Classical Me, Classical Thee: Squander Not Thine Education
Classical Me, Classical Thee: Squander Not Thine Education

Author: Rebekah Merkle

Publisher: Canon Press & Book Service

Published: 2017-08-22

Total Pages: 110

ISBN-13: 1591282098

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"Everyone is so busy giving the classical education to the students that I'm not sure people have taken the time to actually tell them why it matters..." Rebekah Merkle knows which high school classes you like and which you roll your eyes at, which books you enjoy and which you kinda skim. That's because she went through this whole thing called classical education, too: She was a guinea pig in one of the very first classical Christian schools in the country. Written for students by a (former) student, Classical Me, Classical Thee is lighthearted and--most importantly for you busy high-schoolers--very short. It has a simple goal: to explain why you students are doing what you do in class. (SPOILER: Grades aren't the point--you won't use your knowledge of the Iliad Book 5 every year until you die.) What you do in class is a drill -- and nobody drills for the sake of the drill. You do drills so that you can win the game. The real tragedy, though, would be if you didn't know you were doing drills... or didn't know there was a game at all. Grades aren't the point. So drill to win.

Rescuing Socrates
Rescuing Socrates

Author: Roosevelt Montas

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2023-03-21

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0691224390

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A Dominican-born academic tells the story of how the Great Books transformed his life—and why they have the power to speak to people of all backgrounds What is the value of a liberal education? Traditionally characterized by a rigorous engagement with the classics of Western thought and literature, this approach to education is all but extinct in American universities, replaced by flexible distribution requirements and ever-narrower academic specialization. Many academics attack the very idea of a Western canon as chauvinistic, while the general public increasingly doubts the value of the humanities. In Rescuing Socrates, Dominican-born American academic Roosevelt Montás tells the story of how a liberal education transformed his life, and offers an intimate account of the relevance of the Great Books today, especially to members of historically marginalized communities. Montás emigrated from the Dominican Republic to Queens, New York, when he was twelve and encountered the Western classics as an undergraduate in Columbia University’s renowned Core Curriculum, one of America’s last remaining Great Books programs. The experience changed his life and determined his career—he went on to earn a PhD in English and comparative literature, serve as director of Columbia’s Center for the Core Curriculum, and start a Great Books program for low-income high school students who aspire to be the first in their families to attend college. Weaving together memoir and literary reflection, Rescuing Socrates describes how four authors—Plato, Augustine, Freud, and Gandhi—had a profound impact on Montás’s life. In doing so, the book drives home what it’s like to experience a liberal education—and why it can still remake lives.

A People's History of Classics
A People's History of Classics

Author: Edith Hall

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-02-26

Total Pages: 586

ISBN-13: 1315446588

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A People’s History of Classics explores the influence of the classical past on the lives of working-class people, whose voices have been almost completely excluded from previous histories of classical scholarship and pedagogy, in Britain and Ireland from the late 17th to the early 20th century. This volume challenges the prevailing scholarly and public assumption that the intimate link between the exclusive intellectual culture of British elites and the study of the ancient Greeks and Romans and their languages meant that working-class culture was a ‘Classics-Free Zone’. Making use of diverse sources of information, both published and unpublished, in archives, museums and libraries across the United Kingdom and Ireland, Hall and Stead examine the working-class experience of classical culture from the Bill of Rights in 1689 to the outbreak of World War II. They analyse a huge volume of data, from individuals, groups, regions and activities, in a huge range of sources including memoirs, autobiographies, Trade Union collections, poetry, factory archives, artefacts and documents in regional museums. This allows a deeper understanding not only of the many examples of interaction with the Classics, but also what these cultural interactions signified to the working poor: from the promise of social advancement, to propaganda exploited by the elites, to covert and overt class war. A People’s History of Classics offers a fascinating and insightful exploration of the many and varied engagements with Greece and Rome among the working classes in Britain and Ireland, and is a must-read not only for classicists, but also for students of British and Irish social, intellectual and political history in this period. Further, it brings new historical depth and perspectives to public debates around the future of classical education, and should be read by anyone with an interest in educational policy in Britain today.