On the Place of Story in Virtue Education

A Doctoral Dissertation by Jacob Allee

All praise be to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, I successfully defended my doctoral dissertation on November 14th in the year of our Lord 2023. Throughout my ten years of working on my Ph.D. the Lord in his providence frustrated two earlier dissertation attempts to ensure that this one would be written.

At first I had planned to write on the Christian Humanism of C. S. Lewis. I did, in fact, write more than 80 pages towards that work before changing course. Following that change I went on to write 140 some pages on the topic of “A Christian Understanding of Abstract Objects” (what Plato called Forms). I’ll not go into all the ins and outs as to why that project was abandoned, suffice it to say I was not ashamed of the work I did on that project, but I was contending with forces beyond my control and I could not move that particular attempt across the goal line. For a brief time I walked away from the doctoral program in frustration, but the Lord rallied my spirit and allowed me to organize a new dissertation committee with a new topic to write upon.

As it turned out, though, it was God’s providence at work (shocking, I know). None of what I had done before was wasted, it all helped form me and make me more ready and able to write what was finally pushed across the finish line. I can honestly say that I am thankful that this is the dissertation I graduated with. The subject matter is extremely applicable to my professional career as a classical Christian educator, it’s close to my heartbeat as a Christian who wants to see young people loving what is true, good, and beautiful, and it was a joy to think about Christian virtue in combination with reading great stories. Further, I am confident that it will bless and encourage my fellow teachers, parents, students, and laborers in the kingdom in a way which my former two attempts would not have.

I promised towards the end of last year that I would make a PDF version of my dissertation available to paid subscribers once everything was settled and done. This is me making good on my promise. For the sake of preview for those who are free subscribers, here is my Table of Contents:

Thanks to all of you who support the work of Study The Great Books as I am working to produce a complete 7-12th Humanities Curriculum. Your reading, commenting, sharing, and general interaction is more encouraging than you’ll ever know. I am genuinely grateful for everyone who follows, paid or free. It’s my desire to give lots of good and useful resources to my fellow classical Christian educators (at home and in the classroom), but if you do decide to upgrade to a paid subscription ($5 a month or just $50 a year) you will not only gain access to my dissertation but also early access to Beta PDF versions of the curriculum as it is becoming available. Online only access to the Great Books study guides will always be free, but the PDFs are only for paid subscribers and they include extra helps and information. To see all the growing resources on this site (and a projection of where the work is heading) you look HERE.

Without further ado, below is the link that will take you to a PDF edition of my dissertation. May it be a blessing to you just as you a blessing to me!

Jacob Allee