Sean Braswell writes about the ancient art of memorization: In an age of smartphones, search engines and external memory aids, it’s easy to forget that it wasn’t long ago that a good memory was essential to being an educated person. And, in many ways, our brains are built to be used in this way, even if we often opt not to do so today. The ancient Greeks and Romans believed in two types of memory: Read more…
On Tuesday of this week, the power went out at Memoria Press and at Highlands Latin School, where the press offices are located. Through the amazing ingenuity of several people, including Paul Schaeffer, we got by on partial power. The school classrooms at HLS. however, were completely without power, yet school went on. Teachers and students were able to do virtually everything they would normally be able to do. It helped that our classrooms are Read more…
In one of the best articles on classical education you can find on the internet, Michael Jordan, professor of English at Hillsdale College discusses the two competing models of education, the older, classical model, and the newer, utilitarian model and argues that the modern effort to replace the former by the latter is a mistake. Generally speaking, there are two major philosophies of education: an older model which addresses moral and spiritual concerns of the Read more…
By now it is common knowledge that many of the leaders of the companies that develop and market computers and smartphones are hesitant to let their own children use the very devices their companies make and sell. It is a cautionary attitude that many school leaders would benefit from knowing. For years the high priests of high tech and those in the pantheon of personal computer development have limited the use of technology among their Read more…
One of the authors essential to classical education is William Shakespeare. He is, in one sense, a bridge from our modern world to the world of the ancients and medievals. To read his plays is to get the sense that he has one foot in the old world and one foot in the new. His themes are never timebound and have spoken to people in every age. We in the classical education movement are among Read more…
Along with wisdom, the inculcation of virtue is the primary goal of a classical Christian education. But is virtue something you can teach? Barton Gingerich at the Acton Institute tells us how Russell Kirk, one of the great Christian political and social thinkers of the twentieth century, answers that question. “Can virtuous citizens be formed by tutoring and other rational forms of education?” he asks. Kirk’s answer? Moral virtue grows out of habit (ethos); it Read more…
Another study gives a disturbing picture of the consequences of screen time for young people. In an observational study, funded by the National Institutes for Health and published in the Lancet, researchers focused on 4,500 children between the ages of 8 and 11 and found that kids who spent more than two hours a day in front of screens “were linked to poorer cognition.” Using data collected over a ten-year period by the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, Read more…
We’ve all heard the rhetoric: “Boring” drill and practice and “rote” memorization are the constant scapegoats for education failure among America’s public educators. The tired school rhetoric running down such traditional practices gives one the impression that schools across the country are numbing the minds of students through antiquated “drill and kill” practices from which students need to be liberated. But Barbara Oakley, author of A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science Read more…
With all the emphasis on science in today’s schools, who would have thought that an actual knowledge of nature would be a casualty? In a recent article for Memoria Press, I discussed what some are now calling a national crisis. According to The Wall Street Journal: … The issue has prompted botanical gardens around the nation to raise the alarm. Colleges are beefing up plant identification coursework for a generation of botanists more focused on Read more…
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