The Education of John Quincy Adams In this letter (full letter below), John Adams is writing to his son about his education, its importance, and the subjects that should be the focus of his attention, which were “Your exercises in Latin and Greek” which “must not be omitted a single day…”. He also encourages him to plod steadily, staying that “a regular distribution of your time is of great importance.” The Precious Advantage of a …
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[ This post originally appeared on my classical teacher site, Locus Classicus. ] [ Concluded from Part 1 ] For myself, I desire to take the classical Christian tradition with the utmost seriousness, meaning that I do not simply reject something found in it because it is not immediately apparent to me how that thing is sensible and might be true. On the other hand, our tradition itself permits us to imagine that, if we …
[ This post originally appeared on my classical teacher site, Locus Classicus. ] I want to approach this seemingly counter-productive question (at least for those of us involved in CCE, Classical Christian Education), by discussing two pretty provocative classical statements that recently came to my attention regarding politics and theology. These two statements, one from the 4th century B.C. and the other from the 16th century A.D. stake out the position that there is a …
Say what one will about mythology; there are times when it is an incredibly deep store of verifiable human knowledge drawn from experience and made more powerful through allegorization. Take Virgil’s remark in Book IV of the Aeneid that as soon as Aeneas and Dido have, according to Juno, been married, immediately “Rumor flies through Libya’s great cities. Rumor, swiftest of all the evils in the world.” Who is this Rumor? What happens if we pay attention …
What does the word “rhetoric” mean to you? Most people associate “rhetoric” with words that are big, showy, or empty, fake, and manipulative. Why would we want to teach our children how to use words to manipulate people? As an online teacher at Kepler Education who teaches Rhetoric, I’d like to submit that rhetoric is inescapable. We are surrounded by rhetoric. It’s not a question of whether our students are going to learn rhetoric–it’s a …