This weekend I was talking to some folks about the different levels of rigor that may be employed in a classical education. Some were adamant that there is a lot of new ‘fad’ curriculum out there that calls itself classical … Continue reading
Author Archives: Lene Jaqua
Preparing to Read the Great Books
Classical Writing’s recommended literature selections are now available on our website. But I have since received several emails about how to prepare for (as well as how to tackle) reading what we call “Great Books”. Well, let’s start by saying that every … Continue reading
Using Older Literature in Classical Education
Among those educators who honestly strive hard to teach kids to write well, who believe in punctuation, spelling, syntactical, and logical correctness, there are two schools of thought: 1. The correctness school: People in this school tend to prefer modern … Continue reading
To New Homeschoolers Part II
Reading and writing are the monarchs of learning. Classical education traditionally aimed at oral and written comprehension and expression. If you do not have command of your own language both to take in what others have expressed and to express … Continue reading
To New Homeschoolers part I
What is a classical education? Can you buy it in a box? Can you find a simple three step formula on how to teach your kids classically? No. Why not? Because being educated classically is being educated to THINK, and … Continue reading
Modern Minds vs. Minds of Antiquity
How do we think? …about ourselves, about our means of persuation, about what other people say and how they say it? We with our modern heritage think much about ‘self’, about how we come across, about “the real me”, and … Continue reading
Learning to think
So often, new moms using Classical Writing will ask on our message boards whether their students really need to outline. “My son already knows the story and can tell it from memory,” a mom will say. “Why bother with the … Continue reading
Posted in Classical Writing Method
Tagged Analysis & Imitation, Fable, Narrative, Writing Projects
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Books and Movies
Recently I began to dig into a book called Story. It is a handbook for writing screen plays for movies. No …I have no aspirations towards writing for the silver screen, but in preparation for Classical Writing – Shakespeare, I … Continue reading
About the meaning of words
This weekend I was musing over the word ‘nature’. It struck me that ‘nature’ has to be one of the most abused/over-used/confusing words in the Western languages. When we talk about a person’s ‘nature’, we may mean the essence of … Continue reading
How we write Classical Writing
A lot of people have asked us how we ‘think up’ our lessons and writing projects for Classical Writing. To say we follow the ancient Greek progymnasmata doesn’t ring a bell with most of you. And why should it? Progym… … Continue reading