By Jonathan Hodge
Hello, and welcome to The King Alfred School’s classical education blog! Throughout the next year, the team at the school will be keeping this blog up to date with a variety of articles on or relating to classical education. As The King Alfred School works to revive the tradition of classical Christian education in the British Isles, this is just one of many tools we plan to utilise to raise awareness of the classical form of education. We hope that through our writings we can create a resource for interested parties to better understand the wealth of information that surrounds the classical tradition.
During our many conversations since we have arrived in the United Kingdom, Jessica and I have explained and reexplained classical education to rectors, vicars, acquaintances, and prospective parents. While these conversations are invaluable in our work, we also look forward to this dedicated space to support the work of the school as we introduce classical education to our community here in England. This blog will follow no set schedule or format, but each of our articles will fall into a list of topics that together form the core of the classical tradition. The idea is that our articles will be a ten to fifteen minute read giving a solid introduction/expostulation on the following:
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- Defining and explaining the term “classical.”
- Elaborating on the liberal arts and classical sciences
- The classical classroom
- Christ and classical education
- The heritage of the Western tradition
- Goodness, Truth, and Beauty
- Critical reviews
- Book recommendations
To start, an accessible book that would provide a good idea of where we are heading with classical Christian education is “The Abolition of Man” by C.S. Lewis.
If you are interested, follow along to get a brief introduction to the fundamentals of classical education. Our first article will be posted later this week providing the initial definition of some key words including “classical,” “liberal arts,” and “classical sciences.” If you are local and ever want to continue the conversation, Jessica and I would love to do so over a cup of tea. We mean it.