Tag: Liberal Arts

Bulletin

The History of Astronomy: A Project Update

For the past two years, I’ve been quietly working on a project aimed at making science—particularly astronomy—more accessible and teachable, especially for educators who may not have a formal background in the subject. As someone who doesn’t have a science background, I’ve served as the project’s first test subject: Could I learn the material well enough to teach it? Could I find a way to convey these ideas in a way that felt intuitive, compelling, and grounded in evidence?

The answer turned out to be yes—but only after a great deal of trial and error. And now, I’m excited to share the next stage of the project: a simple, organized set of resources aimed at helping teachers learn the material themselves and feel ready to pass it on to their students. The goal is to make the story of the solar system approachable and teachable, even for those without a science background.

From Learner to Teacher

I came into this project without a science background. My goal was simple: could I learn the material and then teach it to someone else? That process helped me relate to what a new teacher might also struggle with. What was challenging to explain? What kind of details did I need in order to be able to pass the knowledge on to the students I was working with?

One thing became clear early on: having good demonstration tools would be essential. At first, I cobbled together resources I found online, but I eventually realized I would need to build them myself. There were a lot of tools that just didn’t exist, and I didn’t want teachers to have to scavenge for these resources on their own. I wanted everything they needed all in one place.

The Tools

The tools I’ve built are meant to make it easy for a teacher to demonstrate key concepts clearly. For example, take retrograde motion. I’ve integrated an open-source tool called Stellarium into the platform. This tool shows the night sky and comes preloaded with a date and time that demonstrates retrograde motion in action. I’ve added the ability to draw directly on the sky, so teachers and students can track the movement of celestial bodies over time. In the image below, one object is marked in red and another in yellow. Students can see how the yellow body moves with consistent spacing between markers, while the red body’s spacing varies over time—a visual cue that helps highlight the difference between stars and planets and their motion over time.

This is an interactive tool teachers can use with their students to guide them through the kinds of observations they need to make in order to identify two key ideas: first, that planets move differently than stars; and second, how to recognize the phenomenon we now call retrograde motion.

There are many more tools like this, each tailored to support specific learning objectives. They’re designed to help students move from direct observation to theoretical models by making abstract ideas visible and interactive.

The result is a platform that brings together these tools along with lesson plans—everything a teacher would need to teach the material, even without prior experience in astronomy.

What’s Next: Equipping the Teacher

The next stage of the project is perhaps the most important: equipping teachers themselves with the knowledge and confidence to teach the material well. 

Starting next month, I’ll be releasing a series called Tracing the Sky. These short, 10–15 minute videos will come out multiple times per week and guide learners through the course content. They’re designed for anyone curious about how we came to understand the solar system—whether you’re learning for your own interest or because you want to teach it.

I see these videos as the prerequisite step for teachers. Once they’ve followed along and built a basic understanding, they can move on to using the platform and lesson plans I’ve developed to teach the material to their students. These videos aren’t meant to be played in the classroom—instead, they’re designed for the teacher. My hope is that any educator, regardless of their prior familiarity with astronomy, could watch these videos and gain a solid understanding of both the historical development of celestial models and the practical tools available to teach them.

Each video is designed to be the teacher’s starting point—a way to learn the material themselves, step by step. Once they feel comfortable, they can take the next step and explore the platform and lesson plans I’ve created. These plans tie directly into the demonstrations and provide guidance on how each lesson fits into the broader narrative, what questions to ask, and which observations to emphasize.

Closing Thoughts

I’ve come to believe that science education doesn’t need to be intimidating or overly technical. At its best, it should be a process of wonder, reasoning, and discovery—and that’s exactly what the history of astronomy offers. It’s a story of humans looking up at the sky, puzzling over what they saw, and gradually learning to make sense of it all.

If I, as a non-scientist, can learn to tell that story, then I’m confident that others can too. And with the right tools and support, I believe we can help students not only understand the solar system—but appreciate the incredible intellectual journey it took to discover it.

If you’d like to keep up to date with the project and follow along with the videos as I release them, you can sign up for my newsletter here: https://mailchi.mp/7be3350a4b33/tracing-the-sky-newsletter

Bulletin

The Liberal Arts Renewal in Brazil

by Jean Guerreiro, Fellow

After High School in 2017, I received an invitation to apply to a six month program in Porto Alegre, Brazil, called ‘Intensive Program of Liberal Arts’ through my literature teacher in the local public school that I attended. I had never heard of liberal arts, but I saw that the Institute had multiple online courses on the Liberal Arts, and thousands of students around the nation. These students were all enrolled there not for professional training, resume building, or even for a diploma to get a job. They were studying Latin, Greek, literature, logic, among other subjects. I was surprised to realize that Instituto Hugo de São Vitor was not the only institution working towards the promotion of an educational renewal, a coming back to the classics, in Brazil. They were a part of a greater movement for the restoration of the pursuit of truth. 

As I was born in a small town in Brazil and went to a public school all my life, classical education was not in the radar for me or my family. Reading wasn’t a habit of mine, nor did I see why it would be. Little did I know that I would fall in love with classical education so deeply, that helping to restore education here has been in the forefront of my mind ever since.

I did go to Porto Alegre and lived there for six months, studying Latin, Greek, logic, and literature. It was like a rebirth to me. I didn’t have an appreciation for the higher things of culture such as music, literature, and art, and also was in complete oblivion of the fact that learning could be for its own sake. I loved it thoroughly and there was no coming back after such an experience. In 2018, I went to Thomas Aquinas College in its California campus, and was a member of the first graduating class of the New England campus, which opened its doors in 2019. 

My experience at Thomas Aquinas College was so rich that I could not help but try to share that with my fellow countrymen. During the summer between my sophomore and junior year, I tried to recruit students from Brazil to come to TAC, as I saw that this experience was very far from anything that anyone could achieve in Brazil. Thanks be to God, there were five students who got accepted to the College and were set to come that fall. An idea, then, came to my mind and I started co-teaching and co-organizing a program with another Brazilian student from the California campus to help these students, and others, to prepare for Thomas Aquinas College. That is when I started teaching online courses on the Great Books using the Socratic method. 

After my graduation in 2022, more and more students were seeking to pursue independent studies reading the Great Books with me. What was even more surprising: the students who started coming were not only the ones who were preparing to come to TAC, they were engineers, college professors, teachers, lawyers, among others. I have been teaching online and in person programs on the great books, attempting to give a taste of what I received at TAC with Aristotelian logic, Euclid, literature, natural science, amongst other programs. The students are grateful and only want to get more and more, and that is rewarding. 

But, teaching was not my primary occupation after graduation. I began working for the office of admissions on the New England campus of TAC, and was able to travel through many different states visiting many great Catholic schools, such as the Lyceum, Immaculata Classical Academy, Chesterton Academies, Gregory the Great Academy, amongst many others. These schools would allow me to speak to all of their students about liberal education, and why it was a natural follow up to the classical education they were receiving. Besides these trips, I got to know and speak to many fellow Brazilians who wanted to take their educations to the next level and make the jump to attempt to come to the U.S. and attend TAC. The experience of working in admissions only increased my love of Thomas Aquinas College, and its view of Catholic Liberal Education. 

Since then I have come back to Brazil and been more immersed in the classical renewal. I have been impressed by the amount of people who have been searching for such an endeavor. As a matter of fact, there are nine Brazilians currently attending Thomas Aquinas College, along with six alumni and over a dozen of applicants. This might be seen as a small number compared to the vast population of over 212 million people that Brazil boasts. But, going to TAC is the culmination of something much greater that has been happening in the past decade in the country. It is worth noting that the Brazilians who have gone to TAC have undergone multiple sacrifices in order to make it work – all to receive a true education.

How it all began, and who are the most important figures in this educational renewal, I cannot claim to know fully. But, certainly there were important teachers who influenced beyond the classroom. Some who deserve mentioning are Olavo de Carvalho, Padre Paulo Ricardo and José Munir Nasser. Olavo was a conservative teacher and writer. He founded a program called ‘COF’, which stands for Online Philosophy Course in Portuguese. The course boasts of 585 recorded classes on the various subjects of philosophy, without any particular school of thought being followed. The focus was on forming conservative thinkers. The course has taught more than 80,000 students. Many others deserve mentioning here, such as a priest called Padre Paulo Ricardo – a priest who is similar in many ways to Venerable Fulton Sheen in his work and popularity-  who has been responsible for an incredible number of conversions to the true faith in the country. José Munir Nasser also had a tremendous impact. He taught a five year humanities program very similar to John Senior’s, amongst many other great figures who contributed to this renewal. 

Nowadays, there are three different fronts that the classical renewal has taken: families starting Catholic schools, homeschooling, and independent learning and study of liberal arts and philosophy, mostly online.  Over a hundred Catholic schools have been starting in the previous five years in Brazil. While it is difficult to provide a true education without the previous formation of teachers and principals, the movement has been focusing on trying to do their best to educate their children in the light of the faith. This movement is very hungry for true formation, and is docile to learning from others. Homeschooling is becoming more and more of an option for families with a desire to remove their children from the woke ideologies presented in the schools. This is worth noting, because despite homeschooling being illegal in Brazil, parents are truly sacrificing their freedom to try to educate their children in the light of the classical curriculum. On the side of adults, there are thousands of students pursuing the truth. The truth that they felt was denied them while they were at school. There are many teachers around the country who are extremely influential, with thousands of students themselves. What do they teach? The classical liberal arts and philosophy. 

Beyond that, we have many people making remarkable progress in spending time for a solid formation. A couple of friends deserve mentioning. There is Rodrigo Ribeiro, who is now a tutor at Thomas Aquinas College and has a strong aspiration to help in the educational renewal in Brazil, but only after receiving many years of experience at the College. Marcus Porto went to Vivarium Novum in Italy, learned Latin fluently, attended TAC and was a distinguished student, and then went on to a masters in classics in Greek and Latin at Kentucky University. Lucas Fonseca – another fellow in the Boethius Fellowship – after studying law decided to take on philosophy as his passion, learned Latin fluently at Vivarium and now teaches the liberal arts in Latin and tutors teachers around the country, as well as getting his masters online at University of Dallas. Many others around the country are united in seeking the best education they can, in order to provide for the true education of others. 

From the numbers of converts to a more serious approach to the faith and to learning arising in every little town and state in the country, one can see easily that Brazil is going through a classical renewal in its education. Is it in the mainstream? Not at all. Not yet. From what I can tell, though, – and I am no prophet – there is hope for the future here. I don’t know if the movement will be able to be strong enough to overcome the strength of the other side, but we know we are on the winning side in the end, and so we keep fighting the good fight, hoping for the crown of victory at the end. 

Bulletin

From a Review of A Brief Quadrivium and Teaching the Quadrivium: A Guide for Instructors

From a review of A Brief Quadrivium and Teaching the Quadrivium: A Guide for Instructors originally published in Principia 3, no. 1 (2024)

Classical educators know that the canon of the liberal arts numbers seven, but very few of us make much progress beyond the trivium before we jump headfirst into philosophy. We approach advanced mathematics through the modern canon of algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus, not the four arts of the quadrivium—geometry, arithmetic, music, and astronomy. Even the one common term, geometry, means different things. For most of us, it is something like applied algebra. The minority who have gone through Euclid will know that the classical art of geometry uses no numbers at all, only proportion. If we have some direct knowledge of the quadrivium this is only very rarely because we studied them as they are. We tend to learn about them, presenting them either as primitive (and therefore obsolete) forms of the STEM fields, or as a few wonder-inspiring diagrams of the golden ratio projected onto the masterpieces of the Old Masters sandwiched between sessions of mathematics classes hardly distinct from those offered in non-classical educational settings—two excellent starting places are Gary B. Meisner’s Golden Ratio and Mirana Lundy’s Quadrivum. In the end, if the quadrivium enters into our thinking or our teaching, it is at second or third hand, and we and our students at best come to appreciate its historical presence in the past of Western culture without acquiring the intellectual character or skills that would enable us to use the quadrivium productively in our own attempts to make the world more beautiful.

This is due to reasons both theoretical and practical. Many who would never question the enduring value of the arts of grammar, logic, or rhetoric struggle to see how the historically constructed quadrivium could be of any more than historical interest to contemporary educators. A deeper problem is that since antiquity these arts have been debased and abused, such that Latin dictionaries list “astrologer or wizard” as the second definition of the noun mathematicus. For such reasons, Plato’s Timaeus and Boethius’ De Arithmetica tend to be reserved for those undertaking advanced studies of those authors, and the immense influence exerted by these texts on Western culture is often presented as a curiosity or problem rather than as a fact whose recovery might lead to fresh insight in the present.

 But what if contemporary students went beyond learning about the historical importance of the quadrivium and learned the content and skills embedded in study of the quadrivial subjects? While many of us make verum, bonum, pulchrum our motto, few of us are prepared to give any account of the final term. The classical education movement has recovered and redeployed the arts of language, showing that logic can still be used to gain certain knowledge of truth and that virtue ethics can still be a means of knowing and doing the good. Despite our recovery of the arts of language and our confidence in their ability to give us access to reality, many see beauty as being in the eye of the beholder rather than being a transcendental susceptible to objective analysis and real knowledge. Writers such as Stratford Caldecott and David Clayton have pointed to the quadrivium as the traditional means of setting the third transcendental, beauty, on an objective basis from which it can be contemplated, known, imitated, and produced.

It comes as no surprise that our inability to accommodate pre-Copernican astronomy and pre-Cartesian mathematics (with the notable exception of Euclid) to our narrative of scientific revolution and progress has not led many of us to develop classroom resources that would give our students access to these traditions and help them develop the skills the arts promise to impart. Green Lion Press, whose edition of Euclid is no doubt well known to many readers of Principia, follows a grand narrative of the “Scientific Revolution” to a great extent in their offerings, providing the text editions that make it possible for students in great books programs to re-create the discoveries of Kepler, Newton, Lavoisier, and Faraday. When I met Howard Fisher, an associate editor at Green Lion Press, I asked him why they do not offer editions of Aristoxenus, Boethius, or other “quadrivial” authors. He told me there is no editorial policy against it, and in fact, they would if they could. The problem, he said, is a lack of editors. Would I like, he added, to try my hand at doing it myself?

A Brief QuadriviumFortunately for me, a humanist who has not yet mastered the arts of number, Peter Ulrickson has provided the sort of book I have long imagined but not had the skill to write. A Brief Quadrivium divides the four arts into a thirty-week curriculum, distributed approximately equally across geometry, arithmetic, music, and astronomy, ending with three brief chapters that consider the quadrivium’s relationship to modern physics, mathematics, and music theory and its propaedeutic role in “preparing us to seek the highest, unchanging things.” Upon completion of the curriculum, students will not only have been exposed to wonder, but they will also have laid the foundation of a detailed, technical knowledge of the quadrivium that they can use both to understand the nature of reality and to produce works of art, in the Aristotelian sense, imitating nature to bring order to chaos and instantiate beauty in the world.

A key component of Ulrickson’s presentation is the continuity of the quadrivium and the trivium as two parts of a whole, as opposed to the modern division of the disciplines into arts and sciences. An excellent example of this in practice is Ulrickson’s gentle but persistent and effective explanation and use of technical terminology. Relying on a philosophy of language based in Aristotelian ideas that recognizes the adaequatio of words, concepts, and things and the status of each of the components of the quadrivium as stable and articulated technai, Ulrickson provides readers with an account of terms like “definition,” “lemma,” “proposition,” and “conjecture” and encourages them to build up familiarity with them. Those who, like me, have made the transition from “literary studies” to the “trivium,” who have come to appreciate the precision that training in the arts of language can bring to conversations about the great ideas, will be pleased to ground their developing knowledge of the quadrivium in this system of language. Properly technical language is not jargon; it is rather a key constitutive element of the knowledge and practice of the art, and Ulrickson presents this in a compelling way that will resonate with classical educators.

Bulletin

On the Liberal Arts in Response to an Article in Principia

As we mentioned in our last bulletin, a group of classical educators and scholars has launched Principia, a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to advancing scholarship on classical education. As Brian Williams, General Editor, reports in his article introducing the journal, forty years of education renewal has spawned a growing body of scholarly research and writing. Principia provides a “venue for robust and vigorous dialogue and debate about classical education” that “will make substantive and positive impacts on the practical implementation of classical education in schools and homes around the world.” Williams' own summative expression and description of classical education provides a strong beginning.

The goal of classical education is to educate whole persons through the accumulated wisdom of the ages for a lifetime of flourishing regardless of their profession or place of employment. It attempts to recover the integrated ends, curricular materials, pedagogical methods, and formative culture that characterize the 2,500-year old tradition of liberal arts education, while remaining open to new works of profound insight, beautiful artistry, and genuine discovery. (p.2)

Christopher Schlect’s article, “What is a Liberal Art?”, highlights the need for common dialogue and debate. By all accounts, the idea of the liberal arts was central to pre-twentieth century Western education, and most current educators in the revival of that education embrace their importance. But as Schlect relates, confusion and disagreement over what the term liberal arts means is prevalent today, not only among universities with no particular interest in classical views, but even among those deeply interested in them. Schlecht emphasizes the need for each educational institution to reach clarity on its own understanding of the liberal arts, while he believes that historical disagreements about their nature will prevent any widespread consensus among classical educators as a whole.

Schlecht expresses the consensus that guides his institution, New Saint Andrews College in Idaho:

The liberal arts teach us how to learn—how to freely gain knowledge and understanding. Insofar as they are arts, they produce something, in this case, the ability to learn. Because they are liberal arts, they liberate us not only from ignorance, prejudice, and provincialism but also from servile dependence on the tutelage of others. 

Schlect goes to clarify the significance of “servile”:

This notion of liberality does not exclude teachers, and it certainly does not suggest any radical notion of independence. Indeed, a liberally educated person continues to learn from teachers, and even relies on them. But he no longer depends upon any one teacher, nor upon a particular school of teachers, to initiate and direct his learning for him. A liberally educated person becomes the master over his own progress in learning. 

With deep respect for fellow laborers in the field, I think this is not only wrong, but dangerously wrong, especially as applied to pre-collegiate learning. A recipient of a serious liberal arts education has received a tremendous blessing. But he is certainly not ready to be set loose in a library, as Schlect suggests, inhabited by the likes of Plato, Aquinas, Hobbes, Kant, and Einstein, and press them into his service. Add Marx and Nietzsche, and our liberal arts graduate should be in terror of opening the books at all. As Aristotle and Aquinas say, to order belongs to the wise man. A young person trained in the liberal arts, but who has not been schooled in philosophy and theology, is far from being wise. He is capable of being taught by the wise man, but not of making wise judgments in the midst of powerful minds compellingly advocating for contrary answers to the fundamental questions of reality.

To understand the minds of any one of those authors takes a great deal of time and effort. The general mastery of words and quantities given by the traditional liberal arts makes understanding the authors possible but not easy. It takes docility and receptiveness, which are dangerously given to the sophistical and brilliant. Plato’s dialogue, The Protagoras, begins with the question of how a young man desiring to become really well educated can judge a teacher. Socrates warns him emphatically about the dangers of learning from just any teacher:

Now, if you are knowledgeable as to which of these wares are beneficial or harmful, you may
purchase learning, in safety, from Protagoras or anyone else at all. Otherwise beware, blessed
man, lest you take chances and imperil your most precious possessions; for there is
surely an even greater danger in the purchase of learning, than in the purchase of food….Learning, by contrast, cannot be borne away in a separate vessel. No, once the fee has been proffered, it is necessary to take that learning into the soul itself, and once you have learned something, you must go your way, having been either harmed or benefited thereby.
[313e] (Platonic Foundation translation)

What do the liberal arts produce in those who become proficient? In answer, Schlect is guided by the claim of Hugh of St. Victor  “that anyone who had been thoroughly schooled in them might afterward come to a knowledge of the others by his own inquiry and effort rather than by listening to a teacher” (Didascalicon. 3.3). As Schlect suggests, Hugh meant that the liberal arts opened up the world of books to the learner, so he could learn directly from the best minds of all time. But at that time, the world of books consisted of the Scriptures, the Fathers, monastic authors, along with the best moralists among the ancient Romans. The learner was expected to trust that all these authors were wise, not to judge among competing worldviews presented by powerful sophists. As Elizabeth Barrett Browning witnessed, even in the 19th century libraries were dangerous places.

Sublimest danger, over which none weeps,
When any young wayfaring soul goes forth
Alone, unconscious of the perilous road,
The day-sun dazzling in his limpid eyes,
To thrust his own way, he an alien, through
The world of books! Ah, you!—you think it fine,
You clap hands—‘A fair day!’—you cheer him on,
As if the worst, could happen, were to rest
Too long beside a fountain. Yet, behold,
Behold!—the world of books is still the world;
And worldlings in it are less merciful
And more puissant. For the wicked there
Are winged like angels. Every knife that strikes,
Is edged from elemental fire to assail
A spiritual life. The beautiful seems right
By force of beauty, and the feeble wrong
Because of weakness. Aurora Leigh

Too often high school graduates from liberal arts schools, although very grateful for what they have received, feel they are done with liberal education, and head to college to take on the serious business of preparing for a career. Often high school educators underestimate the crucial importance of their influence on inspiring a love of serious learning, and of directing their students towards the authors, programs, and professors that will guide them towards wisdom. For training in the liberal arts is only the beginning of a complete liberal education. As Newman wrote in the Preface to his Discourses on University Education, being well-grounded in grammar and mathematics will “make them feel nothing but impatience and disgust at the random theories and imposing sophistries and dashing paradoxes, which carry away half-formed and superficial intellects,” and will prepare them to be “gradually initiated into the largest and truest philosophical views.” But Newman warned it could also make them powerful proponents of error:

In all it will be a faculty of entering with comparative ease into any subject of thought, and of taking up with aptitude any science or profession. All this it will be and will do in a measure, even when the mental formation be made after a model but partially true; for, as far as effectiveness goes, even false views of things have more influence and inspire more respect than no views at all. Men who fancy they see what is not are more energetic, and make their way better, than those who see nothing; and so the undoubting infidel, the fanatic, the heresiarch, are able to do much, while the mere hereditary Christian, who has never realized the truths which he holds, is unable to do anything. 

As we think through together what is being accomplished in our times by the many different efforts to renew education in the light of (but not limited by) the successes of the past, the liberal arts should be differentiated from – while finding their role within – our understanding of liberal education as a whole. The liberal arts are to be treasured for the role they play in awakening and forming the mind, but they must not be considered to complete education to the point of making their possessors masters of their own learning. Rather, their most important role is to open the ways to begin to profit from the wisdom presented by authentic guides.