Schooling America

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Editor's note: the original recording was lost, so this is the backup. Please excuse the quality. Will be back to normal next episode. Thanks!

Joshua Gibbs, director of the Classical Teaching Institute at the Ambrose School in Boise, Idaho, couldn't be paid to read books as a kid—and he started teaching classic literature at 28 with no natural interest in the texts in front of him. Then The Consolation of Philosophy became the first book he ever really understood. Ryan and Alex talk with him about how a storyteller's instincts became a way of teaching, and why your students need a teacher willing to say what he thinks.

What's in This Episode:

• How Joshua's confession as a capable young student—that he lay awake each night planning what to draw once his schoolwork was done—convinced his mother to start looking for something else
• Why The Consolation of Philosophy made philosophy seem doable: its first four books observe how people actually behave instead of laying down abstract rules
• Why a lecture can be a single sentence—and what happens to students whose teachers never say what they think
• Why a high school teacher has to take teenagers seriously and not seriously at the same time
• Why Joshua admits to his students that he's a mediocre Christian, and how that shakes them out of easy Sunday-school answers

Resources Mentioned:

• Arcadia Education
• Classical Learning Test
• The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius
• How Much Lecture Is Necessary? by Joshua Gibbs

Chapters:

• 00:00: Introduction
• 01:32: Department of Defense schools and VHS homeschooling
• 11:43: A good student who wouldn't read
• 17:18: Teaching at 28 and The Consolation of Philosophy
• 28:03: The burlap bag in the woods
• 35:47: Teaching aphorisms through stories
• 50:08: Good lecture versus bad lecture
• 56:32: Stand-up comics and didactic professors
• 01:11:04: Taking teenagers seriously and not seriously
• 01:17:11: Christian schools and the cheap currency of language

Hosted by Ryan Klopak (Arcadia Education) and Alex Julian (CLT). The Furrows podcast features leaders in classical education who have been transformed by classical education. 

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios.

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Jane Scharl read Crime and Punishment alone at eleven, and what it gave her was not a sense of being special but the opposite: a sense that everything she felt had been felt before, and that she owed it to those people to go find out how they'd handled it. She's now a verse playwright whose Rabelais plays get staged, and she talks here about the classical language she never got to learn, the student she was who could hold every idea and no due date, and why she thinks a base level of unhappiness is normal, but we've stopped tolerating it.

What's in This Episode:

• What happened when a teacher ran a week-long screen fast with his ninth graders, which was not the relief he expected but existential dread, and the eighty percent who said afterward they would not do it again
• Why Jane Scharl does not believe in "normal," and what that does to how you read the student in your class who cannot keep track of a schedule. 
• The case that a base level of unhappiness is ordinary and that we have lost our tolerance for it, offered as one explanation for how freely diagnoses get handed out now
• What reading Crime and Punishment alone as a child did to her, which was not a sense of being special but of being precedented and owing something to the people who went first. Worth sitting with if you teach students who think nobody has been where they are
• Why she took a politics, philosophy, and economics degree rather than a writing one, and how wanting to know something before writing about it ended with her staging a verse play a mentor had told her would never be performed

Resources Mentioned:

• J.C. Scharl
• Sonnez Les Matines, a verse play by J.C. Scharl
• The Death of Rabelais, a play by Jane Clark Scharl
• Classical Learning Test
• Arcadia Education

Chapters:

• 00:00: Introduction
• 02:00: How Ryan already knew Jane, but Jane didn't
• 06:21: Crime and Punishment alone as a child
• 13:27: Why Jane doesn't believe in normal
• 18:07: Xenophon's ten thousand, and what silence does to a person
• 22:27: The Walden challenge, and the dread it turned up
• 27:49: Shaman initiation, and being buried in the cave
• 32:04: The womb you outgrow, and purgatory as grace
• 46:24: Studying philosophy so she would have something to write about
• 58:48: The Rabelais trilogy

Hosted by Ryan Klopak (Arcadia Education) and Alex Julian (CLT). The Furrows podcast features leaders in classical education who have been transformed by classical education. 

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios.

Send us Fan Mail

Patrick Whalen spent a decade in the Marine Corps, founded a boys' boarding school on a Kansas farm, and now builds physical education curriculum for classical schools through Iliad Athletics. 

He tells Ryan Klopak and Alex Julian how a candlelit reading of Ecclesiastes, a wagon crash into a chain-link fence post, and The Song of Roland read over cigars all point at one conviction: that formation runs through the body, and abstraction is what happens when it doesn't.

What's in This Episode:

• Why Patrick credits the dinner table over any classroom he sat in, and what his educator parents told him about report cards
• Saint Gregory's Academy: sixty boys, no electronics, and a folk-music culture that turned a self-declared non-singer into a musician
• Busking through Rome as a juggling troupe, and the old puppeteer who kept twelve boarding-school boys from getting jumped in an alley
• Reading The Song of Roland with Marines before a deployment, and why "do you blow the horn" was the only question worth pressing
• The chess-and-burpees day camp where the least athletic kid on the team won the game in three moves

Resources:

• Iliad Athletics
• Adam's Curse
• St. Martin's Academy
• Classical Learning Test
• Arcadia Education

Chapters:

• 00:00: Why this episode drops you mid-conversation
• 01:59: The dinner table did more than any classroom
• 08:09: Educator parents who said the grade is the grade
• 16:22: The wagon, the hill, and the chain-link post
• 21:53: Saint Gregory's Academy—no electronics, so you made the music yourself
• 25:30: Busking Rome with bagpipes, juggling clubs, and knives
• 42:41: Dropping out of Hillsdale to enlist as an infantryman
• 49:41: The Song of Roland, whiskey, and cigars before a deployment
• 56:18: Naming Iliad Athletics after a boy who understood the joy of battle
• 01:00:34: Practical ways to put the body back in your classroom

Hosted by Ryan Klopak (Arcadia Education) and Alex Julian (CLT). The Furrows podcast features leaders in classical education who have been transformed by classical education. 

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios.

Send us Fan Mail

Elizabeth Williams knew she wanted to teach from the time she lined up her stuffed animals for class as a small child, but it was a homeschool high school built on classical literature—and a self-led reading of The Grapes of Wrath—that showed her what her early Catholic schooling had left out. After studying literature, history, and theater at Franciscan University of Steubenville and starting her career in the classroom at Great Hearts, she now teaches middle school and is building a theater program from the ground up. She joins Ryan and Alex to talk about awakening wonder in the most self-conscious students in the building, turning a classroom into a mead hall, and why anything worth doing is worth doing badly.

What's in This Episode:

• Awakening wonder in middle schoolers—the age where "it becomes cool not to care"—and why that window shapes lifelong beliefs about what a student can and can't do
• Transforming the classroom into the world of the text: candlelit mead halls for Beowulf, a conch shell for Lord of the Flies, a projected balcony and foam swords for Cyrano de Bergerac
• Using whatever's on hand as a prop—a rolling chair as a horse, a talent-show flyer as a love letter—because the symbol matters more than the object
• Selling students on a book by exaggerating your own enthusiasm, since middle schoolers see through a single glimmer of discontent
• Trading an overwhelmed, perfectionist first year for a "firm but kind" classroom by asking for help and putting yourself on the hot seat

Resources Mentioned:

• Great Hearts Academies
• Classical Learning Test
• Arcadia Education

Chapters:

• 00:00: Introduction and Elizabeth's path into classical education
• 05:00: A self-led study of The Grapes of Wrath
• 10:07: Awakening wonder in the self-conscious middle school years
• 21:03: Why drama forces students into the great ideas
• 27:20: Cutting through cynicism at each student's pace
• 31:14: Turning the classroom into the text
• 36:22: Keeping your own imagination alive
• 47:39: Teaching Shakespeare to eighth graders
• 55:40: Pointing students toward God in a charter classroom
• 59:30: Perfectionism and the "firm but kind" classroom

Hosted by Ryan Klopak (Arcadia Education) and Alex Julian (CLT). The Furrows podcast features leaders in classical education who have been transformed by classical education. 

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios.

Send us Fan Mail

Nikhil Jandhyala came to classical education as a public-school kid raised on two faiths—Hinduism American capitalism—and left it a Catholic teacher who now hands the same gift to his own students. Ryan Klopak and Alex Julian trace that transformation with him: the sixth-grade natural-philosophy class where "nature acts for an end" first cracked his world open, the ninth-grade Euclid teacher who convinced him that truth is worth pursuing for its own sake, and the long, winding road to conversion.

What's in This Episode:

• How a single truth from a sixth-grade natural-philosophy class—"nature acts for an end and it does nothing in vain"—became the first crack in a materialist worldview, and what it means to teach students to observe nature rather than memorize textbooks about it
• The ninth-grade Euclid teacher who ran geometry like "an intellectual street fight," and why Euclid may be the only real natural science a student gets in high school
• Why middle school is where American anti-intellectualism hits hardest, and what classical schools can (and can't) do about the drift toward treating learning as mere utility
• Reading Lord of the Flies and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader as maps of the human soul
• The conversion at the center of it all: idolizing Hitchens and Maher, a barefoot pilgrimage in India, church bells with no church in sight, and the friend whose argument finally pointed him toward the Church

Resources:

• Euclid's Elements
• The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• Classical Learning Test (CLT)
• Arcadia Education

Chapters:

• 00:00: Welcome and meeting Nikhil Jandhyala
• 01:47: Before classical education—India, Hinduism, and the dollar bill
• 05:02: Sixth grade and the first truth: "nature acts for an end"
• 15:42: The dividing line between faith and reason
• 21:41: Middle school, deans, and the anti-intellectual pull
• 31:15: The books that stick with you
• 33:21: Lord of the Flies as a map of the soul
• 36:55: Eustace, the dragon, and the mercy of Aslan
• 42:03: High school and the Euclid teacher who changed everything
• 55:38: Atheism, a pilgrimage, and church bells with no church

Hosted by Ryan Klopak (Arcadia Education) and Alex Julian (CLT). The Furrows podcast features leaders in classical education who have been transformed by classical education. 

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios.

Send us Fan Mail

Professor Owen Anderson teaches philosophy and religious studies at Arizona State University, where starts every intro philosophy class with "where did your life go so wrong?"  In this conversation, Ryan and Alex trace his journey from a curious teenager in Arizona public schools to a philosophy professor working to recover what education has lost.

What's in This Episode:

• How discovering the Great Books in a school library set Owen on the path to philosophy and why students today still hunger for that kind of intellectual engagement
• The farming analogy for education: why cultivating students requires patience, and what teacher narcissism costs a classroom over time
• Aristotle's proof for the highest good and the eternal—and how Owen uses these arguments in introductory philosophy at ASU
• John Dewey's vision for democratizing education, how it went wrong, and why Mortimer Adler's answer offers a better way
• Owen's book The Twelve Arguments and how natural theology connects to the American founding and the Declaration of Independence

Chapters:

• 00:00: Welcome and a Note on Audio Quality
• 00:47: Introducing Professor Owen Anderson
• 02:30: Discovering the Great Books in High School
• 08:49: Early Questions About Faith, Truth, and Certainty
• 13:22: The Farming Analogy: Why Education Takes Time
• 17:00: What Students Lose in the Industrial University
• 26:14: Aristotle on the Good and the Eternal
• 41:09: John Dewey, Mortimer Adler, and the Democratization of Education
• 51:29: Charlie Kirk as the Campus Socrates
• 58:56: The Twelve Arguments, Natural Law, and the American Founding

Resources Mentioned:

• The Twelve Arguments by Owen Anderson
• After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre
• Classical Learning Test
• Arcadia Education

Hosted by Ryan Klopak (Arcadia Education) and Alex Julian (CLT). The Furrows podcast features leaders in classical education who have been transformed by classical education. 

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios.

Send us Fan Mail

In Part 2 of his conversation with Ryan and Alex, Andrew Ellison—veteran classical educator and former headmaster—opens with something he couldn't wait to share: a bucket-list Tallis Scholars concert in Dallas that arrived at exactly the right moment. The story becomes a lens for exploring how classical education transforms not just students, but every person in a school building—teachers, administrators, and ultimately the families and communities around them. 

What's in This Episode:

• How a Tallis Scholars concert sparked a reflection on classical education's power to form everyone in a school building—including the headmaster
• Where graduates and non-educators can find real communities of lifelong learning once they've left the classroom
• What makes faculty common reading programs genuinely formative and what quietly kills them
• Why the shared faculty office is a non-negotiable architectural feature of a classical school
• How classical education's influence ripples outward from teachers to students to families and how it opened one educator's path to faith

Chapters:

• 00:00: Catching Up with Andrew—Health Update and a Bucket List Concert
• 05:30: The Tallis Scholars and the Revival of Renaissance Sacred Music
• 14:41: The Veritas Music Teacher Who Changed a Headmaster's Ear
• 22:00: Mortimer Adler on Leisure and the Purpose of Liberal Education
• 28:00: Well-Read Mom and the Quest for Lifelong Learning Communities
• 31:12: Faculty Common Reading—Power, Pitfalls, and What Actually Works
• 42:13: The Shared Faculty Office as a Non-Negotiable
• 47:20: How Classical Culture Ripples to Students and Families
• 53:20: Church Communities and Classical Schools as Cultural Seedbeds
• 55:55: The Way of Beauty—How Classical Education Deepened Andrew's Faith

Resources Mentioned:

• The Tallis Scholars
• Well-Read Mom
• "Labor, Leisure, and Liberal Education" by Mortimer J. Adler — The Imaginative Conservative
• Classical Learning Test
• Arcadia Education

Hosted by Ryan Klopak (Arcadia Education) and Alex Julian (CLT). The Furrows podcast features leaders in classical education who have been transformed by classical education.

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

Send us Fan Mail

Andrew Ellison grew up in the suburbs of Indianapolis with a public school teacher mother who read the Chronicles of Narnia at bedtime and ran summer learning programs at home—and had no idea any of it was "classical." In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, host Alex Julian traces Andrew's path from that curiosity-rich childhood through a soul-killing public junior high, into Trinity School at Greenlawn in South Bend, Indiana, and through his early teaching years at Tempe Prep Academy in Phoenix. Andrew now serves as Vice President of Enrollment Management at the University of Dallas.

What's in This Episode:

• How Andrew's mother—a certified public school teacher—cultivated an educationally rich home that planted the seeds of classical formation long before anyone called it that
• The founding story of Trinity School at Greenlawn and why Andrew's parents sent him there without knowing anything about classical education
• Why Andrew's transition into classical schooling felt like continuity rather than rupture and what that reveals about the difference between a school that panders and one that leads
• Two pages in Wheelock's Latin on the Indo-European language family that "blew his mind" and opened the vertical dimension of knowledge for the first time
• How the classical education movement grew from living room conversations in Tempe, Arizona to the President's cabinet and the internal "30 years war" Andrew fears it must avoid

Chapters:

• 00:00: Introduction
• 01:49: Andrew's Mother as First Teacher
• 16:14: Middle School and the Pandering Culture
• 20:55: Trinity School at Greenlawn
• 23:45: Latin Tutoring with Bill Walker
• 35:42: Lead and They Will Follow
• 49:06: Wheelock's Latin and the Language Revelation
• 57:48: The Path to Teaching and Great Hearts
• 01:04:38: Good Books and Cultural Inputs
• 01:09:09: The Classical Ed Movement: Past and Future

Resources Mentioned:

• University of Dallas
• Great Hearts America
• The Paideia Proposal by Mortimer J. Adler
• Arcadia Education
• Classical Learning Test

Hosted by Ryan Klopak (Arcadia Education) and Alex Julian (CLT). The Furrows podcast features leaders in classical education who have been transformed by classical education. 

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios.

Send us Fan Mail

Dr. Anthony Sciubba leads one of the largest K–5 classical schools in the Southwest at Great Hearts in the Phoenix Valley. In this conversation, he traces a journey from a public school upbringing in Gilbert, Arizona—where Great Expectations bored him to tears in seventh grade—to a transformative encounter with the great books at Pepperdine, graduate studies at Yale, Oxford, and Emory, and ultimately a calling to bring classical Christian education to children at the elementary level.

What's in This Episode:

• How a great books colloquium at Pepperdine first introduced Anthony to Augustine, the Church Fathers, and the intellectual richness of early Christianity
• The Clement of Alexandria vs. Tertullian debate—and why the question of what Athens has to do with Jerusalem is far more than an academic one
• A deep dive into Gregory of Nazianzus—poet, bishop, theologian, and reluctant monk—and the two books Anthony recommends for entering his world
• Why classical Christian education may be the most historically significant and most ecumenical movement in modern American Christianity
• How Anthony's move from higher education to K–12 school leadership reflects the classical conviction that education forms the whole person—mind, heart, and soul

Chapters:

• 00:00: Introduction / Anthony's Childhood in Arizona
• 02:22: First Encounter with Classical Literature
• 09:19: Great Books Colloquium at Pepperdine
• 14:03: Athens and Jerusalem—Clement of Alexandria vs. Tertullian
• 21:08: Gregory of Nazianzus—Poet, Bishop, and Theologian
• 28:07: C.S. Lewis at The Kilns
• 37:46: Classical Christian Education and the Great Conversation
• 54:17: From Pepperdine to Yale, Oxford, and Great Hearts
• 1:03:33: Why K–12? The Practicality of Classical Education
• 1:10:35: How This Transforms Others: The Classical School Movement

Resources Mentioned:

• St. Gregory of Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biography by John A. McGuckin
• Gregory of Nazianzus on the Trinity and the Knowledge of God by Christopher A. Beeley
• Classical Learning Test
• Arcadia Education

Hosted by Ryan Klopack (Arcadia Education) and Alex Julian (CLT). The Furrows podcast features leaders in classical education who have been transformed by classical education.

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

Send us Fan Mail

Dr. Toyin Atolagbe shares how her early education in Nigeria, marked by daily hymns, strict discipline, and a focus on shaping both heart and intellect, formed the habits and virtues that guide her work today. She discusses the power of classical education to instill excellence, the crucial role of parents as first educators, and her current work supporting families through Lighthouse Parenting Hub.

What's in This Episode:

• How Dr. Atolagbe's elementary education in Nigeria shaped her character through daily assemblies, hymns, literature, and high moral standards
• The formation of lifelong habits of excellence, discipline, and virtue through classical-style education
• The importance of beauty, truth, and goodness in shaping young minds and hearts
• Technology's impact on children and the need for parents to set clear boundaries
• Supporting parents through coaching, training, and resources at Lighthouse Parenting Hub

Chapters:

• 00:00: Introduction and welcome
• 01:15: Growing up in Nigerian schools—classical education in practice
• 07:14: Formative experiences—songs of praise, cultural groups, and leadership
• 14:32: The role of discipline and high standards in character formation
• 28:45: Teaching in classical schools and forming student virtue
• 42:18: Parenting philosophy: setting boundaries while supporting growth
• 54:26: Technology use and building discipline in children
• 01:03:02: Lighthouse Parenting Hub: coaching and resources for families
• 01:08:19: Closing thoughts

Resources Mentioned:

• Lighthouse Parenting Hub
• Arcadia Education
• Classical Learning Test

Hosted by Ryan Klopak (Arcadia Education) and Alex Julian (CLT). The Furrows podcast features leaders in classical education who have been transformed by classical education.

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios