Classical educator Ravi Jain dives deeply into the nature, purpose, and interconnectedness of the liberal, common, and fine arts, explaining how they are meant to form a rich education for the body, mind, and soul. The arts are to serve each other, uplifting wisdom, wonder, and the goodness of Creation. Jain describes the liberal and fine arts as more “soulish,” while the common arts (food production, architecture, medicine, etc.) are works done by the body or related to the needs of the body. The common arts ought to be learned and completed with dignity and as acts of service. Just as metaphysical and theological questions ought to guide study in the liberal arts, so must they guide the common arts. When the arts are grounded in piety and wisdom, they allow us to fulfill our creative duty of ora et labora.
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“The foundational distinction between traditional education and modern education is that the ancients believed education was fundamentally about shaping loves.” So write Ravi Scott Jain and Kevin Clark in their book The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Philosophy of Christian Classical Education. Originally published in 2013, a revised and enlarged edition of that book has recently been released. In the first of two interviews with the authors, Ken Myers asks Ravi Scott Jain about place of the Quadrivium — the four mathematical arts — within the larger framework of the classical approach.
Orienting reason and passions — In an essay titled “The Abolition of Mania” (Modern Age, Spring 2022), Michael Ward applies C. S. Lewis’s insights to the polarization that afflicts modern societies. (16 minutes)
The loss of hierarchy and humility in the academy — In interviews from 1999, literature professors Alvin Kernan and Marion Montgomery discuss how culture of the academy — its hyper-democratic posture and its loathing of limits — derails the pursuit of truth. (25 minutes)
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 160 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Jessica Hooten Wilson, Kyle Hughes, Gil Bailie, D. C. Schindler, Paul Tyson, and Holly Ordway
Teaching for wonderfulness — Stratford Caldecott on why education is about how we become more human, and therefore more free
Education and human be-ing in the world — In championing a classical approach to teaching, Stratford Caldecott was an advocate for a musical education, affirming the harmonious unity in Creation. (26 minutes)
Maintaining a connected grasp of things — Ian Ker summarizes the central concern of John Henry Newman’s educational philosophy as developed in The Idea of a University
The future of Christian learning — Historian Mark Noll insists that for Christian intellectual life to flourish, a vision for comprehensive and universal social and cultural consequences of the Gospel has to be assumed. (18 minutes)
Earthly things in relation to heavenly realities — In this lecture, Ken Myers argues that the end of education is to train students to recognize what is really real. The things of this earth are only intelligible in light of heavenly realities. (59 minutes)
Engaging the sound of ancient wisdom — Monique Neal explains how learning an ancient language as a spoken, living one enriches one’s experience of reading original texts. (21 minutes)
Sustaining a heritage of wisdom — Louise Cowan (1916–2015) explains how the classics reach the deep core of our imagination and teach us to order our loves according to the wholeness of reality. (16 minutes)
Recovering natural philosophy — Science teacher Ravi Scott Jain discusses natural philosophy, the “love of wisdom in the realm of nature,” as the overarching discipline in the sciences. (21 minutes)
Parsing the intellectual vocation — Norman Klassen and Jens Zimmermann demonstrate that some form of humanism has always been central to the purposes of higher education, and insist that the recovery of a rich, Christocentric Christian humanism is the only way for the university to recover a coherent purpose. (39 minutes)
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 155 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Donald Kraybill, Thaddeus Kozinski, David Bentley Hart, Nigel Biggar, Ravi Scott Jain, and Jason Baxter
Teachers and Learners — Ian Ker shares John Henry Newman’s ideals of learning, and Mark Schwehn discusses the virtues of good teachers. (27 minutes)
Liberal arts and the importance of truth — Listen to conversations with two guests from Volume 153, Margarita Mooney and Louis Markos, on the liberal arts and the importance of truth. (26 minutes
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 153 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Charles C. Camosy, O. Carter Snead, Matt Feeney, Margarita A. Mooney, Louis Markos, and Alan Jacobs
Healthy habits of mind — Scott Newstok describes how many efforts at educational reform have become obstacles to thinking well, and he offers a rich and evocative witness to a better way of understanding what thinking is. (20 minutes)
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 151 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Richard Stivers, Holly Ordway, Robin Phillips, Scott Newstok, Junius Johnson, and Peter Mercer-Taylor
Wise use of educational technologies — David I. Smith articulates the difficulties Christian schools face as they seek to use technology in a faithful way. (24 minutes)
Educational provocations — Steve Talbott on establishing ends for education before selecting means
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 150 — FEATURED GUESTS:
David I. Smith, Eric O. Jacobsen, Matthew Crawford, Andrew Davison, Joseph E. Davis, and Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung
How should we then teach? — Following three years of research, David I. Smith discusses what he and his colleagues learned about how educational technologies can be profitable servants and not tyrannical masters. (56 minutes)
The Liberal Arts tradition, II — context and extension — Kevin Clark explains how the book he co-authored defines a framework in which the Trivium and the Quadrivium are the core of a curriculum that includes piety, gymnastics, music, philosophy, and theology. (20 minutes)
The Liberal Arts tradition, I — science and harmony — Ravi Scott Jain discusses the place of the Quadrivium — the four mathematical arts — within the larger framework of the classical approach to education. (21 minutes)
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 145 — FEATURED GUESTS:
David I. Smith, Bruce Hindmarsh, Jason Baxter, John Fea, Laurie Gagne, and Matthew O’Donovan
Further up and further in: understanding Narnia — Joseph Pearce explains how fairy stories can open our eyes to the depths of reality if we read them with the virtue of humility. (15 minutes)
The Practice of Christian Pedagogy, Volume II — David I. Smith argues that more attention needs to be given to the meaning conveyed in teaching methods and assumptions about teaching.(63 minutes)
Thoughts about higher education — Four thoughtful academics discuss how the fact of the Incarnation should inform the ends of higher education. (16 minutes)
Learning to love the truth — Fr. Francis Bethel talks about his book John Senior and the Restoration of Realism. (17 minutes)
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 134 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Chris Armstrong, Grevel Lindop, Michael Martin, William T. Cavanaugh, Philip Turner, and Gisela Kreglinger
