“Do you ask me what you should regard as especially to be avoided? I say, crowds.” Being the introvert I am, this answer from Seneca (letter 7) received from me a warm welcome and strong affirmation. However, I quickly learned that his reasoning was not formed from a fear of crowds or a feeling of …
Probatos itaque semper lege, et si quando ad alios deverti libuerit, ad priores redi. One should always read sound literature, Seneca advises, and when one begins feeling the urge to pass on to new reading material, return to the books or authors already read. I recall Lewis saying something similar in An Experiment in Criticism. …
Ex iis quae mihi scribis et ex iis quae audio bonam spem de te concipio: non discurris nec locorum mutationibus inquietaris. Aegri animi ista iactatio est: primum argumentum compositae mentis existimo posse consistere et secum morari. This is the opening of Seneca’s second letter to Lucilius, and it moves quickly to an argument for the …
How ought reading be taught? Notice that the question asks “how ought” not “how can”. The question bears a subsequent inquiry: what should my students read? One technique I have grown increasing aware of is children sitting in small groups reading little paperback pamphlets about animals, the seasons, plants, and daily life bearing lots of …
Here are 5 basic resources on Mimetic Instruction. 1. Read anything by Plato. 2. There was an essay written in 1880 by Charles Alexander McMurry called How to Conduct the Recitation which covers the basic concepts of Mimetic Instruction. I have a copy of this essay in a book by J. Wesley Null and Diane …
Image via Wikipedia The word rhetoric has come bear an unfortunate stigma over the years. Rhetoric, as popularly understood, amounts to little more than a bundle of self-interest wrapped by a thin layer of truth. But this is only one model of rhetoric. In her book, The Trivium, Sister Miriam Joseph stated that, “Rhetoric is …
Oversimplification signifies a separation from one’s place. By place, I am referring to the physical-geographical locale of one’s habitation. The place where I live. Much of the language I hear from students, from adults, and from our shared culture reflects the overwhelming attempt to simplify things, to simplify everything.Food, literature, transportation, tools, conversation, communication, relationships, …
During the past decade or so, educational policy and practice appear to have focused more and more upon developing the worker at the expense of developing the citizen. Charles N. Quigley The NYT ran a piece lamenting the declining test scores of American students regarding their basic civics education. It appears that our students are …
The reason for teaching classically is that it attends to the nature of the child and the nature of learning. When we teach this way we appropriately honor both the child and the subject. Classical instruction accomplishes this by making use of two modes of instruction: Socratic, and what is called Mimetic, which I will …
The common approach to literature in many classrooms is to give the child a worksheet with a number of questions about the text. But, whose questions are they? Giving a child a set of questions that he did not ask, nor was even thinking about sets an unnecessarily arduous task before him, and actually leads …
