Liberal Education: Piercing the Dome

By |2024-03-18T20:50:26-05:00March 18th, 2024|Categories: Democracy, Education, Freedom, Liberal Learning|

Three proposed ends of liberal education — career, democracy, and a free mind — do not pierce the dome of the bourgeois workaday world. Let us begin anew with a question: “How can liberal education pierce the dome that encloses the bourgeois workaday world?" This essay was originally delivered at Magdalen College on October 25, [...]

Turning the Whole Soul: The Moral Journey of the Philosophic Nature in Plato’s “Republic”

By |2024-03-17T16:52:56-05:00March 17th, 2024|Categories: Andrew Seeley, Culture, Education, Philosophy, Plato, Socrates, Timeless Essays|

According to Socrates, to save Philosophy, to save young souls destined for greatness, to save human society itself, the true, philosophic nature must be freed from the corruptive influences that have formed him and receive the best education. The soul must be turned around. I forgot that we were playing and spoke rather intensely. For, [...]

Being in Front

By |2024-03-08T19:23:50-06:00March 3rd, 2024|Categories: Catholicism, Education, Liberal Arts, Liberal Learning, Wyoming Catholic College|

Our students read the greatest books of the tradition, a challenge to the brightest minds, and risk themselves repeatedly in conversation, until those who are seasoned “invariably deem it a special privilege to be in the front,” as General William Tecumseh Sherman said of veteran soldiers. Years ago, when my wife and I taught at [...]

Keeping Asian-Americans in Their Place

By |2024-02-22T05:58:52-06:00February 21st, 2024|Categories: American Republic, Education, Joseph Mussomeli, Liberalism, Politics, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

We should not try to right one historic wrong by committing a new one. After enduring over a century of white racism, now the Asian-American community must cope with a more subtle but just as sinister form of liberal racism: the harsh Orwellian reality that in modern America all minorities are equal, but some minorities [...]

“Critical Thinking”: What Does It Really Mean?

By |2024-02-19T18:38:20-06:00February 19th, 2024|Categories: Education|

“Critical thinking” is one of the most popular buzz words used by the education system today. Unfortunately, as education expert Martin Cothran notes, modern educators have no idea how to actually define “critical thinking skills”: “Modern educators love to talk about ‘critical thinking skills,’ but not one in a hundred even knows what he means by [...]

A Worthy Chase: Pursuing an Ideal Education

By |2024-02-09T22:57:23-06:00February 9th, 2024|Categories: Books, Classical Learning, Education, Eva Brann, Liberal Learning, St. John's College, Timeless Essays|

Eva Brann’s latest book, “Pursuits of Happiness,” is a collection of essays which range from Aeschylus to Austen, with topics spanning the nature of time itself to Sacred Scripture. Interspersed here are two parts constituting the whole of an ideal education. Pursuits of Happiness: On Being Interested by Eva Brann (640 pages, Paul Dry Books, [...]

Liberal Education and Politics: The Case of “The Tempest”

By |2024-01-19T18:06:11-06:00January 19th, 2024|Categories: Benjamin Lockerd, Education, Featured, Liberal Learning, Politics, Timeless Essays, William Shakespeare|

A liberal education is free in the sense that it is free of practical goals. We study our language and our literature or biology and chemistry and psychology just because it is a human instinct to do so, and because it is enjoyable to do so. Everything is Political Just as I began my college [...]

The End of Literature

By |2024-01-10T18:21:33-06:00January 10th, 2024|Categories: Benjamin Lockerd, Edmund Burke, Education, Featured, Liberal Learning, Timeless Essays|

There have been theories about literature nearly as long as there has been literature, beginning with Plato and Aristotle. But the ancient theorists all assumed that they were thinking about something that had its own functions and ends, which they might help to explain. When the new professors think of theory it is exclusively more [...]

Love to Learn, Learn to Love

By |2023-12-18T11:41:39-06:00December 17th, 2023|Categories: Beauty, Catholicism, Classical Education, Classical Learning, Classics, Education, Great Books, Liberal Learning, Truth|

To get the most out of your time here, I have some advice: Love to learn, ignore your grades, and learn to love — and then I promise that Thomas Aquinas College will radically change your life. Before I arrived here on campus for the first time 23 years ago, my high school classmates had [...]

Jane Austen Forever!

By |2023-12-15T18:08:48-06:00December 15th, 2023|Categories: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Books, Classics, Culture, Education, Fiction, Jane Austen, Literature, Television, Timeless Essays|

Pick up a Jane Austen novel, and you will discover that behind the long gowns and country dances, people in her era struggled with the same weaknesses we struggle with today. Well-written stories like Austen’s bring to life the human drama that is played out in every age, in every heart. I’ve been reading Jane [...]

Oracle of the Humanities: Charles Eliot Norton of Harvard

By |2023-11-13T20:13:35-06:00November 13th, 2023|Categories: American Republic, Democracy, Education, History, Humanities, Literature, Michael J. Connolly, Senior Contributors|

Charles Eliot Norton is unknown today outside historians of literature or education, but between Fort Sumter and Teddy Roosevelt he dominated Anglo-American literature and Harvard lecture halls. Beginning with optimism, in the years following Appomattox his perspective darkened into fears that American democracy encouraged selfishness, corruption, and the hatred of excellence. In the 1890s, Harvard [...]

A World in Need of Re-Enchantment: A New Leader at Wyoming Catholic College

By |2023-11-11T08:26:35-06:00November 10th, 2023|Categories: Catholicism, Education, Liberal Arts, Liberal Learning, Wyoming Catholic College|

We live in a world in need of re-enchantment; but re-enchanting love is rekindled in the hearts of people one at a time. To reclaim that sense of loving delight in God and the world, we need to give our students a break from the busyness and distraction that surrounds daily life, let them digitally [...]

The Joys of a Reflective Life

By |2023-11-22T11:40:59-06:00November 6th, 2023|Categories: Culture, Michael De Sapio, Senior Contributors, The Imaginative Conservative, Writing|

The essayist’s head is always in the clouds, his feet are never on the ground. What keeps me going is cultivating an inner joy. A sort of contemplative trance is for me the most blessed state in which to find oneself. Sometimes it even leads to prayer, the highest form of reflection and communion. As [...]

Liberal Learning, Great Books, & Paideia

By |2023-10-24T05:55:19-05:00October 23rd, 2023|Categories: E.B., Education, Eva Brann, Featured, Russell Kirk, Senior Contributors, St. John's College, Timeless Essays|

First, I want to say how honored I feel at receiving this prize named after Russell Kirk, an admirable writer, and Paideia, a noble practice. Even those of you who have not studied Greek may recognize what paideia means. It is the same word you can hear in “pediatrics,” the medical care of children, or [...]

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