Colloquy: Quote from Kant: “Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.”

Led by Steve Elliott
I would love to say we spent the hour discussing this quote, but only one friend from here in Memphis showed up, so we spent a wonderful hour catching up and discussing a broad range of issues connected with our schools including parent education, movies in the classroom, the loss of connection [...]

The Necessity of Re-Inventing the Wheel: Why Every School Must Develop Its Curriculum In-House

Steve Elliott
This was my own workshop, so all I can say is “thanks” to the twenty or so who showed up and added to our discussion of what our fears are in curriculum development and how to move past them by placing more stock in our faculty and less in “paper curriculum.”
I am very [...]

Colloquy: Quote from MacDonald

Led by Vigen Guroian
The quote was as follows: To inquire into what God has made is the main function of the imagination. It is aroused by facts, is nourished by facts, seeks for higher and yet higher laws in those facts; but refuses to regard science as the sole interpreter of nature, or the laws [...]

Pillar II – The Principles of Classical Education: The Principle of Integration

John Mason Hodges
·       After a great illustrative story about horses and horse study that highlighted how disintegrated our learning has become, JMH launched into the following basic points:·      

Integration demands hierarchy – two subjects cannot be joined together w/o a third higher principle in play.·      
We must return to Theology as the Queen of Sciences, [...]

Exordium II: The Business of Reading Great Literature: Why We Should Teach Literature to Business Students and Why That Matters to Classical Schools

Vigen Guroian
Basing his thesis upon an experiment he conducted last year with his Theology and Literature classes at Loyola University in Baltimore, Vigen discussed the demise of any form of literary commonplace in the modern university classroom.  The core Liberal Arts have been squeezed out by trade courses in “business” and most modern university students [...]

The Poetic Knowledge Panel: The Prelude, Book 1, by William Wordsworth

This was a discussion of this work by Dr. James Taylor, Laura Berquist, and Martin Cothran.  It would defeat the very notion of the panel to try and relate what was discussed.  It is always a joy to take part.  The notion is that students can learn just by listening and watching accomplished students (the [...]

Conspiracy!: Cicero, Catiline, and Running a Classical School

Dr. Michael Johnson, Headmaster,
Westminster
Academy,
Memphis TN
Mike spent much of the hour recounting the story of
Cicero and Catiline and the conspiracy that sprung up around them in history.  He then pulled the following principles from this story that were quite appropriate but which we did not have much time to unpack:
A.     Both reveal the need for an [...]

Colloquy: Should the Quadrivium be a part of our k-12 intellectual culture?

Steve Elliott
Leading this was both a delight and very frustrating for me.  I wanted to jump in and discuss, not moderate and facilitate.  This is a huge question needing a lot of discussion.  We had trouble getting us all on the same page in defining the Quad because it is so lost from our educational [...]

Colloquy: Is history a sufficient organizing principle for the curriculum?

James Daniels
Just to summarize a liquid and somewhat inclusive discussion, the group was not willing to affirm the question.  History is very helpful, in fact indispensable in many ways, but not fully sufficient.  We did suggest that something along the nature of the biblical mythos was more likely to fill this bill.  The CD will [...]

Pillar I: Reflections on the Definition of Classical Education

Martin Cothran
Two means of defining CE: by division and by classification
By Division: What are its parts?
I. Skills – how (Liberal Arts)

a.Trivium (Word / Qualitative)

i.      Grammar – Latin, study of language
ii.      Logic – study of thought

iii.      Rhetoric – study of persuasion or expression

b.      Quadrivium (Matter / Quantitative) – simply follows Joseph at this point

II. Content – what [...]