L@L Notes: Andrew Kern

Thanks for listening to Leigh! @ Lunch! If you’re interested in topics that came up during the show, see below for a list of links and other notes you may find helpful. If you missed “Updates on Classical Education with Andrew Kern” (1/25/12), click on the title to listen to the show archive now (available 15 minutes after the show ends).

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Notes from today’s show

• To purchase your own copy of today’s giveaway, A Contemplation of Nature, visit the CC Bookstore.
• Don’t forget — through Jan. 31 you can purchase Memory Master products at a sharply discounted rate!
• Andrew Kern is the founder and president of the CiRCE Institute. He is the author, with Gene Edward Veith, Jr., of Classical Education: The Movement Sweeping America. His essays include:
  • Classical Education and the Western Tradition
  • Twelfth Night
  • The Teacher’s Responsibility
  • Lost in the Trinity
  • The Word Became Flesh
  • The Word Became Flesh
  • When He Prepared the Heavens
  • Eyes to See
  • Blessed Among Women
  • Naming as Blessing
• For more information about the possible connection between Solomon and the seven liberal arts, see Proverbs 9:1.
• The seven arts are: grammar, logic, and rhetoric (the trivium); as well as arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy (the quadrivium).
• Andrew quotes Dante’s Paradiso (Canto 13): “Far worse than uselessly he leaves the shore (more full of error than he was before) who fishes for the truth but lacks the art.” Learn more about 13th century Italian poet Dante Alighieri at WorldofDante.org.
• Leigh compares the trivium, which deals with language skills and ideas, to the quadrivium, which deals with physical skills and application. The seven liberal arts allow us to balance the big picture, what has happened in the past, with real people in real space at the moment that they live in.
• David Hicks’ book Norms & Nobility, is available from the CC Bookstore.
• The goal of the quadrivium, according to Andrew, “is to see the truth of what you are looking at, to see into the essence, the heart and soul of what you are looking at.”
• See more examples of Leigh using “truth tables”: Logic – Truth Tables and Truth Trees (2008). Read a primer on Truth Tables from the University of Cincinnati and a simpler explanation from SparkNotes.
• Comfort for panicking listeners: “There’s never been a truly classically educated person ever, because there’s always too much more to learn…It’s an ideal that if a community seeks it together, it will be blessed.”
• Andrew describes 3 ways to apply the stages of learning:
  • 1) The young child’s stages of learning (see Dorothy Sayers’ The Lost Tools of Learning).
  • 2) The stages of learning any subject – basic information, internal logic or relations between information, ability to communicate its principles.
  • 3) The stages of a  lesson with the aim of perceiving a truth. We go from a specific instance (incarnation), to comparing the types/examples, to deriving a general principle (epiphany).
• He contrasts the stages of learning to the art of learning. We achieve the art of learning when we identify a pattern which, if we imitate it, will allow us to speak, write, use math, or do logic well. We use that pattern to approach truth in our community.
• Arithmetic is the art of the properties of numbers. The practical application is the ability to calculate. You’re asking, “How do numbers behave?”
• Geometry is the study of the properties of shapes. The practical application is the ability to measure the earth. Geometry (geos + metron) means “the measure of the earth.”
• Harmonics/Music is the study of the properties of numbers in relation to each other (e.g. ratios and proportions). A chord is a ratio or proportion between the lengths of strings. Music is a bridge between the trivium and quadrivium and between physical and spiritual/emotional realms.
• In the Middle Ages, music was the art of the muses (including poetry and verse). The origin of the word comes from Greek mousike techne “art of the Muses,” from fem. of mousikos “pertaining to the Muses,” from Mousa “Muse.” In classical Greece, any art in which the Muses presided, but especially music.
• Astronomy is the study of the properties of shapes in motion. The Greeks charted the movement of the stars to find principles that explained their motion. In studying the stars, the Greeks sought “normative” reasons beyond the useful, something related to truth, wisdom, and virtue. The goal of astronomy was to train the mind to perceive truth.
• The 2012 CiRCE Conference is titled A Contemplation of Creation. It will take place July 18-21, 2012 in Louisville, Kentucky. One of the featured speakers will be author and speaker Wendell Berry! Other speakers are David Hicks, Martin Cothran, and many more. Click here for more information about the conference, or to register.
• Wendell Berry (1934-) is an American author and speaker who has written numerous works of fiction and nonfiction including the collection of essays A Continuous Harmony. He is the winner of the 2012 Russell Kirk Paideia Prize for lifetime achievement in classical education.
• Previous recipients of the award include Dr. Glenn Arbery, the author of Why Literature Matters, Tracy Lee Simmons, author of Climbing Parnassus, and Laura Berquist, author of Designing Your Own Classical Curriculum.

Thanks for listening!