaller minority: the number of Americans...
Originally published in Classis Volume XVI, no. 3 By Eric Indgjerd In an address titled, “The Greatest Single Defect of My Own Latin Education,” Dorothy Sayers confessed the lamentable fact that, although she had started upon Latin at the ripe young age of seven—her...
Originally published in Classis Volume XXXII, no. 1 By David Seibel In Beauty in the Word: Rethinking the Foundations of Education, Stratford Caldecott (1953-2014) shines a fresh light on the classical Trivium to remove the fog hanging over schools today. This is not...
Originally published in Classis Volume XXXII, No. 2 By David Seibel Healthy bodies have strong immune systems that recognize and respond to attacks from foreign invaders like parasites and bacteria. The human immune system is involuntary, like breathing when asleep,...
Originally published in Classis Volume XV, no. 3 By Bryan Lynch In Marshall McLuhan's famous phrase, 'the medium is the message'. That is, the way an idea is presented or delivered may often communicate more powerfully than the content of the message itself. Following...
Originally published in Classis Volume XV, no. 1 By Corrina McKenna When one works at a tree farm in Georgia, work has a way of following one home at night. On days we took cuttings to propagate new trees, I would close my eyes after hours of clipping and snipping and...