A glimpse inside Hillsdale College's network of classical schools across the country.
"The beginning is thought to be more than half of the whole."- Aristotle We often advertise classical education as an education for the whole human person. We are not training people for careers, we say, but minds for Wisdom; we aim not to improve skill sets so much as we aim to improve the human… Continue reading The First Step toward Wisdom
Self portrait, by Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (1790). The most frequent piece of advice I have given students over the years is to slow down on art assignments. It is very easy to become impatient in the studio and want to skip steps or move forward prematurely. Admittedly, I am guilty of often becoming… Continue reading Quality Over Quantity
Petrarch, the fourteenth century Italian monk, sometimes referred to as the “father of humanism”, famously wrote a series of letters to classical writers such as Cicero, Seneca, Homer, and Socrates. These writers having been dead for more than a thousand years at the time, Petrarch didn't expect a response. But he wrote nevertheless because he… Continue reading Why Our Students Write in their Books
One of my favorite features of the Hillsdale College-affliated schools is that there is an equal focus on teachers educating both the minds and the hearts of their students. The curriculum we teach is ripe with opportunities to discuss virtue and how the choices of different people affect their lives and the lives of those… Continue reading Lancelot Plays Football
Movies can be so captivating. They take us on a journey through events, lives, struggles, and victories. For me, I am particularly drawn in when the movie ends and right before the credits, I see the words based on a true story. When the movie is based on real events, I relate more to the… Continue reading “Based on a True Story”
Would you like to learn more about education in America, classical schools, or liberal education? Or, would you like to prepare for a career teaching in or leading a Hillsdale-affiliated classical school? Here are some places to begin.
Instead of helping us to deepen ourselves and take a mature and complex view of the past, history is increasingly employed as a simple bludgeon, which picks its targets mechanically—often based on little more than a popular cliché—and strikes.
Teachers from Hillsdale College's affiliated K-12 schools gather to discuss classical science instruction on the Hillsdale College campus. What's the difference between a great science lesson, and a great science lesson in a classical school? We are the principles behind the classical approach to teaching science? For the last several decades, the teaching of science… Continue reading Classical Science Instruction vs. the STEM Approach
We aren't music teachers. We are child teachers who teach music. One of the teachers I used to work with is a very reflective person, and once in a while she sends me a text message out of the blue with her thoughts about this and that. We’ve talked about her family’s road trips across… Continue reading How to Hire a Great Music Teacher
Online K-12 education is certainly not ideal, but for teachers and families across the country it’s sometimes the only option. What can we do to make the most of it?
The Classical Classroom 