It is not more spending or a new and innovative program. Rather the solution, according to authors Gene Edward Veith, Jr. and Andrew Kern, is classical education.“America education cannot improve until we have a new theory of education. Fortunately, one exists,” Veith and Kern write. “An increasing number of schools and educators are returning to an approach to education that is the bedrock of Western culture: classical education.”Veith and Kern examine contemporary education theories that have failed during the 20th century. Among them are modernism, postmodernism, and multiculturalism. They in turn produced Whole Language, Goals 2000, School-to-Work, critical thinking and technology in the classroom. It is clear that these approaches are not working.In Classical Education, the authors examine six different approaches elementary and secondary schools use to tie the “3 Rs” to the moral and civic education of the Western tradition. They include Christian Classicism, which is advocated by the Association of Classical and Christian Schools; Democratic Classicism, which has been adopted by over 100 public schools; Moral Classicism, which is based on the idea that education is a path to virtue; and Liberating Classicism, Marva Collins’ program for minority children in poor neighborhoods that emphasizes phonics and character education.This revised and updated edition includes new chapters on classical education in Catholic schools and in the homeschooling movement.Veith and Kern also review the best liberal arts colleges in the U.S. that teach Western tradition and they provide a directory listing of organizations that work for a return to classical education.

    David Hicks contends that the classical tradition promotes a spirit of inquiry that is concerned with the development of style and conscience, which makes it an effective and meaningful form of education. Dismissing notions that classical education is elitist and irrelevant, Hicks argues that the classical tradition can meet the needs of our increasingly technological society as well as serve as a feasible model for mass education.

    To succeed in the world today, students need an education that equips them to recognize current trends, to be creative and flexible to respond to changing circumstances, to demonstrate sound judgment to work for society's good, and to gain the ability to communicate persuasively.

    Contrasted to the academic and cultural fads often based on the scientific methodology of the Cartesian legacy, or any number of trendy experiments in education, Poetic Knowledge returns to the freshness and importance of first knowledge, a knowledge of the senses and the passions."Poetic knowledge" is not the knowledge of poetry, nor is it even knowledge in the sense that we often think of today, that is, the mastery of scientific, technological, or business information. Rather, it is an intuitive, obscure, mysterious way of knowing reality, not always able to account for itself, but absolutely essential if one is ever to advance properly to the higher degrees of certainty. From Socrates to the Middle Ages, and even into the twentieth century, the case for poetic knowledge is revealed with the care of philosophical archeology. Taylor demonstrates the effectiveness of the poetic mode of education through his own observations as a teacher, and two experimental "poetic" schools in the twentieth century.

    The authors demonstrate how the flowering of modern science depended upon the Judeo-Christian worldview of the existence of a real physical contingent universe, created and held in being by an omnipotent personal God, with man having the capabilities of rationality and creativity, and thus being capable of investigating it. Pearcey and Thaxton make excellent use of analogies to elucidate difficult concepts, and the clarity of their explanations for the nonspecialist, for example, of Einstein's relativity theories or of the informational content of DNA and its consequences for theories of prebiotic evolution, are quite exceptional, alone making the volume worth purchasing." --Dr. David Shotton, Lecturer in Cell Biology, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford"Pearcey and Thaxton show that the alliance between atheism and science is a temporary aberration and that, far from being inimical to science, Christian theism has played and will continue to play an important role in the growth of scientific understanding. This brilliant book deserves wide readership." --Phillip E. Johnson, University of California, Berkeley"This book would be an excellent text for courses on science and religion, and it should be read by all Christians interested in the relationship between science and their theological commitments." --J.P. Moreland, Professor of Philosophy, Talbot School of Theology, Biola University

    The addition of this book is a must for all upper-level Christian school curricula and for college students and adults interested in math or related fields of science and religion. It will serve as a solid refutation for the claim, often made in court, that mathematics is one subject, which cannot be taught from a distinctively Biblical perspective.

    S. Lewis observed how modern education was changing our conception of what it means to be human. By cutting off students from the transcendent values of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, modern schools ceased cultivating virtue in students and instead communicated a mechanistic vision of the world that viewed students as products to be engineered. Lewis believed that in seeking to control nature, modern “conditioners” would also seek to control humans and remake them according to the preference of the conditioners, since any appeal to Truth, Goodness, or Beauty had been rejected. Lewis argued that we must recover these transcendent values in order to prevent the dehumanizing tendency in modern education and renew the cultivation of virtue in our students.With Awakening Wonder, Steve Turley demonstrates that it is precisely such a recovery that is at the heart of the current classical education renewal. Once again, Truth, Goodness, and Beauty are celebrated as those objective values that are essential for cultivating students as flourishing human beings. In these pages you will discover the history and development of these transcendent values and how they redeem our senses and sanctify our imaginations. Teachers will also learn how to incorporate these values into their teaching to awaken awe and wonder in both themselves and their students.

    Based in Milan, Italy, Giussani heads the Communion and Liberation movement and is a council for the Congregation for the Clergy and the Pontifical Council for the Laity. He discusses education in terms of fundamental truths, in particular, the element of faith. It presents the argument that without the fundamental factors of tradition, the young person is merely a fragile leaf separated from its branch.

    Instead, this booklet describes the liberal arts as a central part of a larger and more robust paradigm of classical education that should consist of piety, gymnastic, music, liberal arts, philosophy, and theology. The booklet also recovers the means by which classical educators developed more than just intellectual virtue (by means of the seven liberal arts) but holistically cultivated the mind, body, will, and affections. A must-read for educators wanting to take a second big step toward recovering the tradition of classical education.

    Even many within the system admit that it is failing. While many factors contribute, Douglas Wilson lays much blame on the idea that education can take place in a moral vacuum. It is not possible for education to be nonreligious, deliberately excluding the basic questions about life. All education builds on the foundation of someone's worldview. Education deals with fundamental questions that require religious answers. Learning to read and write is simply the process of acquiring the tools to ask and answer such questions.A second reason for the failure of public schools, Wilson feels, is modern teaching methods. He argues for a return to a classical education, firm discipline, and the requirement of hard work.Often educational reforms create new problems that must be solved down the road. This book presents alternatives that have proved workable in experience."Good at diagnosing our educational afflictions, Douglas Wilson is still better at finding remedies. His Logos School provides a model, a practical design, for the restoration in the curriculum of Christian humanism--as contrasted with what Christopher Dawson called secular humanism." --Russell Kirk, D. Litt., editor, The University Bookman

    This practical, insightful book is essential reading for any parent.

    Today, students are taught an encyclopedia of subjects but they are not taught the basic skills of learning: to discover, to reason, and to apply. They are not taught the trivium.Can you homeschool in a classical style without compromising your Christian principles? Classical education must be sifted through the critical screen of the Scriptures to be transformed into a Biblical model.Can you homeschool in a classical style without buckling under the burden? There is only so much time in the day. For every subject, and for every age, we have a workable plan which leaves you free to breathe. You can continue to use other approaches to homeschooling within the framework of classical education.Some of the distinctives of Teaching the Trivium include:--an emphasis on reading aloud to your children--studying logic from ages ten through high school, rather than using it as a one or two year supplement--ancient literature from a Christian perspective -- is it really necessary to read Homer?--choices in language study, with an emphasis on Biblical Greek--why INFORMAL math or grammar before age ten may be a better choice--how to give your children the tools they need to teach themselves--how to homeschool in a classical style without buckling under the burden--a workable plan for every subject and for every age which avoids homeschool burnout -- there is only so much time in the day--how to continue using other approaches to homeschooling within the framework of classical education--homeschooling is not alternative education -- homeschooling was here first

    Now, in this elegantly written and passionate book, Vigen Guroian provides the perfect complement to books such as Bennett's, offering parents and teachers a much-needed roadmap to some of our finest children's stories. Guroian illuminates the complex ways in which fairy tales and fantasies educate the moral imagination from earliest childhood. Examining a wide range of stories--from Pinocchio and The Little Mermaid to Charlotte's Web, The Velveteen Rabbit, The Wind in the Willows, and the Chronicles of Narnia--he argues that these tales capture the meaning of morality through vivid depictions of the struggle between good and evil, in which characters must make difficult choices between right and wrong, or heroes and villains contest the very fate of imaginary worlds. Character and the virtues are depicted compellingly in these stories; the virtues glimmer as if in a looking glass, and wickedness and deception are unmasked of their pretensions to goodness and truth. We are made to face the unvarnished truth about ourselves, and what kind of people we want to be. Throughout, Guroian highlights the classical moral virtues such as courage, goodness, and honesty, especially as they are understood in traditional Christianity. At the same time, he so persuasively evokes the enduring charm of these familiar works that many readers will be inspired to reread their favorites and explore those they may have missed.

    It investigates literature, culture, history, and religion in an attempt to show that education is increasingly about bureaucratic training and less about scholarly truth. A warning that cultural and artistic treasures of classical and Christian civilizations must be preserved, this provocative analysis diagnoses a cultural and societal malaise facing modern Western societies.

    S. Lewis gathers together forty book reviews, never before reprinted, as well as four major essays which have been unavailable for many decades. A fifth essay, "Image and Imagination," is published for the first time. Taken together, the collection presents some of Lewis's finest literary criticism and religious exposition. The essays and reviews substantiate his reputation as an eloquent and authoritative critic across a wide range of literature, and as a keen judge of contemporary scholarship, while his reviews of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings will be of additional interest to scholars and students of fantasy.