Show me an example The Promethean Chronicles: August 2010

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Reforming the teacher

Andrew Kern gives five salient characteristics of a classical teacher.


Five ideas that distingiuish Classical education from conventional:
  1. A unifying principle that orders all learning, thus an integrated, proportioned course of learning. In Christian classical education this unifying principle or “logos” is Christ
  2. Recognition of the transforming power of ideas, thus an emphasis on training students to contemplate ideas rather than merely retain content or master processes
  3. Virtue as the end of education, rather than mere application, thus a concerted and rigorous effort to cultivate every human faculty in every student. In particular, the faculties of sensory perception, attentiveness, intellectual apprehension, and concrete re-presentation are cultivated in all the arts and sciences.
  4. Humans learn by imitation, thus classical educators have always recognized the need for mentors, models, examples, etc. who are masters of their area of knowledge and who are the kinds of people we hope the students will grow up to become. In a word: honor and recognition to genuine authority. Imitate proceeds through the stages outlined above: perception, attention, absorption, apprehension, re-presentation. This is the essence of all learning and therefore must be applied in every learning context.
  5. Endless emphasis on reality over mere appearance, thus the recognition that perception is powerful, but it is not necessarily reality. When one is taught that perception is reality, accountability and the need to grow are either relativized, trivialized, or removed altogether.