This article considers the coherence of educational movements using the progressive education of the early twentieth century, also known as ¡°The New Movement,¡± as a case study. Educators at classical schools often define classical education in opposition to progressive education, especially as advocated by reformers such as John Dewey. But what was progressive education? Progressive reformers have been a puzzle for historians to this day, remaking America¡¯s schools with a set of diverse and at times contradictory principles and policies that defies any unifying philosophical explanation. Though not philosophically unified, the progressive movement satisfies Carl Kaestle¡¯s definition of ideology and thus proves helpful in understanding educational movements. This article argues that progressives maintained an illusion of agreement by consistently utilizing the same loaded rhetoric for education, though the terms meant different things to different proponents: ¡°nature,¡± ¡°science,¡± and ¡°progress.¡± A variety of primary sources illustrate how the use of rhetoric provided apparent philosophical coherence where it did not truly exist. The article ends by identifying the progressive movement as a cautionary tale for classical education.

The contemporary classical education movement has grown rapidly and is comprised of a wide variety of private schools, homeschoolers, public charter schools, policy makers, higher education programs, professional associations, journals, trade publications, and think tanks. What is it that unites this thick network of disparate individuals and organizations into a cohesive movement? This article attempts to answer that question by explaining ten principles that have characterized the tradition of classical education throughout history across millennia, continents, languages, and cultures. While not exhaustive, these ten principles represent central tenants of the long tradition of classical education and the contemporary classical education movement. The principles are thus a philosophically and historically grounded means by which to differentiate classical education from other educational paradigms and also provide a common understanding of classical education around which various constituencies within the contemporary movement can coalesce.

Amid accusations of racist portrayals of Native and Black characters, the use of Laura Ingalls Wilder¡¯s Little House series in public schools is declining sharply. Many private classical schools, however, continue to utilize the series both as an aid to learning about a seminal period of American history and as a way of inculcating virtues, such as endurance and self-reliance. This paper seeks to justify the novels¡¯ incorporation in classical schools beyond these reasons, arguing that Wilder raises questions about heroism, piety, and family that are prevalent throughout the Western literary tradition. In particular, this article places the series in dialogue with Homer¡¯s Odyssey, considering the heroic statuses of husbands and wives. Both Wilder and Homer portray the detrimental effects of an adventurous husband that must be countered by a wife¡¯s equally weighty and heroic civilizing force. As such, the Little House series and the Odyssey fittingly serve as bookends to a classical student¡¯s education.

This article engages critically with Stephen Wolfe¡¯s The Case for Christian Nationalism (Canon Press, 2022) and the Christian nationalist movement more broadly. It specifically examines Wolfe¡¯s dual assertions that rightly ordered church communities (such as nations) cannot be composed of ¡°two or more ethnicities¡± and that furthermore this tenet is rooted in ¡°the Reformed theological tradition.¡± This article argues, to the contrary, that an ethnocentric ecclesiology runs directly counter to the best insights of the Protestant Reformers. In particular, Luther and Calvin offer rich interpretations of the Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11, which narrate a rather different account of humanity¡¯s present divisions than that of Wolfe. This conclusion is intended to serve as a launching point for a more far-ranging discussion of Christian nationalism¡¯s present challenge to Christian institutions¡ªincluding many classical schools.

This article considers and in the main argues for Plato¡¯s views on education, particularly as expounded in Republic and Laws. Plato sees education primarily in terms of an induction into goodness, rather than part of the pursuit of wealth or worldly reputation. Along with his contemporaries in ancient Greece, Plato recognized that the foundations of education will be found in gymnastic and music. The reasons for this are explained and defended, taking music to include the broad work of the muses of history and the other arts as well as music in the narrow sense. A Platonic childhood education will cover all the seven liberal arts, with what we might call philosophy and theology coming later on. This view is by and large defended, though Plato¡¯s bias towards the mathematical sciences at the expense of the empirical is criticised.

Despite their ubiquity and widespread acceptance and in contemporary education, formal grading systems are relatively recent innovations in the history and philosophy of education. Far from innocuous tools which aid the student¡¯s academic development, grades and grading systems developed as ad hoc tools for ranking students against one another in academic competitions. This article examines the history of assessment, grades, and grading in light of the longer tradition of education and suggests alternative practices could better orient students toward the true, good, beautiful, holy, healthy, and beneficial. By understanding how and why contemporary approaches to grades developed, classical educators will be equipped to mitigate the unintended and often unseen adverse consequences grades have on their students. Ultimately, this article seeks to liberate teachers and students to pursue the intrinsic goods of learning over against the fleeting and extrinsic rewards of making the grade.

While classical schools today typically exhibit a carefully considered approach to the linguistic arts of the trivium, the equally important mathematical arts of the quadrivium have received relatively little consideration. This being so, mathematics is often approached in ways that are not distinctly classical. This article seeks to establish the importance of the quadrivial arts as a means of ascending from lower to higher things. Though most know Plato¡¯s comparison of a lack of education to being imprisoned in a cave, relatively few are familiar with the role the quadrivial arts play in ascending from the cave. Because the mathematical arts cultivate and direct the imagination, they enable students to move beyond sensible particulars to the formation of forms and figures by the mind. Thus, the mathematical arts help free us from an undue preoccupation with lower things and direct us toward the pursuit of knowledge and what truly is.

The term liberal arts is widely used but seldom defined. While casual usage allows license for flexibility, academics should exercise care with terms that probe the vitals of their calling. This paper proposes a workable definition of liberal arts. It draws upon historical usage to address several concerns that figure into such a definition: it clarifies what an art is, it differentiates arts from sciences, it distinguishes liberal arts from other arts, and it also distinguishes liberal arts from humanities. Alternative definitions may also be viable, but only if they duly recognize historical usage and differentiate the term liberal arts from terms related to it.

Classical education includes an apprenticeship in the art of rhetoric. It also gives a central place to the study of major works of literature, philosophy, and theology. There is often, however, an assumed disconnection between the art of rhetoric and the study of great texts. This disconnection undermines students¡¯ ability to hear the voices of these texts as conversation partners in ongoing debates. This article illustrates how historically-based rhetorical-poetic reading enables us to hear the voices in a given text and to consider how they work together. The argument first outlines some modern assumptions about the relation between poetry and rhetoric. The second part explains what rhetorical-poetic reading involves when approaching John Milton¡¯s epic, Paradise Lost. The final section focuses on the second book of Milton¡¯s poem, establishing how layered persuasive purposes constitute the fabric of the work and what the poem reveals through its curious dramatization of demonic deliberation.

Augustine¡¯s De Magistro (On the Teacher) is a short and relatively minor dialogue that often is overlooked. Nevertheless, it is an important text, both for its role in the development of key themes in Augustine¡¯s thought and because of its epistemological and pedagogical contributions to the philosophy of education. This paper explores the significance of De Magistro in three steps. First, it introduces the dialogue and offers a summary of Augustine¡¯s argument therein. It then examines important contributions that this dialogue makes in the development of Augustine¡¯s thought regarding signs and the inner teacher. Finally, it explores some educational implications of De Magistro regarding the nature of teaching and the use of Socratic dialogue that Augustine plunders from the previous work of the pagan Plato.

As the classic of classics and the bridge between pagan antiquity and the Christian era, Virgil¡¯s Aeneid stands at the center of the humanities¡¯ Great Conversation. Yet this poem of Empire, with its flawed hero and its ambivalence toward divine and temporal power, raises more questions than it answers about the nature of human history. The epic¡¯s true moral complexity, mirroring the insoluble conundrum that is human life, makes it especially relevant in an era whose political polarization resembles civil war. Reflecting on centuries of readers¡¯ deeply personal relationships with the Aeneid, this article discusses how even today the ¡°greatest text¡± can provide companionship and inspiration on our life¡¯s journey.