Welcome to Renewing Classical Education
Weekly Posts on What Classical Education Was, Is, and Could Be Again
Welcome to this newsletter, column, sub-space where I will be writing on the renewal of classical, liberal arts education in the U.S. and sometimes abroad.
About 26 years ago, I found myself unexpectedly helping to found a small classical school in Pennsylvania. My qualifications for doing so were quite modest. I had studied history, minored in classics, studied at a Great Books college, and took a master’s in theology. Later I finished a PhD in apologetics (a sort of combination of theology and philosophy).
All this means that I had some book learning but hardly a clue about what classical education was or could be. Yes, like most of us, I had floated on some fragments after the shipwreck of education that began around 1890. I knew a little Latin and Greek. In other words, I knew something of classical languages and classical history but just a smidgeon of classical education. Of course at the time I thought I knew, well, enough. I didn’t know what I didn’t know and so I jumped into the deep end of the pool and began to flail. And my education began.
Though I thought I had received a “liberal arts” education, I could not name the liberal arts. I thought they were history, English, and philosophy (they’re not). I assumed education was a collection of methods with which I was more or less familiar. I was not. Later I learned that education (certainly classical education) is not a collection of methods. I thought a good curriculum was a decent collection of textbooks. Later I learned that textbooks were more like the shadow cast by the classical curriculum. I traffic in these shadows as the Publisher at Classical Academic Press.
For me, encountering the tradition of classical education was a step into a warm but bewildering light. I squinted but could not stare or see it whole. Learning of the tradition, and by it, has been a slow illumination that still seems like a beginning. I still hope to get an education and enjoy the walk toward an education—the light is warm and the shadows are growing slowly shorter.
If you are on this journey too, or are interested in starting, then join me each week and share your thoughts and comments. I will try to respond to most comments every weekend. I will try to tell the story of the renewal in the U.S. that has been underway for about 40 years, and connect the modern renewal to the 1500 years or so that preceded it. Once in a while, I will try to predict the future.
You may also like to sample my linked podcast—the Christopher Perrin Show—that is that is hosted here on Substack and also available at TruthNorth.fm (and most podcast outlets). I post a new podcast every two weeks.
I have written one small book on classical education, and several for classical education—Latin, Greek, and logic texts. What I have enjoyed most, however, is finding others more talented and insightful than me, and publishing their books. Some of these works are listed below my signature line.
C. S. Lewis says somewhere that we go nowhere alone—I certainly haven’t. I am grateful for many kindred spirits and especially my colleagues at work and in the Alcuin Fellowship of classical educators. The ten years of educator retreats with this fellowship has been the best school I have known.
One last logistical note: I won’t be using the paywall function of Substack for anything that I write—meaning that all subscribers (paying or not) will be able to read anything I write at anytime. You will find (in time) some special interview features behind the paywall but never my weekly written posts.
Pax,
Christopher Perrin
The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Philosophy of Christian Classical Education, by Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain
Myth Made Fact: Reading Greek and Roman Mythology through Christian Eyes by Louis Markos
The Common Arts Tradition: Renewing the Classical Tradition of Renewing the Hands, Head, and Heart by Chris Hall
An Introduction to Classical Education: A Guide for Parents, by Christopher Perrin
See several other titles on classical education here.