Developing Classical Thinkers

This week, we have a special episode in honor of Memorial Day, a holiday that honors those who have given their lives in service to our country and in preserving our freedom.In this episode, we look at the beginnings of Memorial Day, why we celebrate the holiday and how long we have done so. Then, we draw out the significance of the day by looking at the life and education of Abraham Lincoln. Thank you to everyone who serves or has served in our military for your time, support, and sacrifice for the freedoms we enjoy each day.

In this webinar, Mrs. Warfield presented practical tips for teaching students how to annotate texts and how annotating can help students develop better reading habits. Topics included the habits of active reading, good questioning, and annotating, as well as ways to encourage whole-group class discussions over texts that matter.A Knightdale native, Mrs. Warfield is a graduate of Pennsylvania State University and has been a teacher for 11 years, with experience in both public and private education. She is certified to teach literature, science and history to all grade levels. Mrs. Warfield is passionate about teaching and loves to learn. This webinar was streamed on April 27, 2023.Learn more about Thales Press and register for upcoming events and webinars at https://www.thalesacademy.org/resourc... Interested in teaching at Thales Academy? Please check out our website if you are interested in pursuing a career at Thales Academy and learning about needs across our network. Find out more at https://www.thalesacademy.org/contact/careers

Since ancient times, classical educators regarded math as a subject to make one wise. Math demonstrates the order, beauty, and harmony in the world around us in a way language cannot always do, and classical education roots the teaching of math in the pursuit of truth, beauty, and goodness. In this episode, host Winston Brady speaks with Phillip Johnson, Professor of Engineering and Sciences at Thales College, and Ravi Jain, an Alcuin Fellow, author of "The Liberal Arts Tradition," and the graduate scholar in science and religion at Oriel College, Oxford University. In the episode, they discuss the history of mathematics education, as well as the ways in which mathematics helps students better understand truth and beauty, and thereby gain wisdom and virtue. We can use mathematics not only to solve problems but also to gain confidence that our world is not inherently random and chaotic—that there is an order to the world that we can see, test, and demonstrate through the power of mathematical reasoning.

On this episode, host Winston Brady speaks with CiRCE-certified educator Kristen Rudd on the value of classical education in general and on Dante's Divine Comedy in particular—why students should read it and the insights they'll gain for life by finishing Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Kristen has homeschooled her two children for 15 years, and she is in the final year of her homeschooling journey. She is a CiRCE-certified master classical teacher, holds an MAT in Classical Education from the Templeton Honors College at Eastern University, and teaches online literature and writing classes for both high schoolers and adults.She teaches the Dante Atrium for the Circe Institute and directs the Independent Classical Educator Fellowship, a convivial group for like-minded entrepreneurial classical educators, as well as the Triangle Classical Forum in the Raleigh-Durham region of North Carolina. Feel free to contact Kristen through her website.

Elizabeth Jetton, a long-time teacher of 6th through 8th grade trivium, will share her insights for teaching middle school students how to write. Her workshop will introduce the steps of the writing process, revising their writing and adding sentence dress-ups, and paragraph structure in and alongside how to introduce these concepts to students.Mrs. Jetton earned a B.A. in English with a minor in Creative Writing from St. Andrews University and a M.A. in English from Wake Forest University. Mrs. Jetton teaches Trivium and chairs the Trivium Department, as well as serving as a writer, editor, and content expert for Thales Press.This episode was streamed live as a webinar on April 12, 2023.Interested in teaching at Thales Academy? Please check out our website if you are interested in pursuing a career at Thales Academy and learning about needs across our network. Find out more at https://www.thalesacademy.org/contact/careers.

ChatGPT is an AI-powered chatbot, capable of producing short and long form written communication. Unlike previous iterations of AI-powered chatbots, ChatGPT produces essays, blog posts, and other forms of written communication that are almost indistinguishable from those written by a human being. When the service was launched in November of 2022, educators and parents immediately recognized the challenges ChatGPT presented for learning and writing. Thanks to this advancement, students could ask ChatGPT to write an essay, set parameters for the assignment, and provide a word count, and ChatGPT could write the essay for the student. On this episode of #DevelopingClassicalThinkers, Winston Brady speaks with two Thales College professors–Peter Forrest, Dean of Humanities and Phillip Johnson, Professor of Engineering and Mathematics–to work through all the challenges presented by ChatGPT.Such challenges included not only the opportunities for plagiarism but also the likelihood students may cease researching topics and instead rely on the machine–ChatGPT–to do their thinking and researching for them. Along the way, they discuss the amazing gifts we humans have for creativity and originality, what it means to be human, and the implications of teaching against the machine.

John Henry Crosby, the president and founder of the Hildebrand Project, joins Bob Luddy in a discussion on "The Dethronement of Truth" by Dietrich von Hildebrand.Hildebrand (1889–1977) was a major personalist philosopher, heralded as "one of the great ethicists of the twentieth century" by Pope John Paul II. Amongst his numerous books and publications, Hildebrand was a prolific essayist, including his 1943 article, "The Dethronement of Truth." In the work, Hildebrand explains the nature and importance of truth and how the rejection of and indifference to truth tears apart the fabric of society. "The Dethronement of Truth" addresses issues of morality, epistemology, and relativism, as well as speaking out against the totalitarian ideologies of Communism and Nazism that Hildebrand, as a German philosopher, had publicly and heroically resisted. As Hildebrand articulates, and as Bob and John Henry discuss, we seek to understand the truth because human dignity and freedom are connected to us being the kind of beings who can seek and come to know the truth about reality. To put any other criterion in place of truth degrades the human person. Bob's Book Review is a periodic webinar led by Bob Luddy, the founder of Thales Academy, Thales College, and CaptiveAire. Learn more about upcoming webinars and all Thales Press events at https://www.thalesacademy.org/resources/thales-press.

Classical education cultivates people of excellence through the contemplation of truth, beauty, and goodness–and a Spanish classroom should do the same, albeit in Spanish! The art and literature of Spain provide a worthy vehicle to discuss beautiful things, providing that one has the resources to focus on Spain’s artistic and cultural treasures, read beautiful poetry in Spanish, or talk about such wonderful things in Spanish.In this webinar, Judith Castillo-Arzeno presented resources for high school Spanish integrating beautiful works of Spanish art, including the likes of Diego Velasquez and Pablo Picasso, and Spanish language learning.Ms. Castillo-Arzeno teaches high school Spanish at Thales Academy Rolesville. She grew up in the Dominican Republic until her family relocated to New York City. A graduate of The City College of New York (CUNY), she has taught high school Spanish since 2009. This webinar was streamed live on January 18 at 4:00 pm.

Each year, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky releases a report entitled the “Festivus’ Report on Government Waste.” He catalogs different projects that the federal government has used taxpayer dollars on that, in Paul’s estimation, is not a wise use of tax payer funds.Many of these projects are funded through various scientific laboratories and, upon reading the list, looks eerily similar to the adventures of Lemuel Gulliver in Gulliver’s Travels, a work of satire by the 18th-century writer Jonathan Swift. In the episode, Matt, Winston, and Josh play a game in which they guess whether or not the experiment is from Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels” or from Rand Paul’s Festivus Report. Then, the group discuss the larger implications of satire and the purposes of scientific investigation. In short, they follow the purposes of satire itself: they use works of classical literature to try and better understand our own culture and our own foibles. For a copy of this year's Festivus' Report (and others), click on this link here: https://www.paul.senate.gov/?s=festivus

To celebrate and explain St. Patrick’s Day, today’s episode features a brief biography of St. Patrick. Roman-British missionary St. Patrick lived from 385 to 461 and is famous for bringing Christianity to the people of Ireland. Learn the full story and how Patrick’s life shows the value of being classically educated. The quote from St. Patrick’s Confessio is available from https://www.confessio.ie/etexts/confessio_latin#01The story about Irish monasteries preserving manuscripts from the ancient world is drawn from “How the Irish Saved Civilization,” available here: https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/how-the-irish-saved-civilization-the-untold-story-of-irelands-heroic-role-from-the-fall-of-rome-to-the-rise-of-medieval-europe-by-thomas-cahill/247589/?resultid=14dc8acd-4e59-40b8-b2ef-02c8bb1116a9#edition=2381566&idiq=4442804