Category Archives: truth for its own sake

The Purpose of Classical Education – An Unintended Dialogue

Posted on December 23, 2015 by marklangley

Every so often we need to remind ourselves of the point of a classical education. As readers of these pages know, the phrase classical education is just a clever way to cloak our real meaning which is Liberal Education. But present fashions dictate … Continue reading →

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Catholic Liberal Education And Respect For Life

Posted on March 14, 2015 by marklangley

Over the past several days I have been stewing over a proposition that seems perfectly obvious to me but which, I am afraid, will be offensive to the vast majority of good and well-intentioned  people who choose to send their children … Continue reading →

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On small beginnings: Wisely and Slow Part V

Posted on February 1, 2015 by marklangley

Classical education has something to do with wisdom. It has something to do with becoming wise. The classical scholars among you will undoubtedly recognize two litotes in that clever opener. Of course classical education has something to do with wisdom. … Continue reading →

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Two Reasons Why Things Are Difficult to Understand: Wisely and Slow Part IV

Posted on January 25, 2015 by marklangley

As has been thoroughly set forth and expounded here in a beautiful succinct and brilliant paper on this very subject, there are seven times when we need to go wisely and slow in our path towards wisdom, that is in … Continue reading →

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Classical Catholic Education: Defending and Promoting Life

Posted on March 8, 2014 by marklangley

Sometimes a thought is expressed so eloquently that the only thing left for us to do is to repeat it. Demosthenes! Therefore since the Lyceum community is presently attending the Cleveland Right to Life Conference, I thought nothing could be … Continue reading →

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The Lost Art of Education and The Lion and Ox

Posted on June 21, 2013 by marklangley

“The Lion and Ox” was very pleased to be quoted by Ken Connor who is a co-author of “Sinful Silence: When Christians Neglect Their Civic Duty.”  He is also Chairman of the Center for a Just Society. Mr. Connor apparently … Continue reading →

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Finisque ab Origine Pendet

Posted on March 12, 2013 by marklangley

Incidentally, I haven’t read much of the Roman poet Manlius who “flourished” in the first century AD. But his famous line “Finisque ab origine pendet” from the fourth book of his Astronomicon appears to have been adopted by Phillips Exeter Academy as … Continue reading →

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Anaxagoras on Liberal Education

Posted on March 10, 2013 by marklangley

“Other things have a part of everything, but mind is unlimited and self-ruling and is mixed with nothing, but is itself alone by itself….” Anaxagoras, the great pre-Socratic philosopher who, Aristotle says, was like a sober man among drunkards was the … Continue reading →

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“This Pertains Most Of All To Human Nature”

Posted on March 9, 2013 by marklangley

Speaking of the Third Commandment and the relevance that it has to liberal education, we can do no better than to hear the Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman defend the very notion of “knowledge for its own sake.” This is the … Continue reading →

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The Olive Wreath

Posted on February 4, 2013 by marklangley

When Xerxes discovered that the Greeks were celebrating the Olympic Festival  the first day after the battle of Thermopylae he asked a Greek deserter “for what do the Greek athletes contend?” When told that they were not competing for money … Continue reading →

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