The Consortium Podcast

Three Essential (But Often Overlooked) Qualities of a Good Teacher

This is Episode 17 of the Consortium Podcast, an academic audio blog of Kepler Education.

Since parents are responsible for their child's education, it's helpful if parents both know how to be good teachers and how to identify good teachers for their children when it's appropriate to hire one. In his book, The Truth of Things: Liberal Arts and the Recovery of Reality, Marion Montgomery notes,

"The good teacher must accept as a starting point an alumni association of parents who generally cannot make a distinction between intellectual accomplishment and moral goodness. Then he must, soundly and according to his intellectual principles, insist upon judging intellect."

In other words, a good teacher knows the end and scope of his vocation and does his work with excellence regardless of the democratic impulses that tend to interfere with that good work.

In this episode, Scott and Joffre discuss these three essential but often overlooked qualities of a good teacher.

 

The Way to Make Thy Son Rich: The True Purpose of an Education

This is Episode 16 of the Consortium Podcast, an academic audio blog of Kepler Education.

Aristotle famously noted that poetry is more philosophical than history because while history teaches what man has done in particular, poetry teaches us what he can and might do universally. This quite evident in George Herbert's Poem, "The Church-Porch." In this Episode, Scott Postma and Joffre Swait unpack a few stanzas of Herbert's delightful poem and discuss the perennial human questions--really, the causes and effects--centered around raising children, education, and its effects on society. One important note Herbert makes--The way to make thy sonne rich, is to fill His minde with rest, before his trunk with riches:--alludes to one of our most championed causes in education--Scholé (restful learning) before job training.

George Herbert's "The Church-Porch" from The Temple, stanzas 16-19:

O England! full of sinne, but most of sloth;
Spit out thy flegme, and fill thy brest with glorie:
Thy Gentrie bleats, as if thy native cloth
Transfus’d a sheepishnesse into thy storie:
Not that they all are so; but that the most
Are gone to grasse, and in the pasture lost.

This losse springs chiefly from our education.
Some till their ground, but let weeds choke their sonne:
Some mark a partridge, never their childes fashion:
Some ship them over, and the thing is done.
Studie this art, make it thy great designe;
And if Gods image move thee not, let thine.

Some great estates provide, but doe not breed
A mast’ring minde; so both are lost thereby:
Or els they breed them tender, make them need
All that they leave: this is flat povertie.
For he, that needs five thousand pound to live,
Is full as poore as he, that needs but five.

The way to make thy sonne rich, is to fill
His minde with rest, before his trunk with riches:
For wealth without contentment, climbes a hill
To feel those tempests, which fly over ditches.
But if thy sonne can make ten pound his measure,
Then all thou addest may be call’d his treasure.

 

Online Education and the Reclamation of the Idea of a University

This is Episode 15 of the Consortium Podcast, an academic audio blog of Kepler Education.

Cardinal John Henry Newman said that “A University seems to be in its essence, a place for the communication and the circulation of thought, by means of personal intercourse, through a wide extent of country." When we use the word University in the academic sense, we are technically shortening the phrase, universitas magistrorum et scholarium, meaning a "community of masters and scholars."

In this episode, Scott and Joffre discuss Cardinal Henry Newman's Idea of a University and how online education might be the best place to cultivate intentional academic communities for families and students amidst the demise of the modern educational system. In addition, they discuss not only the benefits but the pitfalls of online education and how to navigate this fairly new medium wisely and safely.

Language Acquisition with Jonathan Roberts and the Ancient Language Institute

This is Episode 14 of the Consortium Podcast, an academic audio blog of Kepler Education.

In this episode, Scott and Joffre talk with Jonathan Roberts of the Ancient Language Institute about the best approaches to language acquisition and the benefits of learning ancient languages when obtaining a liberal arts education.

 

Kepler Education offers a number of language courses, both ancient and modern, for 5th grade all the way up to adult learners.

Poetry and a Liberal Arts Education

This is Episode 13 of the Consortium Podcast, an academic audio blog of Kepler Education.

In this episode, Scott and Joffre discuss the importance of poetry in a liberal arts education. Poetry is more philosophical than history, says Aristotle. And this means poetry gives us insight into the human condition: what humans might do as opposed to history, which tells us what humans have done.

The Romantic poet, Percy Shelley noted that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. In a sense, they are prophets in the truth-telling sense (rather than the prognosticating sense) because poetry serendipitously offers flashes of wisdom and delightful insight, further cultivating the human imagination. Poetry also enriches other forms of communication by actualizing the music of language, turns of phrases and figures of speech.

Easter and Education

This is Episode 12 of the Consortium Podcast, an academic audio blog of Kepler Education.

This episode was recorded for Easter but due to technical difficulties recording a previous podcast, it was delayed.

The content is nevertheless still quite relevant given Easter is the celebration of the most important event in human history, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The resurrection absolutely changed everything, including education, since by it Christ “re-formed the human race” as Irenaeus notes in Against Heresies. In his Second Oration on Easter, Gregory Nazianzen affirms the same saying, “A few drops of blood re-creates the whole world.”

In that the resurrection of Christ brings the whole cosmos within range of the redemptive purpose of Christ (Eph. 1), it reaffirms in one sense (Deut 6:4ff), and recreates in another sense (Paideia), the purpose and method of education, making it that much more important for us to get it right.

Visual Communication and the Liberal Arts

This is Episode 11 of the Consortium Podcast, an academic audio blog of Kepler Education.

In this episode is Scott Postma and Joffre Swait interview Roxana Corradino, an artist, college professor, and Kepler teacher, and discuss visual communications and the importance of its study in a liberal arts education.

Images and signs are all around us. But unless we are aware that every day we are being bombarded with ideas, subtly, in the form of visual communication, we may fail to see how our perceptions are being influenced. In this episode Roxana Corradino discusses the nature and importance of visual communications and how this discipline plays a vital role in how we see the world and interpret the meaning of our world in our day-to-day lives.

NOTE: Unfortunately, technical difficulties in recording this week's podcast resulted in an abundance of editing which diminished the quality of this particular episode. However, we believe the conversation was important enough to share with our listeners so you can glean the valuable content our guest provided in the interview.

 

The Liberal Arts Education, Practically Speaking

This is Episode 10 of the Consortium Podcast, an academic audio blog of Kepler Education.

In this episode, Scott Postma and Joffre Swait get practical about a classical liberal arts education.

You can also learn more about Kepler Education and the consortium of teachers who share this vision for student flourishing by visiting our website at https://kepler.education.

Or, visit the Consortium Blog at https://consortium.kepler.education/.

A Liberal Arts Education and the Great Conversation

This is Episode 9 of the Consortium Podcast, an academic audio blog of Kepler Education.

In this episode, Scott Postma and Joffre Swait make a thorough treatment of the meaning of a classical liberal arts education and show its importance and benefits, namely that it has the potential to cultivate a wise and virtuous people whose resultant happiness produces a free and flourishing society. A liberal arts education can be stated as the pursuit and acquisition of that knowledge which is pleasurable for its own sake, and which frees the mind and prepares the soul to be wise and virtuous. Listen to hear how one can pursue this kind of education.

You can also learn more about Kepler Education and the consortium of teachers who share this vision for student flourishing by visiting our website at https://kepler.education.

Or, visit the Consortium Blog at https://consortium.kepler.education/.

 

Robots or gods: AI and Human Education

This is Episode 8 of the Consortium Podcast, an academic audio blog of Kepler Education.

In this episode, Scott Postma and Joffre Swait discuss the development of AI and what this means in light of giving our children a Human Education. The robots are coming and that's not changing. But that shouldn't concern Christians who educate their children to be human beings who know how to assess value and not just function as a cog in a rote society.

 

Writing is an example of this kind of distinction. Writing can formulaic, but it is also a very human exercise. Students who only learn to write formulaically as a job skill will see their job eventually replaced by a robot. Those who learn to be a cultivated human being and recognize writing is an expression of one's humanness, will have nothing to fear. Soft skills like these cannot be replaced by a robot because they are fundamentally human and not replicable by AI.

 

This is the quote referenced in the podcast:

“For the civic educator, the task is to produce a particular kind of citizen; for the educator released from political goals, the end of education is less to shape students than to develop their reason and knowledge to such a degree that they are able to take personal responsibility for shaping themselves as free and independent individuals—thinking through their own views, cultivating their own tastes, developing their own life plans, and becoming unique people. Although it is comforting to think that in a democracy these two projects are complementary (we like to say that democracy is the form of government that values free and autonomous individuals), the open-endedness of the educational process is worrisome from the political perspective; the temptation is to try to produce an education with a known and satisfactory outcome. Free men and women are often a bit too unpredictable for the civic educator's taste.” - Bob Pepperman Taylor, University of Vermont

 

This is the AI article referenced in the podcast. 

 

You can also learn more about Kepler Education and the consortium of teachers who share this vision for student flourishing by visiting our website at https://kepler.education.

Or, visit the Consortium Blog at https://consortium.kepler.education/.