The Great Tradition: Classic Readings on What It Means to Be an Educated Human Being

Any teacher, parent, or student intent on cultivating an educational philosophy immune to changing fashions and technologies needs this anthology. Editor Richard Gamble brings together seminal writings on liberal arts education in the hopes of inspiring 'modern misfits' to 'follow the trail of an older, more noble, and continual conversation about what it means to be an educated human being.' Spanning twenty-four centuries, the texts represent a legacy that begins in pagan Greece and Alexandria and draws wisdom from the Eastern and Western Church, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and agnostics, without trying to offer any ecumenical synthesis. The common ground is respect for liberal learning ('helping the soul love what it ought to love, to know itself and its maker') and a rejection of the utilitarian ideal that dominates mainstream education. Each writer is introduced with a brief biography and references to encourage further reading. Roughly a third of the 80 excepts are drawn from classical and late antiquity (Plato, Seneca, Philo, Basil the Great); a third from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment (Aquinas, Erasmus, Luther, Calvin, Milton); the final third adds modern voices (Burke, C.S. Lewis, Eliot, Weil, Christopher Dawson).An Eighth Day View:Frustrated with the continuing educational crisis of our time, concerned parents, teachers, and students sense that true reform requires more than innovative classroom technology, standardized tests, or skills training. An older tradition--the Great Tradition--of education in the West is waiting to be heard. Since antiquity, the Great Tradition has defined education first and foremost as the hard work of rightly ordering the human soul, helping it to love what it ought to love, and helping it to know itself and its maker. In the classical and Christian tradition, the formation of the soul in wisdom, virtue, and eloquence took precedence over all else, including instrumental training aimed at the inculcation of "useful" knowledge. Edited by historian Richard Gamble, this anthology reconstructs a centuries-long conversation about the goals, conditions, and ultimate value of true education. Spanning more than two millennia, from the ancient Greeks to contemporary writers, it includes substantial excerpts from more than sixty seminal writings on education. Represented here are the wisdom and insight of such figures as Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Cicero, Basil, Augustine, Hugh of St. Victor, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Erasmus, Edmund Burke, John Henry Newman, Thomas Arnold, Albert Jay Nock, Dorothy Sayers, C. S. Lewis, and Eric Voegelin. In an unbroken chain of giving and receiving, The Great Tradition embraced the accumulated wisdom of the past and understood education as the initiation of students into a body of truth. This unique collection is designed to help parents, students, and teachers reconnect with this noble legacy, to articulate a coherent defense of the liberal arts tradition, and to do battle with the modern utilitarians and vocationalists who dominate educational theory and practice. Title:: The Great Tradition: Classic Readings on What It Means to Be an Educated Human Being Author:: Gamble, Richard M. Edition:: 0002 ISBN Number:: 193519156X ISBN-13: 9781935191568 Location Published:: Intercollegiate Studies Institute: January 2009 Binding:: Paper Back Book Condition:: New Categories: Education Seller ID:: 49032 Keywords: classical education, education, home school, liberal arts