15 Comments

The article is a feat of strength! I believe every father must get acquainted with what is a liberal arts education and shepherd their kids receiving one.

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Amen.

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I appreciate the encouragement, I’m an older brother at the end of a labour intensive career in floors and custom shower work. Making time to develop one’s intellectual skills can be challenging at the end of a hard day. Thanks again for posting all this information. Discipline and no excuse making certainly helps. Learning to be a better man and do better is a life time of work on so many levels, but that is what God has called us to do and be on this short journey, running the race to win not lose. Pax Vobiscum

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Amen!

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On connections between numbers, geometry, music, check out Donald in Mathmagicland (Disney, c.1957),

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U_ZHsk0-eF0&t=6s&pp=ygUYZG9uYWxkIGluIG1hdGhtYWdpYyBsYW5k

As for education as merely job training to make a lot of money, Proverbs 17:16 asks us, “Of what use is money in the hand of a fool, since he has no intention of acquiring wisdom?”

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Nice. I’ll check that out.

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I trust you’re familiar with Dorothy Sayers’ Lost Tools of Learning?

https://www.gbt.org/text/sayers.html

Doug Wilson, a somewhat controversial Calvinist adopted this approach

https://www.amazon.com/Recovering-Lost-Tools-Learning-Distinctively/dp/0891075836

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_education_movement

Where, though, to attend college?

www.ralston.ac

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You’ll want to buy both this little ISI booklet, part of a series to help thoughtful students survive and thrive in corrupted colleges,

https://www.amazon.com/Students-Liberal-Learning-Guides-Disciplines/dp/1882926536

and this more thorough volume by the same author, the late, great James Schall, a Catholic priest:

https://www.amazon.com/Another-Sort-Learning-James-Schall/dp/089870183X/

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Thank you for this fantastic reminder of what the Liberal Arts are and why they are important. You have put your finger exactly on the problem with education in the US today - a problem that plagues even Christian schools here. As a society, we have come to believe that the purpose of education is to get a better paying job. How sad that we have forgotten our heritage as people of the Book, who built Western Civilization to be a society of free people, citizens, able to govern themselves. This is the exact reason that I do not feel like I'm "wasting" my MA in History by homeschooling my children! Please keep up the reminders - they are so important, and quite timely!

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You are what will help rebuild the west! May God bless you and your family!

My wife earned her masters in philosophy while 2 of our 4 kids were still very little. She would rock them to sleep while reading aloud the Brothers Karamazov for her class. My kids benefit infinitely from having such a mom, your kids will too.

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This is by far the best article I’ve read on this subject. Thank you brother and looking forward to engaging with more of your content.

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Thanks for the encouragement! Nice to meet you.

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Unfortunately, educators are now applying the soulless specialist approach to even the liberal arts. Reading great literature has been replaced with “literacy skills,” which can be taught as easily with a comic book or restaurant menu as with Dante…

There are many reasons why ADHD rates are soaring, but one of them is that this inhuman skills based education is simply boring!

Gaty.substack.com

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You are a powerhouse, Jacob.

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That’s kind of you to say my friend.

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