In October of 1939, at St. Mary’s Church in Oxford, C.S. Lewis spoke to an audience of undergrads who were questioning the futility of a college education in the midst of a country at war. To them, attending lectures and writing papers bordered on frivolity and selfishness when their fellow countrymen were fighting, not only […]
The day before our seniors boarded the bus for Europe, their 12th-grade humanities teacher read them an excerpt from Allan Bloom’s 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind. In it, Bloom writes: “A trip to Florence or to Athens is one thing for a young man who hopes to meet…his Socrates in the Agora,
It’s been a topic of debate for almost four decades. This issue, whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie, would actually make an excellent Lost Tools of Writing essay if it weren’t for two important factors. For starters, Die Hard is not a movie for kids. I recently forgot this (as it had
Tensions were a bit higher than normal this past Wednesday and Thursday, as our students took their first semester exams. As the parent of a seventh grader, who was experiencing her first ever upper school exam, I found myself thinking about how “set apart” these assessments are from others they have throughout the year. While
Classical educators talk a lot about the ‘cardinal virtues’ of fortitude, prudence, temperance, and justice. Plato was actually the first person to come up with the idea of four ‘cardinal’ virtues, and later Aristotle expounded upon the concept. The word cardinal here isn’t referring to the Virginia state bird, or those guys with the funny
As I was traipsing through England on a whirlwind three-day tour, my first stop was the University of Oxford. I went on a tour led by a current student, and one of the places we visited was the Bodleian Library. The Bodleian Library is one of the oldest libraries in Europe and is the heart
In recent years, John Milton Gregory’s, The Seven Laws of Teaching has received some flack. As with any “old” text or practice, there comes a time when society questions whether it is still effective, applicable, and appropriate. I’ve attended recent conferences where this very question was being discussed and read numerous articles that take one
As I sat down to write this, my daughter asked me what I was writing about. Adequately explaining virtue to a 9-year-old seemed like it might take more time than I wanted to devote at the moment, so I simply said, “I’m writing about how argument can be good.” She instantly responded vehemently with, “No,
“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” Essentially, Jesus is asking a question of definition. Define me, Peter. Who am I? The point wasn’t to have Peter regurgitate the right answer but for him to wrestle with the concept of who Jesus was in order to reach a definition on
In 7th grade, we are working through the book The Lost Tools of Writing. If you haven’t heard of this book before I highly recommend it. The book instructs students on how to write a persuasive essay. As the year progresses, they learn new concepts that help with invention, arrangement, and elocution. Last week, we
