In the final episode about Josef Pieper's Leisure the Basis of Culture, we discuss the connection between leisure and worship and why secular holidays don't cut it. We also compare the totally consuming world of work to the one ring to rule them all.

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Please consider becoming a founding donor for St John Henry Newman College, a new independent classical school in South Brisbane.

Music: 'Inspiring Dreams' by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon
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Josef Pieper connects our ability for festival and celebration with schole and leisure. If in our schools we manage our celebrations and justify them with key learnings and outcomes, and asses their relative success or failure against a checklist, it's likely our celebrations have become subsumed into the life of work. 

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In Part 3 of the series on Leisure the Basis of Culture, the discussion is all about acedia and restlessness as the opposite to leisure.

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Our series explaining schole continues with part two on Leisure: The Basis of Culture. In this episode focusing on Chapter Two, we question how hard work and effort have come to be seen as the litmus test of successful education, and whether this vision misses out any essential elements that humanise education.

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Music: 'Inspiring Dreams' by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon
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Schole is an alien concept for those new to classical education. In the first episode in our mini-series on the book Leisure: The Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper we discuss what it means to contemplate, and the difference between two ways of knowing that were described in the Middle Ages as ratio and intellectus. Pieper's Leisure is one of the foundational books for classical liberal arts education, and it provides a helpful corrective for a modern education that has become obsessed with analysing and deconstructing, and is often at risk of losing the forest for the trees.

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Music: 'Inspiring Dreams' by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon
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In this episode James reads a paper that he prepared recently for a classical education symposium. The paper focuses on the role of beauty in education.

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Music: 'Inspiring Dreams' by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon
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James interviews Dr Scott Crider, Professor of English at the University of Dallas where he has taught for thirty years. His book, The Office of Assertion: An Art of Rhetoric for Academic Essay, is one of James' favourites for teaching academic writing. James and Scott discuss the value of rhetoric, how to teach writing, the power of language, and the way that poetry communicates truth. 

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Music: 'Inspiring Dreams' by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon
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In another short FAQ episode, Difff and James discuss why history is such an important and central focus of Classical Education.

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Music: 'Inspiring Dreams' by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon
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In this interview, Difff speaks to Dr Hugh Chilton from The Scots College, Sydney. They discuss ways that Scots is rediscovering elements of classical and liberal arts education through reclaiming the reality of teachers as scholars and academics and the positive impact that can have on a school. Hugh then explains the Scots X program that he leads at the college and how it incorporates elements of classical education to think deeply about the best kind of education specifically for boys in junior high school.

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Music: 'Inspiring Dreams' by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon
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For the first episode of 2025, Difff and James ask why schools should read the 'Great Books'. What even are the great books, and what makes them so great? Schools have to read something (though that's perhaps not universally acknowledged), so what metrics should be used to determine what kinds of books should be read.  And isn't it true that what we call the 'Great Books' are just old, boring and difficult?

Please consider becoming a founding donor for St John Henry Newman College, a new independent classical school in South Brisbane.

Music: 'Inspiring Dreams' by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon
Creative Commons CC BY 4.0