Education and Virtue

"Education is properly understood as the care and perfection of the soul. Excellence (arete) is not primarily excellence of skill but excellence of virtue." ~ Richard Gamble on Plato's view of education, The Great Tradition

Poetic Education and Boys

This is a subject near and dear to my heart!  Cindy at Dominion Family has a thoughtful post on this.  Here's a quote:

But it is the regular boys, the sports-loving boys, the farmer boys, the active boys who will benefit most from a poetic education: the Spurgeons and the George MacDonalds and the Eric Liddells and the Almanzo Wilders.

I'm trying to spend some time on this Christmas break reflecting and checking my home education course, so I appreciate this food for thought. 

Why Teach Latin? continued

"Four years of high-school Latin would dramatically arrest the decline in American education... Nothing so enriches the vocabulary, so instructs about English grammar and syntax, so creates a discipline of the mind, an elegance of expression, and serves as a gateway to the thinking and values of Western civilization as mastery of a page of Virgil or Livy (except perhaps Sophocles’s Antigone in Greek or Thucydides’ dialogue at Melos)."

~Victor Davis Hanson

Read the full article here

HT:  Justin Taylor

A Book of Comfort, by Elizabeth Goudge

My friend Linda Dean introduced me to the novels and writings of Elizabeth Goudge years ago. Yesterday I pulled this anthology of poetry and prose from my shelf to peruse again.  I love this quote this from her preface, describing the comfort which books give us…

"…What are the sources of comfort to which we turn in what Saint Augustine…calls "our mortal weariness"?  The answer is that our existence is as light with comfort as it is weighted with weariness.  The sources of our comfort are legion, and cannot be counted, but if we attempted the impossible and tried to make a list most of us would place books very high indeed, perhaps second only to faith, for reading is not only a pleasure in itself, with its concomitants of stillness, quietness and forgetfulness of self, but in what we read many of our other comforts are present with us like reflections seen in a mirror.  If the light of our faith flickers we can make it steady again by reading of the faith of the saints, and hearing poetry sing to us the songs of the lovers of God.  In the absence of children we can read about them, and in the cold and darkness of midwinter, look in the mirror of our book and see flowers and butterflies, and spring passing into the glow and warmth of summer…"

I also like her "categories" of comforting things (from the table of contents):

We Are Comforted When We Consider the Glory and Wisdom of Creation… The Comfort We Have in Delighting in Each Other… The Comfort of Faith… The Comfort We Have in Living in the World of Imagination

Elizabeth Goudge (1900-1984) was the daughter of a clergyman of the Church of England. You can read more about her here, and see the extensive bibliography of her works.  A couple of my favorites are The Dean's Watch;  a trilogy about the fictional Eliot family: The Bird in the Tree, The Herb of Grace (also published under the title The Pilgrim's Inn), and The Heart of the Family; and her children's fairy tale, Linnets and Valerians, which I read for the first time last week, and which I thoroughly enjoyed!

Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks

Or Learning Website Design As I Approach Middle Age

I did it, and I am so proud of myself. Never mind that it has taken practically every spare moment for the past 6 months. It is a nice feeling to see it up there and running. And it stays done, unlike laundry, meals, and cleaning. :)

Take a look and see what you think.

And now maybe I can resume posting once in a while.

Homeschool or Classical School?

Cindy at Dominion Family has some interesting thoughts on this issue.

I posted this comment on her blog the day before in response to a related post:

It’s my 2 graduated scholars, both godly and intelligent young men whom I respect and enjoy, that keep me going…wouldn’t trade my relationship with them for anything…and I find it hard to believe it could have been built any other way…

And…how would I ever find the time to read aloud for 2 hours a day to my younger crew if they were in school?

Nope…not worth it. Too much I’m not willing to sacrifice for the “potential” academic benefits…which I’m not even sure exist.

This is on my heart b/c I’ve had several conversations about this from younger moms fearing their lack of ability to do high school with their boys.

Why Latin? Indeed...

Excellent post from Cindy at Dominion Family about the reasons for teaching Latin to our kids.