Blog
Dr. Jeremy Bell
Earlier this year I delivered a lecture on Robespierre and the Reign of Terror to a classroom of undergraduates. After I had finished, I overheard one student say to another, “who needs TV drama when you have history?” While I was naturally pleased at her enthusiasm for the content, her words did not sit easily with me. Historical narratives can indeed be as gripping as anything seen on screen – it is no accident that the genre of “historical drama” boasts some of the finest television series ever made, such as the BBC’s I, Claudius – but the academic study of history is supposed to offer the student something more than mere stimulating or cathartic spectacles. What, however, is this “more”? This question has bothered me ever since my own undergraduate days. Setting aside its possible entertainment value, why exactly do we study history?
Annalise Day
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
-- Excerpt from The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
Robert Frost’s words have stuck with me ever since my first semester literature lecture at Campion College. Perhaps because the scenario they described felt so familiar to me, given my seemingly constant struggles with indecision. Or perhaps because as Catholics, we are called to choose Christ in all things. Or it could be because as young adults in the 21st century, we are often shunned if we choose to stray away from the cultural path that champions leftist conformity. Whatever the case, making the decision to take the road less travelled and attend Campion College in 2015 has proved invaluable to me. It has given me an enriching education, irreplaceable friendships, and the tools I need to aspire toward seeking and living out truth, beauty and goodness in all aspects of my life.
Ben McCabe
Aristotle said, “All men by nature desire to know.” The primary purpose of Augustine Academy is to impart a deep love of learning and a genuine desire for depth and meaning in the lives of young people. The objective is that throughout their time at the Academy, students will grow to understand learning as dynamic and exciting pursuit of the Truth, rather than a utilitarian means to a job.
Here is the recording from our July open reading group! Additionally, you will find links related to this month's reading and discussion.
Jonothan Lethbridge
HSC, VCE, QCE, WACE, SACE, TASC, NTCET & AST.
The final exam of each state. After taking the HSC not all that long ago I was reflecting upon what the education system asks of students and I remember what one of my favourite teachers used to say during year 12 “Play the game.”
“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” This popularly cited quote from Aristotle isn’t actually by the Greek philosopher at all. Despite its false attribution, the statement does encapsulate something essential to his thinking on education and was a perspective that had informed Western pedagogy for millennia: that education is about soul transformation.
- Written by: Jonathan Hili
Former Prime Minister, the Hon John Howard OM AC, sat down with Campion College President Dr Paul Morrissey to discuss the state of education in Australia, and why a traditional liberal arts education is so crucial to the future of the country.
Stefanie Lorimer
The notion of a well-trained mind is familiar to the classical educator and the aim of this training is equally transparent: to engender wisdom and virtue. In 1972 Professor László Dobszay, referred to the music pedagogy of the great 20th Century musicologist, composer and philosopher Zoltán Kodály when he asserted that adding a well-trained ear, heart and hand would allow the human spirit to “even today overcome the apparent destiny of history” (Dobszay, 1972). What may we glean from Kodály’s pedagogical approach? How are a well-trained ear and a well-trained heart connected? How is this connection important to classical education?
Barry Spurr
I
Annie Proulx, who is incapable of writing an imperfect sentence and whose prose is more genuinely poetic than much that passes for ‘poetry’ today, reflects, in Bird Cloud, that ‘sometimes I don’t know what poetry is’. She will ’stumble into and around poetry, frequently knocked sideways’ by it. But she certainly recognises it when it is genuine, citing a poem ‘I liked so much I almost fell over’. Real poems, for Proulx, have a kind of physical force and impact, being possessed of the ‘Thing Which Cannot Be Explained’.[2]
Steven Schwartz
In the late 1960s, a group of inmates in South Africa’s notorious Robben Island prison, staged a performance of Antigone, Sophocles’ 2000-year-old tragedy. One prisoner, with little stage experience, was keen to participate. His name was Nelson Mandela.
In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela describes his role as King Creon:
At the outset, Creon is sincere and patriotic, and there is wisdom in his early speeches when he suggests that experience is the foundation of leadership and that obligations to the people take precedence over loyalty to an individual.
Natalie Kennedy
English in a nutshell (thanks for that metaphor Shakespeare!) is all about storytelling. At one of our English Teachers Association conferences author of The Book Thief, Mark Zusak, stated that “really, what we are made of are stories.” Stories that are full of tragedy and triumph, ups and downs, birth, rebirth, death, happiness and sadness, destruction and creation, colourful characters and dialogue. In the most simplistic sense, people’s life can be understood as have a beginning, a middle and an end. Everyone here, has an individual story of their life. And as a community here at Northside we have a collective, corporate story about who we are and what our task is, and where we are headed. Beyond these stories though, is a larger story. A metanarrative. The bible is that story and it is a story about who God is, and who we are in relation to Him. This grand narrative of the world and humankind’s place within it invites our students to consider that this ultimate author may have written a part for them to play in His story of redemption.
Karl Schmude
The English essayist and humourist, Max Beerbohm, once remarked that, after reading a single paragraph of a work, he knew whether the author had received a classical education. He based this judgment, not on the display of learning or the citing of classical references, but simply on the quality of the writing. Having received a classical education at Oxford, he extolled the virtues of Latin in cultivating precision in the use of language and the expression of clear thought.
James Franklin
Mathematics has always been a core part of western education, from the medieval quadrivium to the large amount of arithmetic and algebra still compulsory in high schools. It is an essential part. Its commitment to exactitude and to rigid demonstration balances humanist subjects devoted to appreciation and rhetoric as well as giving the lie to postmodernist insinuations that all “truths” are subject to political negotiation.
Denise O'Hagan
As a poet and editor, this is a sentiment I’ve heard expressed more than once, albeit less bluntly. And I can’t help thinking that it’s a very modern question: our twenty-first century world increasingly values those activities which can be linked to tangible and financially lucrative ‘outcomes’ over others. This is reflected in turn in current trends in education, both in Australia and overseas.
Cheree Harvey
While preparing for our Parent Practicum on 28 June, I have had the marvelous opportunity to dwell on yet again, the fifteen tools that Classical Conversations promotes and teaches to gift your child (and yourself) a classical education. These are not new, they are derived from the classical style of learning from centuries before with Aristotle and Plato, and they really help to train the brain to think classically.
