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 “The end of study should be to direct the mind towards the enunciation of sound and correct judgments on all matters that come before it.” –Descartes, Rules, I Effective paragraphs share two characteristics, cohesion and coherence.  Effective curriculum must equip students with the ability or skill set to craft cohesive, coherent paragraphs as a matter [...]

It is probable that genius tends actually to prevent a man from acquiring habits of voluntary attention, and that moderate intellectual endowments are the soil in which we may best expect, here as elsewhere, the virtues of the will, strictly so called, to thrive. But, whether the attention come by grace of genius or by [...]

“The end of study should be to direct the mind towards the enunciation of sound and correct judgments on all matters that come before it.” –Descartes, Rules, I I was recently asked how Classical Composition prepared students for college writing courses that might be based upon or assume the “The Six Trait Writing Model.” I [...]

Education is the art of making men ethical. It begins with pupils whose life is at the instinctive level and shows them the way to…change their instinctive nature into a second, intellectual, nature, and makes this intellectual level habitual to them. –Hegel, The Philosophy of Right,III. Additions 97 (151) Definitions: Cohesive–Of thought, speech, reasoning, etc.: [...]

Then you will say, “I met with Epictetus as I should meet with a stone or a statue”: for you saw me, and nothing more. But he meets with a man as a man, who learns his opinions, and in his turn shows his own. Learn my opinions: show me yours; and then say that [...]

Men’s natures vary, and their habits differ, but true virtue is always manifest. Likewise the training that comes of education conduces greatly to virtue; for not only is modesty wisdom, but it has also the rare grace of seeing by its better judgment what is right; whereby glory, ever young, is shed o’er life by [...]

“…and I affirm that tranquillity is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind.” –Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 4, Sec. 3 After Invention students learn Arrangement or the ability to place material (arguments, development, narration, encomium or invective, digression, etc.) in the most effective manner depending upon purpose and audience.  Aphthonius’ Progymnasmata follows a [...]

The more they [the majority of the population] are instructed the less liable they are to the delusions of enthusiasm and superstition, which, among ignorant nations, frequently occasion the most dreadful disorders…They are more disposed to examine, and more capable of seeing through, the interested complaints of faction and sedition, and they are, upon that [...]

A wicked man puts on a bold face, but the upright gives thought to his ways–Proverbs 21.29 What is the first business of him who philosophizes? To throw away self-conceit. For it is impossible for a man to begin to learn that which he thinks that he knows–Epictetus, Discourses, Book 2, Chpt. 17 Classical Language [...]

Classical Language Theory towers over Western Civilization. Its elegant yet wholly practical tenants impart innumerable advantages to its adherents. One advantage is a clearly articulated purpose or end for instruction. Another is having clear, assessable goals made up of discrete skills and sub skills (also called objectives) which may be explicitly taught and universally mastered. [...]