For a fledgling school that wants to add a few extracurricular activities, theater isn’t a bad place to start. You don’t need many people; it can be cheap; it brings the entire school community together; and, of course, it’s fun. Classical Christian schools, in particular, can tap into the deep history of drama as both […] The post Love the Audience and Do What You Please appeared first on CiRCE Institute ..read more

Animal Farm was unexpectedly one of our all-time favorite schoolbooks. “Four legs good! Two legs baaaaaad!” my daughter began chanting through the house. She loves animals, and my boys are of an age that delights in finding hypocrisy in others. And I, unexpectedly, was chastened by Boxer the workhorse. As the pig Napoleon, leader of […] The post I Will Work Harder? appeared first on CiRCE Institute ..read more

We live in a world where college is considered necessary for a full life. Good jobs, social status, and more, all seem to be dependent on it. However, when I think of the college establishment, I don’t think of education; I think of the “Pajama Boy” ad: a photo of a young man wearing pajamas that […] The post Pajama Boy College appeared first on CiRCE Institute ..read more

The following is the sixth in a series of posts on teaching rhetoric. After laying much groundwork to understand what the three modes of persuasion are, as well as what an appeal is, we are now ready to begin exploring particular appeals and their fallacious counterparts! We will do this by exploring a number of […] The post Rhetoric Part 6: Ad Hominem—Appeal to the Man appeared first on CiRCE Institute ..read more

This article was originally published on the author’s Substack platform, Polytropism, and is published here with permission. I did Classical education backwards. Classical educators love talking about the trivium, the three stages of grammar, logic, and rhetoric that constitute the broad developmental categories from kindergarten to twelfth grade. Together, they function like a rhetorical epicheirema, […] The post Order and Sight: An Encomium for the CiRCE Apprenticeship appeared first on CiRCE Institute ..read more

The following is written by a recent high school graduate, Matthew DeGraaf, who will be studying Secondary Mathematics Education at Geneva College.  I spent my whole life being classically educated without knowing how it was supposed to benefit me. Why was I supposed to care for the subjects that had nothing to do with the […] The post How Teachers Kill Classical Education appeared first on CiRCE Institute ..read more

In J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Two Towers, the wizard Gandalf describes the palantír as a device that allows people “to see far off and to converse in thought with one another.” As someone who uses video conferencing for a significant portion of each day, the device Gandalf describes is certainly familiar. The idea of magical or […] The post Teens Beware! Gandalf Wants Your Smartphones appeared first on CiRCE Institute ..read more

The following is adapted from a graduation speech recently delivered by the author. In the opening scenes of the Odyssey, Athena presents a vision of manhood. She sees a man as one who protects his family, who upholds his ancestors’ honor, and who stands up to wicked men. She encourages Telemachus to be like his […] The post A Brief Charge to Senior boys Graduating from Christian Schools appeared first on CiRCE Institute ..read more

The end of the school year is the right time for a speech. It’s the time for teachers to make speeches to their students and for administrators to make speeches to teachers. You don’t need to take each student or teacher aside individually because the end of the school year calls for the sort of […] The post What Teachers Need To Hear From Administrators At The End Of The Year appeared first on CiRCE Institute ..read more

Have you ever had the experience of hearing or seeing something that brought back a memory related to what you heard or saw? Growing up, my father always had a band. Almost everyone in our family played an instrument and we would often sit around playing old songs in a circle on the back porch […] The post Thinking In Latin appeared first on CiRCE Institute ..read more