In late 2023, ACES launched an ambitious project to develop a classical curriculum package suited to our Australian context that could be adopted (and adapted) by schools. As many of you are aware, a number of sample curricula – some quite detailed and practically ready to pick up and use – already exist in the United States. While purchasing these are helpful in the short-term, what we really lack is a comprehensive curriculum that specifically addresses Australian concerns and, more pointedly, that maps on to the Australian Curriculum.
Until you read the Classics, you simply don’t know how much of it is around you.
Sure, there are some things that have survived into popular culture, a herculean task to be sure. A few of the Olympic gods, a reference to a wooden horse, a quote about stepping into a river twice might be surmised without having had the opportunity to read and understand the originals... but this is just a simulacrum, a thin veneer of the wisdom and insight gained from the great texts.
Early in October, ACES hosted an immersion course in conjunction with Beautiful Teaching, “Teaching History Classically” with Mark Signorelli leading. Mark has over twenty years of experience as an educator and is the headmaster of Lumen Gentium Academy, a classical Catholic secondary school in New Jersey USA.
Wandering into a newsagent today you will find magazines covering fishing, motorbikes, science, politics, history, new technologies, and more. But the monopoly is still held by what are generally described as ‘women’s interests’: rows and rows of publications about weddings, homes and gardens, cake decorating, craft, health and wellbeing, and, of course, cuisine, couture, and celebrity gossip. How then, could any woman browse these well-stocked sections and still see a gaping hole? Because there is one—where a publication dedicated to the philosophical and cultural contributions of, and impact on, women ought inhabit.
About the Author: Veronika is Founding Editor of Mathilde Magazine, and resides in Melbourne. You can find out more about Mathilde at www.mathildemagazine.com or https://www.instagram.com/mathildemagazine/
Many readers would be familiar with the stories – the kids who came home from school talking about ‘gender theory’ or the epidemic of vaping in schools or even just the amount of money that is poured into the school system, with ever diminishing returns: unruly children that can’t read or write.
St John's College Information Evening The Ramsay Centre is hosting an evening to find out more about St John’s with Associate Professor Andrew Poe. He will deliver a lecture on “Thinking and Unthinking Political Necessity: ADemocratic Reading of Book 2 of Plato’s Republic" and share his experience of the Great Books education he received at St John’s College. The talk will be followed by light refreshments and conversation.
