By Dhananjay Jagganathan, Ph.D. | July 19, 2023 I teach in one of the oldest ‘Great Books’ university programs in the United States. We still require all our incoming students to take the same sequence of intensive courses, in small sections, using roughly the same syllabus, and centered on the Western intellectual tradition. Because my... Read More »

By Matthew Bianco, Ph.D. | May 16, 2023 Anyone who has read Plato’s Meno knows that the question of whether virtue can be taught is an ancient one. In the world of classical education, it is a question we attempt to answer. Even if we assume, at our most optimistic, that we know both what... Read More »

By Emily Dickinson | May 16, 2023 The Soul selects her own Society — Then — shuts the Door — To her divine Majority — Present no more — Unmoved — she notes the Chariots — pausing — At her low Gate — Unmoved — an Emperor be kneeling Upon her Mat — I’ve known... Read More »

By Frederic Putnam, Ph.D. | May 16, 2023 There. I’ve said it. Or perhaps confessed. I quit a number of years ago after noticing that, although I enjoyed books about poetry, especially Perrine’s Sound & Sense and Western Wind, my students did not. Nor were they enamored of William Packard’s Poet’s Dictionary, or the frankly... Read More »

By Angel Adams Parham, Ph.D. | May 16, 2023 It’s Thursday evening and the girls are asking about tomorrow’s “special breakfast.” I’ve just returned from a trip and haven’t had a chance to think about it, but thankfully my husband Jonathan already has a plan: he will make apple bread tonight, and we’ll have that... Read More »