I said to Hank, “If we do this thing, I want our materials to look like this.” Over dinner, we talked for hours about what we’d seen across the exhibit hall, but particularly at Memoria Press. I had proof of the damage left behind: bright students in my classroom at SMU whose education had been weakened, and I’d even say crippled in many respects by their absence.īut here it all was again: clean, crisp, clear, and powerful. Raised with a strong background in Latin, I had watched with sorrow as these seminal subjects faded from public schools. But what power emanated from their publications! With ever increasing surprise, we leafed through serious, attractive courses in Latin, Greek, Rhetoric, Ancient History, Poetry, and Handwriting. And the second was the booth for Memoria Press.Īs I recall, their spread was significantly smaller than it is today. One was called Greathall Productions featuring the delicious, incomparable master of story-telling Jim Weiss (I’ll save him for another essay). We stumbled across two things that really stayed with us. Wandering through the aisles, encountering names like Math-U-See, ACE, and Sonlight, we were fascinated. So that summer Hank and I drove to Houston to attend a convention. Still, when student after student seemed to echo the same assessment, I got curious. I was just learning from them about homeschooling, but I really had no grasp of methods or materials. They repeatedly lamented the dearth of serious secondary-school level curricula in the Fine Arts, not just in the homeschooling world, but in public education. We were considering taking up a challenge issued by a variety of my SMU students who had been homeschooled. The Classical curricula published by Memoria Press served as the first inspiration for Hank and me as we started on the path towards Professor Carol. The second reason is dearer, and more poignant: the sudden loss of a great woman named Cheryl Lowe, founder of Highlands Latin School and of Memoria Press. These are teachers who help turn the “average” child into a well-educated human being.īut that’s not the only reason I am thinking about this event. These are teachers who make the neglected subjects of Latin, Greek, Rhetoric, and Ancient History spring to life. Pushing past today’s low expectations, they accept the realm of excellence as the only standard. Why? Gathered together will be some of the most inspiring educators you could hope to meet. My thoughts are already focused on that adventure. But between this voyage and returning to Dallas, I’ll spend three whirlwind days at Highlands Latin School (Louisville, KY), working with teachers attending a training conference for the Classical Latin School Association. Still, the joy of sitting here, looking out at the castles on the Rhine? That defies description.īy the end of the week, I will be back in Texas. The precious, early morning hours before official tour activities begin are my favorite, no matter where I am. The 14 exercises, organized from the simplest and most basic to the most complex and sophisticated, were the core education of a classical speaker, designed to produce what Quintilian once called “the good man, speaking well.” Need Lesson Plans for Classical Composition I: Fable? Click here to purchase a printed or digital version.I’m watching barges go up the Rhine River. The greatest communicators of ancient times, Quintilian and Cicero among them, employed the progymnasmata to teach their students the art of communication. The progymnasmata gave them the stylistic tools to appeal to their hearts as well. Presented clearly and systematically in a structured curriculum, Classical Composition will give you a clear road map to writing excellence.Īncient writers invented a way of teaching writing known as the progymnasmata, which provided a method of teaching composition that not only taught budding writers a disciplined way to approach communication, but also helped them appeal to the heads of their audience. Jim Selby has blown the dust off the writing curriculum that was used in schools for over 1,500 years and put it in an easy-to-teach format that will revolutionize your home or private school curriculum. What if you could teach your child using the same writing program that produced such masters of the language as John Milton, William Shakespeare, and Benjamin Franklin? What if you could have the same composition curriculum used by Quintilian, the greatest teacher of ancient rhetoric, and Cicero, the greatest persuasive speaker of all time?
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