On a blessed August morning in 2012, I gave birth to our third child, Austin. Our prayers for a healthy and happy little boy, adorned with two unexpected dimples, were answered. He was an immediate treasure. We savored our first few months with him as in no other season in our life. Austin seemed to [...] The post Think About Such Things appeared first on Memoria Press: Classical Education ..read more

My family delights in finding older, out-of-print books on Christian education because I delight in reading them. Written by Christian pedagogues in the 1800s or earlier, such books become a time capsule for all of us interested in passing on the best of classical Christian education. In a recent find called The Discourse of Errors [...] The post Letter from the Editor: Summer 2024 appeared first on Memoria Press: Classical Education ..read more

Repetitio Mater Studiorum. “Repetition is the mother of learning.” In our classical tradition we exalt repetition as a valuable tool for learning. But beyond prizing repetition as an aid in memorizing individual goals (Latin grammar forms, multiplication tables, Shakespeare soliloquies), a connected classical curriculum offers valuable repetition about important truths over the long course of [...] The post Vade Mecum: “Go with me.” appeared first on Memoria Press: Classical Education ..read more

When I decided to write a second, expanded edition of Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child’s Moral Imagination, my thoughts went through many iterations of the stories I might discuss in three new chapters. I could not include all the stories that came to mind. But I found room to [...] The post Three Fairy Tales on Goodness and Beauty appeared first on Memoria Press: Classical Education ..read more

I remember being flabbergasted twenty-five years ago when my mother-in-law, Cheryl Lowe, casually mentioned that she’d like to start a college one day. At the time—the late 90s—Memoria Press operated out of the Lowe family garage attic. Mrs. Lowe and Martin Cothran worked on their Latin and logic programs on weekdays, and Cheryl’s son, Brian [...] The post The Case for the College appeared first on Memoria Press: Classical Education ..read more

Is a classical education still relevant? Is it worth the time and the effort, or should our students be studying the modern world and modern languages, preparing for modern jobs? Every one of us wants to give our students the best possible education—but what is the best? The latter half of the twentieth century has [...] The post Three Pillars Upon Which Memoria Press is Built appeared first on Memoria Press: Classical Education ..read more

Prior to a discussion of poems everyone should know, it would be good to ensure that everyone knows the meaning of the word “poem.” It derives from ancient Greek and means “a thing that is made or created.” A poet is one who makes or creates a thing, and poiesis is the act that brings [...] The post Poems Everyone Should Know appeared first on Memoria Press: Classical Education ..read more

When the call came to contribute a “listicle” to this issue of The Classical Teacher, I did not shrink from the task (despite having never heard the word before). My first thought was: “That should be easy.” It has not been. The first difficulty in compiling a list of top ten compositions stems from the [...] The post 10 Classical Music Pieces Everyone Should Know appeared first on Memoria Press ..read more

Occasionally—okay, frequently—my wife asks me if I have done something that needs to be done. When I look at her blankly and say, “No. Was I supposed to do that?,” she says “You didn’t see the list I put on your desk?” as she scans the various disorganized stacks of paper. Then she makes me [...] The post Lists: A Requiem appeared first on Memoria Press ..read more

The power of the word “classical” cannot be underestimated, communicating as it does the ideas of excellence, truth, order, discipline, and beauty. It brings to mind something that has withstood the test of time and by virtue of this fact, something that participates in some way in the timeless and the eternal. When we examine [...] The post Why Should Christians Read the Pagan Classics? appeared first on Memoria Press ..read more