Author: Jason Barney
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The Flow of Thought, Part 3: Narration as Flow
It’s been a little while since my last article on the flow of thought, or how Mihayli Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow can support the philosophy of classical education. In the meantime, I’ve shared an early version of my eBook on implementing Charlotte Mason’s practice of narration in the classroom (see our new Narration page for…
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Training in the Arts vs. Teaching Sciences
I have previously written on the classical distinction between an ‘art’ and a ‘science’, but I recently discovered some interesting confirmations of it in Plato and John Milton Gregory (two otherwise widely divergent figures in the history of education). In particular, the chief take-away for teachers is a clearer awareness of when you are focused…
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The Flow of Thought, Part 2: The Joy of Memory
In my last article “The Flow of Thought, Part 1: Training the Attention for Happiness’ Sake” I drew a connection between Aristotle’s view that happiness is the chief goal of education and the findings of modern positive psychology. In Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, he reports his findings that people report being most…
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The Flow of Thought, Part 1: Training the Attention for Happiness’ Sake
It may seem strange to look to modern psychology for support of classical education. After all, it’s the vagaries of modern thought that have got us into this educational trouble in the first place. The abandonment of tradition, the scientism and revolutionary overhaul of religion have all taken their toll on the proper training of…
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Excellence Comes by Habit: Aristotle on Moral Virtue
All too often we are inclined to think of excellence as the product of good genes and good fortune rather than our personal habits. The fates bestow their blessings indiscriminately and haphazardly, and the talented and successful are the lucky recipients of excellence, while the rest of us are mired in mediocrity. Those who rise…
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Jesus the Ideal Learner: Priestly Lessons for Education
In a previous article on Jesus’ student-teacher relationship with John the Baptist, we mentioned that there is so much that can be learned about education from Jesus’ example. The mystery of the incarnation is packed with significance for the process of learning, human maturation and discipleship. As it says in Hebrews, “Although he was a…
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Educating for Self-control, Part 2: The Link Between Attention and Willpower
In my last post on educating for self-control, I laid out a Christian case for the importance of self-control from the New Testament, citing Paul’s famous fruit of the Spirit and Peter’s not-as-famous virtue list in the first chapter of 2 Peter. Then we delved into the roots of self-control as a concept deriving from…
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Educating for Self-control, Part 1: A Lost Christian Virtue
If there’s any virtue that Christians need, especially in contemporary society, it’s self-control. We have available to us more seductive entertainment, more well-advertised temptations and even more innocent pleasures (like unhealthy foods, which end up being not so innocent in the long run…), than any other people at any time in the history of the…
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Practicing Education: Growing in the Art of Teaching
When I was a child I did gymnastics, and one of the most fundamental aspects of gymnastics is practice. We practiced skills and routines, we stretched and we worked out for hours, far longer than the average sports team practices. Where your average soccer team practiced an hour or an hour and a half a…
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The Importance of Deep Reading in Education
Deep reading is the type of reading that involves one’s undivided attention in a sustained manner to tackle a long-form book, like a novel. The feeling cultivated by deep reading is that of being lost in a book, taken to new worlds, enraptured by an alien train of thought. While many educators still feel that the…