From the very start, the founders of The Heights understood education to consist in the communication of a culture. As culture often enters a boy's mind through his senses, an important means of this transmission is the art and architecture of a school. Indeed, in many ways buildings embody the ideals of an institution.
This week Joe Cardenas, head of mentoring and long-time art history teacher, joins us for a conversation on the importance of beauty in education. Rooting the conversation in the American tradition, Joe helps us see why and how the art and architecture of schools is as important as the books in its curriculum.
As we hear from Joe, the art on a school’s walls become the images adorning a student’s soul. If we want to help our boys be at home in their very selves, the art of schools is an indispensable means to this end.
Chapters
Additional Resources
Adoremus.org's explanation of the Four Seasonal Marian Anthems (includes history and translation)
PDF of Music and Lyrics to Alma Redemtoris Mater from gregorian-chant-hymns.com
Speech on the Rebuilding of the House of Commons by Winston Churchill
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
The Feeling of Things, the Contemplation of Beauty by Joseph Ratzinger
A Catholic Eton? by Paul Shrimpton
Also on the Forum
School Tone, the Most Powerful Teacher with Alvaro de Vicente
Building Little Houses: Why Random Art Projects Are Awesome by Joe Bissex
Manners: The Art of Happiness by Robert Greving
Why Our Politics Needs Poetry with Dr. Matthew Mehan
Five Fruits of a Poetic Education by Nate Gadiano
In many schools, education is understood in reductively intellectual terms. The point of teaching, it would seem, is merely to inform, to fill the mind with data, to train the intellect to perform tasks and solve puzzles. To be sure, information and intellectual virtues are essential aspects of education; but they are not the whole, and to make them so would be to reduce the person to his mind.
In this talk, taken from our recent Art of Teaching Conference, Anton Vorozhko helps us understand the role of the heart in the education of the whole human person. Starting with a reflection on the greatest of teachers, Christ—the one to whom all other teachers ought ultimately to point—Anton offers advice at once practical and personal. His talk centers on three areas, or apostolates, which he suggests teachers should consider: presence, correction, and prayer.
In the end, considering these three apostolates will help teachers turn their daily work into what St. John Henry Newman called a cor ad cor loquitur—a heart speaking unto heart—making his task not only to inform the mind but equally to move the heart.
Chapters
Additional Resources
Forty Dreams of St. John Bosco: From St. John Bosco’s Biographical Memoirs by St. John Bosco
Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II by George Weigel
Also on The Forum
The Art of Teaching: On Forming Contemplative Souls with Rich Moss
Developing Your Son’s Will with Andy Reed
The Freedom to Form Bonds: Kevin Majeres on Mindfulness and Attention with Dr. Kevin Majeres
The Talk and Beyond with Michael Moynihan