The Blog of the Classical Latin School Association
If you are familiar at all with classic children’s literature, you will know the name Garth Williams. Williams illustrated Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, Cricket in Times Square, and Little House on the Prairie. For those of us who grew up on his illustrations, they constitute a montage of our childhood. (more…)
by Brett Vaden
What are we doing when we educate children? There are three possibilities. (more…)
If you haven’t read Charles Cochrane’s Christianity and Classical Culture, then you should, and if you have, you know how hard it is to get through. (more…)
by Brett Vaden
Last week, National Society Honor students at Plano Senior High School were told they would not be allowed to wear their NHS stoles at graduation. When questioned about the policy, the principal said no club regalia was allowed at graduation. A NHS sponsor said that school officials didn’t want any students to feel excluded or to single anyone out. (more…)
by Martin Cothran
I was talking with several classical school leaders recently about a new building project their schools was in the middle of. Of course, there are a number of things you have to think of when you are talking about a capital construction project for your school. (more…)
In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis introduces his subject by discussing the contents of a textbook on his shelf, which he calls “The Green Book.” To protect the authors’ real names, he refers to them as Gaius and Titius. Rather than accomplish their stated purpose, to teach upper school boys and girls the art of English composition, Gaius and Titius’s efforts mainly serve to implant a dangerous idea into their young readers’ minds.
Imagine you are the author of a popular book on English usage and working on the new edition of your book when a rent-a-car clerk tries to tell you you’ve violated a rule of English usage. (more…)
by Martin Cothran
“Reading something on a screen—as opposed to a printout—causes people to home in on details and but not broader ideas, according to a new article by Geoff Kaufman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon, and Mary Flanagan, a professor at Dartmouth.” (more…)
by Brett Vaden
Abraham Lincoln was a backward thinker. His mind wasn’t just in the present. Nor was it just in the future. He considered the past, letting it influence his actions, and even staking his life on principles set down by people whose bones had bleached long before he was born.
I want to share a virtue we can learn from Lincoln’s backward thinking: the audacity of principle.
I have been giving a talk at homeschool conventions this year called, “What IS the Christian Worldview?” based on an article that recently ran in Memoria Press’ Classical Teacher magazine.
There are basically four parts to the talk:
1. How a lot of people use the term “Christian Worldview,” but few can define it
2. Where the term “worldview” comes from in the first place
3. The definition of the term “worldview”
4. What makes a worldview “Christian” (more…)