You know all of that research into “learning styles,” whether a child is a visual learner or an auditory learner or whatever?  Well, we are finding that, while there is an element of truth to it, attending to such things does not seem to matter much in children actually learning more.  The key factor in learning is grasping meaning, a concept that evades any of these sensory approaches.  (While cultivation of meaning is what classical education is all about.) Read more

More vindication of classical education, which cultivates knowledge (grammar) AND understanding (logic) AND application (rhetoric).  As opposed to various contemporary methods which, for reasons I cannot understand, fixate on only one of these dimensions of education and denigrate the others.   This article discusses the fad of   critical thinking, including the admission that educators cannot even define it!  The various approaches are incoherent,with  the most obnoxious version being “just question everything.”  More substantive scholars say that being able to think… Read more

The notable scholar E. D. Hirsch is offering a radical new proposal:  That schools actually teach CONTENT.  Ever since Dewey, the assumption has been that schools don’t need to teach knowledge; rather, they should teach processes.   (Classical education, of course, teaches both.)   Here Hirsch shows how the efforts to teach reading, as in No Child Left Behind, are failing. Gaining comprehension in reading, according to the research he cites,  involves building upon other KNOWLEDGE of what the reading is about…. Read more

Here is someone who got through grade school, graduated from high school, graduated from college with an education degree, became a teacher, and taught in a high school for 17 years  all without knowing how to read!  Read more