The Christopher Perrin Show

In this episode of The Christopher Perrin Show, Christopher Perrin reflects on wisdom as one of the chief aims of classical and liberal education. Beginning with practical wisdom, or phronesis and prudentia, he asks whether the young can become wise before age and experience have done their slow work. Drawing on Aristotle, Proverbs, Mortimer Adler, Anthony Kronman, and the older model of professors as bearers of a treasured inheritance, Perrin argues that students may grow wise by studying what is old with teachers and friends who love wisdom. He then takes listeners to the cathedral of Siena, where the medieval mosaic floor presents a journey from Lady Wisdom, Socrates, Crates, and the mountain of wisdom toward Moses, Abraham, the altar, and Christ, the power and wisdom of God. The episode unfolds the relationship between wonder and wisdom, showing how astonishment, humility, and awareness of ignorance begin the journey of philosophy and education. Perrin closes with Raphael’s image of Prudence as a young woman looking into a mirror with an old man’s face behind her, suggesting that the wisdom of the ages teaches us to know ourselves. This episode offers a rich meditation on Classical Academic Press’s renewed motto, Wonder to Wisdom, and on the lifelong climb toward wisdom, virtue, and freedom.

Episode Outline

• Wisdom as one of the chief ends of classical and liberal education
• Practical wisdom, phronesis, prudentia, and the wisdom that comes with age
• Whether the young can become wise before long experience has done its work
• Wise friends, noble teachers, old books, and the transmission of a treasured inheritance
• The cathedral of Siena and the mosaic of Lady Wisdom, Socrates, and Crates
• The floor of Siena as a journey from pagan wisdom toward Moses, Abraham, the altar, and Christ
• Wonder as the beginning of philosophy, learning, and the pursuit of wisdom
• Classical Academic Press’s renewed motto: Wonder to Wisdom
• Raphael’s Prudence and the need to look backward in order to know ourselves
• The lifelong climb toward wisdom, virtue, freedom, and self-examination

Key Topics & Takeaways

• Wisdom as Education’s End: Classical education seeks more than information or novelty. It aims at wisdom, virtue, and freedom, forming students who can see and love what is true, good, and beautiful.
• Practical Wisdom and Prudence: Perrin distinguishes practical wisdom as the ability to know what to do in changing circumstances. The Greek phronesis and Latin prudentia both point to a kind of foresight gained through experience, mentoring, and disciplined reflection.
• Young Students and Old Wisdom: The young may lack long experience, but they can still receive wisdom by studying what is old. Wise teachers, noble friends, and great books can help students participate in an inheritance larger than themselves.
• Siena’s Eucharistic Journey: The cathedral floor in Siena presents wisdom as a pilgrimage, moving from Lady Wisdom, Socrates, Crates, and Mount Parnassus toward Mount Sinai, Moses, Abraham, the altar, and Christ.
• Wonder to Wisdom: Wonder begins the journey toward wisdom by awakening astonishment, fear, humility, and an awareness of ignorance. A good education should preserve and deepen that wonder rather than flatten it into utility.
• Prudence and Memory: Raphael’s Prudence suggests that wisdom requires both self-knowledge and historical memory. The young woman becomes prudent by looking into a mirror that reflects the wisdom of the old.

Questions & Discussion

• What does it mean for wisdom to be one of the chief ends of education?
  Consider the difference between education aimed at wisdom and education aimed mainly at information, credentials, or novelty. How would a school change if wisdom were truly one of its central goals?
• How can young people become wise before they have grown old?
  Discuss Perrin’s account of wise friends, noble teachers, old books, and inherited traditions. What kinds of study, friendship, and imitation help the young receive wisdom beyond their years?
• Why does Siena’s cathedral floor place pagan philosophers within a Christian journey?
  Reflect on the movement from Lady Wisdom, Socrates, Crates, and Mount Parnassus toward Moses, Abraham, the altar, and Christ. What does this suggest about natural wisdom, revealed wisdom, and fulfillment in Christ?
• What role should wonder play in teaching and learning?
  Consider Aristotle’s claim that philosophy begins in wonder and Perrin’s connection between wonder, fear, astonishment, and acknowledged ignorance. How can teachers provoke wonder without reducing it to entertainment?
• How does looking backward help us know ourselves?
  Discuss Raphael’s image of Prudence as a young woman with an old man’s face behind her. How do history, literature, and the wisdom of the ages help students see their own humanity more truthfully?

Suggested Reading & Resources

• Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle
• Metaphysics by Aristotle
• The Book of Proverbs
• ClassicalU Course: Introduction to Classical Education
• ClassicalU Course: A Brief History of Classical Education
• ClassicalU Course: The Liberal Arts Tradition

In this episode of The Christopher Perrin Show, Christopher Perrin welcomes Dr. Louis Markos for a wide-ranging conversation about the Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian legacy and the renewal of classical Christian education. Markos traces how his Greek heritage, early love for Homer and Plato, Jewish mentors, and long academic vocation prepared him to defend and pass on the liberal arts tradition. The conversation explores why Christians can read pagan classics with discernment, how general revelation prepares cultures for special revelation in Christ, and why the church has often received, purified, and redirected what is true, good, and beautiful outside its visible borders. Perrin and Markos discuss Athens and Jerusalem, Tertullian and Augustine, Plato and Hebrews, Paul at the Areopagus, Dante, Milton, C. S. Lewis, Mortimer Adler, John Dewey, and the dangers of both progressivism and dead classicism. They also consider how classical Christian schools form students in virtue, courtesy, confidence, joy, and participation in the great conversation. The episode closes with Markos describing his forthcoming Dante project with Classical Academic Press and pointing listeners to his ClassicalU courses on Greek and Roman mythology and Dante.

Episode Outline

• Markos’s early formation: Greek heritage, Homer, Plato, Jewish mentors, and the call to become an English professor
• Bringing Athens and Jerusalem together: the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian inheritance in classical Christian education
• From Achilles to Christ and From Plato to Christ: pagan classics as preparation for the gospel
• Discernment and general revelation: why Christians can receive truth, goodness, and beauty outside the church
• Tertullian, Augustine, Basil, Aquinas, Calvin, and the church’s long debate over pagan learning
• Mission, culture, and baptism: plundering Egypt, reclaiming temples, and receiving what can be consecrated to Christ
• Progressivism, dead classicism, and the need for a living classical tradition ordered toward wisdom and virtue
• What classical Christian schools should cultivate: joy, confidence, courtesy, great books, and participation in the great conversation

Key Topics & Takeaways

• A Received Tradition: Markos’s love for the classical inheritance began through family, teachers, and reading. His Greek heritage, the Odyssey, Plato, and great mentors shaped his desire to pass on liberal education.
• Athens and Jerusalem: The episode centers on the union of the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian traditions. Markos argues that the pagan classics can prepare readers for Christ when received through Christian discernment.
• General Revelation and Discernment: Christians need not demonize every non-Christian source. General revelation means that God can speak through creation, reason, conscience, imagination, and culture, even though special revelation in Christ remains supreme.
• Receiving Without Syncretism: The church has often received and purified cultural goods without collapsing them into the gospel. The task is not to baptize everything, but to discern gold from dross.
• Classical Education as Formation: Markos contrasts true classical education with both progressivism and dead classicism. The goal is not mere drill, novelty, or college prep, but the formation of wisdom, virtue, eloquence, and rightly ordered loves.
• A Joyful School Culture: In a healthy classical Christian school, students show confidence without cockiness, courtesy without stiffness, joy in learning, and a sense that they belong to a larger conversation.

Questions & Discussion

• What does it mean to “pass the torch” of the classical Christian tradition?
  Consider how Markos received the tradition through family, teachers, books, and mentors. Who helped hand this inheritance to you, and how might you hand it on to others?
• How should Christians read pagan classics with discernment?
  Discuss the difference between receiving what is true, good, and beautiful and uncritically baptizing everything in a culture. What examples from Homer, Plato, Virgil, or Dante help clarify this distinction?
• Why is the distinction between general revelation and special revelation so important?
  Reflect on how creation, conscience, reason, imagination, and culture can prepare people for the gospel while still requiring fulfillment in Christ and Scripture.
• What dangers come from both dead classicism and progressivism?
  Compare a school that treats drill as an end in itself with one that treats novelty, utility, or ideology as the goal. What would a living tradition look like instead?
• What would you hope to see in the halls of a healthy classical Christian school?
  Discuss Markos’s description of students marked by joy, confidence, courtesy, humility, vocabulary, quiet order, and participation in the great conversation. Which of these signs is most needed in your own context?

Suggested Reading & Resources

• Passing the Torch by Louis Markos
• From Achilles to Christ: Why Christians Should Read the Pagan Classics by Louis Markos
• From Plato to Christ by Louis Markos
• The Myth Made Fact by Louis Markos
• ClassicalU Course: Myth Made Fact
• ClassicalU Course: Dante’s Divine Comedy

In this episode of The Christopher Perrin Show, Christopher Perrin welcomes John Mays to tell the story of his vocation as a teacher, writer, and founder of Novare Science. Mays traces his winding path from electrical engineering and recording-studio work to public school teaching, graduate study in physics, classical education, and two decades at Regents School of Austin. Along the way, he explains how wide reading in literature, history, philosophy, and theology shaped his approach to science education. The conversation turns to the emergence of Novare Science, beginning with Mays's frustration over the “cram, pass, forget” cycle and his search for a mastery-based model that would help students retain, understand, and love what they learned. Mays describes four major integrations that make science education classical: mathematics, history, epistemology, and language. He also recounts the long entrepreneurial labor of writing, designing, printing, selling, and revising an eleven-book science curriculum over seventeen years. The episode closes with Mays's encouragement to science teachers: teach not merely with routine and assignments, but with wonder, beauty, and a vision of creation as God's loving self-disclosure—themes he develops further in his ClassicalU courses, including Teaching Science Classically: 10 Essential Principles, The Science Mastery Workshop, Science and the Symphony of Creation, and Cultivating Wonder Throughout the School. 

Episode Outline

• John Mays's winding path through engineering, recording, teaching, physics, classical education, and curriculum writing
• Discovering classical education and teaching physics at Regents School of Austin
• The two questions behind Novare: how to teach science classically and how to overcome “cram, pass, forget”
• Mastery-based learning through cumulative assessments, weekly review, practice, and long-term retention
• The four classical integrations in science: mathematics, history, epistemology, and language
• The first Novare books and the growth from classroom materials into a full science curriculum
• Novare Science, Centripetal Press, and the eventual partnership with Classical Academic Press
• Textbook beauty, classroom wonder, and Mays's encouragement to science teachers

Key Topics & Takeaways

• A Winding Vocation: Mays's story moves through engineering, recording, public teaching, graduate physics, classical education, and curriculum writing. Each stage helped prepare him for the work that became Novare Science.
• The “Cram, Pass, Forget” Problem: Mays saw that students often crammed for tests, passed them, and forgot nearly everything soon after. He came to regard this as a serious failure of academic formation.
• Mastery and Long-Term Retention: Mays developed cumulative assessments, weekly review guides, and practice habits so students could retain what they learned. Mastery made learning more durable and satisfying.
• Classical Science Education: Mays describes classical science as integrating mathematics, history, epistemology, and language so students learn science as part of a larger, ordered vision of reality.
• Masterable and Beautiful Textbooks: Oversized textbooks can communicate that a subject cannot truly be learned. A humane science text should be carefully written, aesthetically inviting, and realistically masterable.
• Wonder at Creation: The best science teaching helps students see the grandeur, beauty, and order of creation rather than merely preparing for the next assignment or test.

Questions & Discussion

• What makes a vocation different from a career path?
  Consider John Mays's movement through engineering, recording, teaching, graduate study, and curriculum writing. How did each stage prepare him for the work that eventually became Novare Science?
• How does the “cram, pass, forget” cycle show up in your own school or learning experience?
  Reflect on classes where students pass assessments but do not retain what they learned. What classroom practices might unintentionally encourage short-term cramming rather than mastery?
• What would it mean to teach for mastery rather than coverage?
  Discuss the difference between racing through a large textbook and helping students retain a smaller, better-chosen body of knowledge. What would have to change in quizzes, homework, review, and expectations?
• How do mathematics, history, epistemology, and language make science education more classical?
  Consider how each element deepens students' understanding of science. Which of these is easiest to include, and which is most often neglected?
• What role should beauty and wonder play in science education?
  Discuss Mays's encouragement to show students the grandeur, beauty, and order of creation. What practices help students raise their eyes beyond routine assignments?

Suggested Reading & Resources

• Novare Science
• Centripetal Press
• Student Lab Report Handbook
• Teaching Science So That Students Learn Science by John Mays
• From Wonder to Mastery
• Accelerated Studies in Physics and Chemistry
• Introductory Physics
• General Biology 
• Classical Academic Press
• ClassicalU Course: Teaching Science Classically: 10 Essential Principles
• ClassicalU Course: The Science Mastery Workshop
• ClassicalU Course:

Description 

In this episode of The Christopher Perrin Show, Christopher Perrin welcomes Keith McCurdy and Davies Owens for a conversation about Raising Sturdy Kids, Keith’s new book on forming strong families and capable children. McCurdy argues that children today are not naturally sturdier than previous generations, but are often more fragile—marked by rising anxiety, depression, diagnoses, medication, and difficulty coping with discomfort. Using the image of trees that need wind and weather to grow “stress wood,” he explains why children also need healthy, productive struggle in order to become flexible, durable, and mature. Davies Owens connects this need to the larger challenge facing parents today: many families are disconnected from extended-family wisdom, surrounded by competing voices, and unsure how to parent with clarity and courage. The conversation assesses the self-esteem movement, gentle parenting extremes, fear-based parenting, and the cultural lie that feelings are the most important part of who we are. Together, they call parents, schools, and churches back to a shared vision of maturity: the ability to choose what is right even when it is difficult, uncomfortable, or unwanted. The episode closes by highlighting practical resources for parents and schools, including Raising Sturdy Kids, Basecamp Live’s “Live Sturdy” conversations, and future ClassicalU resources.

Episode Outline

• Introducing Raising Sturdy Kids and the need for strong families and capable children
• Keith McCurdy’s background in mental health, counseling, and work with families
• Why children today are often more fragile than sturdy
• The tree analogy: stress wood, wind, weather, and healthy struggle
• Davies Owens on parents, extended family, and the loss of generational wisdom
• Basecamp Live, Zipcast, and the “Live Sturdy” conversations with Keith McCurdy
• The self-esteem movement and the story of the broken baseball trophy
• The cultural lie that feelings are the most important part of who we are
• Helping students understand that emotions cannot reliably discern truth
• Parenting by consensus and the dangers of following the crowd
• The “three Ps”: problem, principles, and practical application
• Maturity as doing what is right when it is difficult, uncomfortable, or unwanted
• Courage as every virtue at its testing
• Family, school, and church as a threefold partnership in forming sturdy children
• Where to find Raising Sturdy Kids and related resources

Key Topics & Takeaways

• Sturdiness Through Struggle: Children do not become strong by being protected from every hardship. Like trees exposed to wind and weather, they need appropriate stress in order to grow durable, flexible, and mature.
• Truthful Encouragement: The self-esteem movement often replaces real formation with artificial praise. Children need adults who speak truthfully about failure, growth, effort, and responsibility.
• Feelings and Reality: Emotions have value, but they cannot reliably distinguish fantasy from reality or truth from distortion. Children must learn to understand feelings without being ruled by them.
• Courage and Virtue: Virtues become real when they are tested. Courage gives virtue flesh by enabling students to practice what is right under pressure.
• Shared Formation: Families, schools, and churches need common language and shared principles if they are going to form children in wisdom, virtue, and maturity.
• Benevolent Authority: Loving discipline is not harsh authoritarianism. Parents are called to lead clearly, calmly, and lovingly, without allowing raw emotion to govern correction.

Questions & Discussion

• Where are children in your community most protected from healthy struggle?
  Consider areas such as schoolwork, chores, athletics, friendship conflict, disappointment, consequences, and technology. What would a healthy, age-appropriate version of productive struggle look like?
• What is the difference between encouragement and false praise?
  Discuss the baseball trophy story. Why did the child instinctively reject praise that did not match reality, and how can adults be both truthful and encouraging?
• How should we teach children to understand their emotions without being ruled by them?
  Consider McCurdy’s examples of fear in an alley, fear in a dream, and fear while watching a movie. What do these examples reveal about feelings and truth?
• What does maturity look like in a child, teenager, or adult?
  Discuss McCurdy’s definition of maturity as doing what is right when it is difficult, uncomfortable, or unwanted. Where do you personally need courage to do what is right despite discomfort?
• How can parents, schools, and churches become a stronger threefold partnership?
  Consider what your school or church reinforces well and where families may be receiving mixed messages. What shared language would help create a thicker culture of formation?

Suggested Reading & Resources

• Raising Sturdy Kids: Simple Truths for Building Strong Families and Capable Kids by Keith McCurdy
• The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis
• Sticky Faith: Everyday Ideas to Build Lasting Faith in Your Kids by Dr. Kara E. Powell and Dr. Chap Clark 
• Basecamp Live Podcast: Live Sturdy Series
• Zipcast.media
• Live Sturdy
• Classical Academic Press
• Society for Classical Learning
• ClassicalU Course: ParentU: Is Classical Education Right for Your Children?
• ClassicalU Course: Growing Classroom Culture through Parent Partnerships
• “More than half of Americans live within an hour of extended family” By Kiley Hurst, Pew Research Center

Description 

Christopher Perrin welcomes Dr. Matthew J. Smith, founder of Hildegard College, to discuss why he left a tenure-track literature career to build a deliberately small, relationship-centered “micro college” in Southern California. Smith describes modern higher education as expensive, bureaucratically bloated, and often unable to offer a unified vision of learning—especially when general education becomes a “Wild West” and majors drift toward professional specialization rather than formation. Hildegard’s alternative model centers on a common great-books curriculum organized around six foundational questions, paired with “entrepreneurial arts” that train students to design and launch real ventures rooted in meaningful work. The conversation explores why generalist formation matters in an AI-saturated economy, and why polymathy may be a more realistic pathway to flourishing than narrow specialization. Perrin and Smith then turn to Smith’s forthcoming book The Lost Tradition of Beauty, arguing that modern education has lost beauty as an intellectually serious category—reducing it to ornament or aesthetics rather than a transcendent that illuminates truth and shapes goodness. They close by discussing what it would mean for schools to recover beauty not merely in décor, but in the lived environment of learning: sound, space, attention, and shared life that draws students out of themselves and toward the whole.

Episode Outline

• Smith’s academic journey: graduate school motivations, love of the liberal arts, and entering college teaching
• The problem in contemporary higher education: cost, debt, bureaucracy, specialization, and lack of a unified vision
• Discovering the “alternative college” movement and visiting models (great-books and classical micro colleges)
• Why relationship matters: mentorship, friendship, shared curriculum, and non-anonymous learning
• Hildegard College’s distinctives: one degree, one major, one shared curriculum
• The six foundational questions that organize Hildegard’s great-books “Foundations of Thought” sequence
• Liberal arts + entrepreneurial arts: “creative action” as redemptive work and practical formation
• Why “Hildegard”: Hildegard of Bingen as a model polymath and cultural contributor
• Student and faculty profiles: internships, civic partners, and bivocational teachers
• Liberal education in an AI economy: generalists, adaptability, and meaningful work
• The Lost Tradition of Beauty: why beauty is intellectually muscular, objective, and formative
• Beauty in schooling: beyond ornament to vocabulary, participation, attention, soundscape, and lived wholeness
• How to learn more: admissions, preview weeks, and online “redemptive entrepreneurship” courses

Key Topics & Takeaways

• Higher education often lacks a unified telos. A “comprehensive university” can produce radically different educational experiences across majors, without shared formation. 
• Cost and debt intensify the crisis. Smith describes the economic burden alongside a weak “return” in both formation and earnings. 
• Micro colleges can rebuild the human scale of learning. Smallness protects against anonymity and makes mentorship and accountability unavoidable. 
• A common curriculum can generate a true academic fellowship. Shared books and shared questions create shared rites of passage and shared intellectual language.
• Polymathy is increasingly practical. As AI changes entry-level work, broad formation and transferable habits may matter more than narrow competencies. 
• Entrepreneurship can be “creative action,” not mere profit-seeking. Hildegard frames entrepreneurship as participation in God’s redemptive work through building and service. 
• Beauty is not optional decoration. Smith argues beauty is objective, rationally discussable, and essential to moral and intellectual renewal. 
• Recovering beauty begins with recovering vocabulary. Schools cannot pursue what they cannot name, describe, and practice.

Questions & Discussion

• What is the “accidental shape” of higher education you’ve experienced—and what does it do to formation?
  What would a “unified vision for learning” look like in one concrete institutional decision?
• Why does relationship matter so much for transformational learning?
  Describe a time your learning changed because of mentorship or friendship rather than content alone. 
• What are the strengths and limits of a single, common curriculum?
  What do students gain when everyone reads the same books and wrestles with the same questions? 
• Are “polymaths” a luxury—or a necessity in an AI-shaped economy?
  How could schools cultivate breadth without becoming shallow (depth-through-few, long apprenticeships, layered skills)?
• What do you think of pairing great books with “entrepreneurial arts”?
  If students must build real things, what guardrails ensure the building remains ordered toward the good?

Suggested Reading & Resources

• The Lost Tradition of Beauty by Dr. Matthew J. Smith (forthcoming, InterVarsity Press) 
• Hildegard College
• Dr. Matthew J. Smith’s substack
• ClassicalU
• The Ethics of Beauty by Timothy Patitsas
• Phaedrus by Plato
• Symposium by Plato
• Confessions by Augustine
• On Order by Augustine
• Range: Why Generalists Triumph in Specialized World by David Epstein
• “Why Poetry Matters” by Dana Gioia
•  “Beauty”, The Art of the Lathe by B. H. Fairchild
• Redemptive Entrepreneurship
• ClassicalU Course: Theology of Beauty and the Imagination: A Guide to Wonder
• ClassicalU Course: Teaching the Great Books
• ClassicalU Course: The Scholé Way
• ClassicalU Course: The Art of Poetry
• ClassicalU Course: Introduction to Classical Education

Description 

Christopher Perrin welcomes Dr. John Mark Reynolds for a extensive conversation about the renewal of classical education—and why the term classical often confuses more than it clarifies. Reynolds shares how family life, great teachers, and deep reading (especially C. S. Lewis and Plato) shaped his intellectual and spiritual journey, eventually drawing him into the classical Christian education movement. Together they explore how classical education is not nostalgia or narrow Greco-Roman elitism, but a living tradition rooted in wonder, dialectic, and a “great conversation” that has always been broader than the modern West. The conversation turns to virtue formation and liberal education, arguing that education should prepare students not only for work, but for judgment, sacrifice, and even death. Perrin and Reynolds also address how the classical movement can avoid becoming a guru-driven ideology, how it must remain open to science and modern technological change, and why false dichotomies distort educational debates. The episode closes with Reynolds’ vision for St. Constantine School, a K–16 “grown backward” model that integrates tutorial-style liberal arts education with practical formation for diverse vocations.

Episode Outline

• Why the question “What is classical education?” is harder than it sounds (and why it matters for renewal)
• The paradox of learning: the more you know, the more you know you don’t know 
• Reynolds’ early formation: pastoral family life, reading, and learning to “get to the bottom” of ideas
• Influential teachers and the life of wonder: Plato, the Socratic habit, and learning as lifelong pursuit
• Returning to Christian faith and integrating faith with the life of the mind
• Why the word “classical” can mislead: the tradition is global, multi-ethnic, and not limited to Greco-Roman texts
• Classical education as the “great conversation”: local cultures rooted in mother tongue, connected to a shared metaphysical reality
• The liberal arts, virtue, and human freedom: what education once aimed at (and what modern credentialing often replaces)
• Education as preparation to live well—and to die well: Plato, Scripture, and the moral seriousness of formation
• Avoiding two dangers in the renewal: guruism and ideological “compounds”
• Science, technology, and modernity: why classical education must have room for Newton (and for contemporary scientific callings)
• St. Constantine’s model: tutorial liberal arts, K–16 integration, dual enrollment, and forming “souls fit for paradise”
• Where to learn more: St. Constantine’s website and ongoing work

Key Topics & Takeaways

• Classical education is bigger than the word “classical.” The tradition is not inherently ethnocentric; its sources and conversations span regions and cultures, including the Near East and Africa.
• Wonder and dialectic are central. Reynolds frames classical learning as rooted in Socratic inquiry and a habit of getting to the bottom of things.
• Liberal education aims at freedom and virtue. True liberty includes self-governance, responsibility, gratitude, and service—virtues modern schooling often thins into mere credentialing.
• Education should prepare students for ultimate realities. The conversation repeatedly returns to the claim that the one certainty is death, and education should form people who can face it with moral seriousness.
• The renewal must remain humble. Classical education collapses when it becomes guru-centric, novelty-driven, or triumphalist.
• Classical education must remain intellectually modern. A classical school should have room for mathematics, science, engineering, and technological prudence—not a nostalgic retreat from modernity.
• Multiple models are needed. St. Constantine is presented as one viable “iteration,” not the only faithful expression of classical education.
• Formation serves many vocations. Reynolds argues that tutorial-style liberal arts can prepare nurses, engineers, builders, and citizens—not only professors and “cocktail party” intellectuals.

Questions & Discussion

• What do you mean when you say “classical education” in your own context?
  List the assumptions you hear most often (elitist, Greco-Roman-only, anti-science, ethnocentric). Draft a two-sentence explanation that highlights both aims (virtue/wisdom) and methods(dialectic/great books/literacy).
• How should liberal education form freedom and virtue today?
  Contrast “credentialing” with “formation.” Where does your institution drift toward one over the other? What habits would actually train self-governance (attention, honesty, courage, sacrifice) in students?
• What does it mean to prepare students to die well?
  Discuss whether your curriculum implicitly prepares students for comfort and success more than moral endurance. Name one text, practice, or tradition that could restore seriousness about mortality, judgment, and ultimate goods.
• How can classical education avoid becoming an ideology or “compound”?
  Identify warning signs of guruism (one name, one method, one “true” model). List practices that keep a school porous and humble (plural models, peer critique, historical study, spiritual disciplines).
• What do you think of a K–16 approach to classical formation?
  Discuss potential strengths (continuity, tutorial culture, cost efficiency, coherent formation). Discuss potential risks (scale, resource demands, insularity). What would be a realistic “next step” in your context?

Suggested Reading & Resources

• The Liberal Arts Tradition by Kevin Clark, DLS, and Ravi Scott Jain
• The Space Trilogy by C. S. Lewis
• Saint Constantine School 
• ClassicalU
• ClassicalU Course: The Liberal Arts Tradition
• ClassicalU Course: Classical Education History and Introduction
• ClassicalU Course: Introduction to Classical Education
• ClassicalU Course: Teaching Science Classically: 10 Essential Principles

Description 

Recorded at the 2026 Great Hearts National Symposium on February 25, 2026, this edited episode features Christopher Perrin’s keynote speech exploring the history, meaning, and renewal of classical education, asking a foundational question: what exactly are we trying to recover? Drawing from sources as diverse as Augustine, Herodotus, Tocqueville, and C.S. Lewis, he traces the transmission of the liberal arts from ancient Greece and Rome through Christendom and into early America. Along the way, Perrin reflects on the gradual fragmentation of this tradition in the modern era, illustrated through the story of the Adams family and the rise of progressive education. 

Perrin challenges educators to embrace the humility at the heart of true learning—that the more we know, the more we recognize our ignorance—and to see themselves as perpetual students. The episode also highlights the remarkable resurgence of classical education today, describing it as a reawakening of seeds long buried but now beginning to flourish. Perrin emphasizes that education is not merely a science or technique, but the transmission of a living tradition aimed at forming wisdom, virtue, and love. Listeners will come away with a renewed sense of purpose, encouraged to tend the “fire” of learning and to participate faithfully in handing down a rich inheritance to the next generation.

Special thanks to the Great Hearts Institute. 

Episode Outline

• Why the question “What is classical education?” is harder than it sounds (and why it matters for renewal)
• The paradox of learning: the more you know, the more you know you don’t know 
• “Begin with the end”: death, wisdom, and the purpose of education 
• Tradition as “handing down”: language, culture, and education as inheritance 
• Athens and Rome: Greek paideia, Roman educatio, and the liberal arts as a transmitted curriculum
• The Church and Christendom: incorporating Greco-Roman learning, theology as “queen,” and widening access
• England to early America: grammar schools, Boston Latin, Harvard, and the rise of popular literacy 
• The Adams family as an educational case study: formation, thinning, and the modern fracture 
• Progressive education: what changed, what was gained, and why education can’t be reduced to a quantitative science
• The modern renewal: early schools (1979–1981), today’s ecosystem, and the need for teacher formation at scale
• Final exhortation: preserve humility, avoid pride, resist false dichotomies, and tend the “fire” of wonder in schools

Key Topics & Takeaways

• Classical education is a tradition before it is a “renewal.” A renewal only makes sense if we can name what is being renewed.
• Teachers must be perpetual students. The classical teacher models humility—seeking wisdom while resisting the pretense of having arrived.
• Education is measured by ultimate aims. Human life is fleeting; education gains its meaning from what it prepares us for—virtue, wisdom, piety, and a life rightly ordered.
• Tradition is unavoidable. Even rejecting tradition requires using language and capacities that were first handed down as a tradition.
• The liberal arts are an inheritance with a genealogy. From Greek and Roman culture through Christian adaptation, the arts endure because they correspond to human nature.
• Modern fragmentation reshaped education’s purpose. When technology and “force” become central categories, education shifts from transmitting culture to preparing for flux.
• Progressive vs. classical is not a simple binary. Many educational “heresies” are partial truths held out of balance (false dichotomies distort practice).
• The renewal must be sustained by love, not mere critique. A movement fueled only by opposition cannot endure—formation requires positive vision and shared goods.
• Classical education belongs to humanity. It is deeply shaped by Christianity, but not owned exclusively by Christians; it welcomes seekers and strangers.

Questions & Discussion

• Why do you think “classical education” is so difficult to define clearly?
  Name what you most often hear from parents or colleagues when they ask what “classical” means. Try writing a two-sentence definition that includes both aim (why) and means (how), then compare with others.
• How does the “perpetual student” posture change the way you teach?
  Where are you tempted to project certainty or expertise instead of wonder and humility? Identify one practice that would help your faculty model learning (shared reading, teacher seminar, public “I don’t know yet”).
• What is education for when you “begin with the end” (mortality in view)?
  How does remembering death sharpen what matters in curriculum and school culture? If you had to prioritize one outcome—wisdom, virtue, piety, civic responsibility—what would you choose and why?
• What can we learn from the Adams family arc—formation to fracture?
  In your own experience, where do you see education becoming “garments that no longer fit”? Does your school respond by adapting the form—or by recovering the measure of the human person?
• What kind of “renewal energy” actually sustains a school long-term?
  Where does your community rely on critique of modern schooling rather than a positive vision? Identify one “beauty practice” (music, poetry, liturgy, feast, shared reading) that could rekindle joy and friendship.

Suggested Reading & Resources

• The Liberal Arts Tradition by Kevin Clark, DLS, and Ravi Scott Jain
• An Introduction to Classical Education: A Guide for Parents by Christopher A. Perrin, MDiv, PhD
• Humanitas
• An Essay Toward Education by W. H. H. Kane
• From Dawn to Decadence by Jacques Barzun 
• Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville 
• The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams
• The Value of the Classics by Andrew West (ed.)
• Address to Young Men on Reading Greek Literature by Basil of Caesarea
• Great Hearts Institute  
• Classical Academic Press
• ClassicalU
• ClassicalU Course: The Liberal Arts Tradition
• ClassicalU Course: Classical Education History and Introduction
• ClassicalU Course:

Description

Christopher Perrin welcomes author and speaker Heidi White to discuss her book The Divided Soul and the inner conflict so many people experience between duty and desire. Along the way, Perrin draws on his own work, The Good Teacher, to frame how educators can unite discipline and delight as they form students’ loves. White traces her path from homeschooling into classical education, then explains how a single remark from Andrew Kern—about the Prodigal Son—sparked a long meditation on the “two brothers” within the human heart. From Genesis to Augustine, and from Dante to Homer, they explore how disordered desire can lead either to indulgence (the prodigal) or to self-righteous suppression (the older brother). Perrin and White rehabilitate the language of desire—eros, longing, even the “stars” behind the word desire—as a force meant for joy and union when properly ordered. The conversation turns practical as White describes classroom habits, “much, not many,” and Socratic discussion as ways to unite discipline and delight in student learning. The episode closes with where to find White’s work, including The Divided Soul, her Substack, and The Close Reads community.

Episode Outline

• Heidi White’s journey: homeschooling, recovering her own education, and entering the classical renewal
• The Divided Soul: how the Prodigal Son becomes a template for understanding interior conflict
• Genesis and the Fall: how desire and duty fracture, and why the rupture shapes every human dilemma
• Rehabilitating desire: eros, “chaste eros,” fasting and feasting, and longing for heaven
• Augustine and the divided will: why we do what we hate and resist what we love
• Teaching implications: habits, formation, music practice, and the slow education of desire
• Classroom practice: reading “much, not many,” annotation, handwriting, and Socratic discussion
• Great books as living feasts: why students return to Austen, Dante, Homer, and others across a lifetime

Key Topics & Takeaways

• The “two brothers” within us: White argues that the prodigal’s appetite and the older brother’s resentment both live in the same soul—and healing requires reconciliation, not victory by one side.
• The Fall fractures what paradise joined: In Eden, duty and desire were aligned; sin introduces a traumatic division that echoes through every choice, habit, and temptation.
• Desire needs rehabilitation, not elimination: Desire is not “for” self-indulgence or suppression, but for joy—ultimately a longing for union with God that remains incomplete this side of eternity.
• Fasting is a pedagogy of desire: Self-denial isn’t contempt for pleasure; it’s training appetite toward a higher good—because “the purpose of the fast is the feast.”
• Great teaching makes room for gift: Dutiful habits (reading, writing, practice) create conditions where wonder can “break in” unexpectedly through truth, goodness, and beauty.
• “Much, not many” restores attention: Classical pedagogy resists “covering content” and instead invites slow, meaningful encounters that students can return to for decades.
• Love is the bridge between duty and desire: The teacher’s “office” (officium) is fulfilled in benevolent love—guiding the student into communion with the artifact and the joy it holds.

Questions & Discussion

• Where do you see the “two brothers” in yourself: indulgence or self-righteous suppression?
  Identify one area where you chase satisfaction “on your own terms” and one area where you deny desire through resentment or control. What would reconciliation look like—practically—in the next week?
• How does the Prodigal Son illuminate your relationships (family, faculty, friendships)?
  Where do you see the temptation to label others as “that son of yours” rather than “this brother of yours”? What practices might restore relationship instead of reinforcing distance?
• What is desire for in your community’s imagination?
  Compare two instincts: “fulfill every appetite” vs. “want nothing.” Which dominates your environment?How could you articulate desire as ordered toward joy, union, and holiness? How can teachers unite rigor and joy in a classroom? 
• How can teachers unite rigor and joy in a classroom?
  Identify one duty you want to strengthen (annotation, narration, memorization, problem sets). Pair it with one practice of delight (Socratic discussion, shared reading, seminar questions that touch real student longings).

Suggested Reading & Resources

• The Divided Soul by Heidi White
• The Good Teacher by Christopher Perrin PhD and Carrie Eben MSeD
• Norms and Nobility by David Hicks
• St. Augustine’s Confessions by St. Augustine 
• The Odyssey by Homer 
• The Prodigal Son - Luke 15 
• The CiRCE Institute
• Classical Academic Press
• Close Reads Community 
• Heidi White's Substack
• Christopher Perrin’s Substack

Description

Andrew Zwerneman, writer and narrator for HISTORY250® and co-founder and president of Cana Academy, joins Christopher Perrin to argue that America’s cultural crisis is, at root, a crisis of memory—and that renewing history education is a work of restoration. Zwerneman traces the teachers, places, and lived experiences that formed him as a historian, then explains why the “liberal discipline of history” must resist ideological reduction and return to observation, sympathy, and fidelity to the past. Along the way, they connect historical remembrance to the deepest human questions: personhood, responsibility, freedom, and the moral imagination that societies inherit. The conversation explores how biblical and classical sources shaped the American founding, how later leaders invoked inherited principles to confront slavery and injustice, and why the West’s habit of self-criticism depends on conserving what came before. Zwerneman introduces Cana Academy and its HISTORY250®  project as practical efforts to rebuild shared story through films, primary sources, maps, and teacher formation. The episode closes with a vivid picture of what great history instruction looks like: students learning to read documents, geography, art, and narrative so they can live under a shared story and recover “hallowed ground.”

Episode Outline

• Zwerneman’s formation: family travel, early teachers, and awakening to the moral weight of history
• Why remembrance is central to human and Christian life: Exodus, Passover, and “do this in remembrance of me”
• Rejecting “history as a force”: recovering human agency, personhood, and moral drama
• American inheritance: scripture, ordered liberty, common law, and natural law in the founding
• Learning from paradox: freedom and slavery at the founding; reform movements that appeal to founding ideals
• The liberal discipline of history: observation, sympathy, and resisting ideology
• What students should study: imagery, narratives, structures, data, geography, and the craft of story
• Cana Academy and HISTORY250®: films, documents, maps, and a “gift” aimed at cultural renewal
• A tour of the ideal classical history classroom: what you’d see, hear, and practice

Key Topics & Takeaways

• History restores identity: A people who lose their story lose a clear sense of who they are—and what they owe to the dead and the unborn.
• Human agency is central: Against “history as a force,” the episode insists that persons mediate between past and present through decisions, sacrifices, and responsibilities.
• Ordered liberty requires memory: American freedom is rooted in inherited sources (biblical imagination, British rights, common law, natural law), and it decays when citizens forget the responsibilities that attend freedom.
• History trains moral realism without moralizing: Sympathy is not excuse-making; it is the disciplined effort to understand the human condition before passing judgment.
• The classroom must return to concrete realities: Great history teaching works from maps, artifacts, documents, portraits, letters, diaries, and place—so students learn “what actually happened.”
• Shared story creates shared sympathies: Art, poetry, and narrative shape communal feeling and help students situate their lives in a meaningful inheritance.
• Renewal is practical: Teacher formation, curated primary sources, and accessible tools (films, documents, maps) are presented as tangible ways to fight cultural amnesia.

Questions & Discussion

• What does it mean to study the past “in its pastness”?
  Discuss why people in the past may act in ways we do not recognize—or approve. How can teachers pursue truth without turning history into propaganda or therapy?
• How do observation and sympathy change the way we teach hard topics (war, slavery, injustice)?
  Identify one topic where your students tend to moralize quickly or dismissively. What sources (letters, diaries, speeches, laws, artifacts) could slow them down into careful understanding?
• What’s the difference between “ordered liberty” and “license”?
  Describe a modern example where freedom is framed as “doing whatever I want.” What habits, texts, or stories could help students reconnect freedom to responsibility and the common good?
• Which leaders or movements best model “reform by remembering”?
  Compare at least two examples discussed (e.g., Douglass, Lincoln, King, Chavez). What did each retrieve from the past to address present suffering?
• What belongs in a strong history curriculum besides a textbook?
  Make a list under five headings: imagery, narratives, structural analysis, data, and geography. Choose one heading and propose one new classroom routine (weekly map-reading, document lab, portrait study, artifact analysis, narrative-writing).
• What would you see in a “great classical upper school” history class?
  Describe the sounds and practices: seminar discussion, source analysis, narration, map work, interpretive writing, and shared reading. What is one change you could make this term that moves your classroom closer to that ideal?

Suggested Reading & Resources

• History Forgotten and Remembered by Andrew Zwerneman
• American Slavery, American Freedom by Edmund S. Morgan
• Land of Hope by Wilfred M. McClay
• Western Heritage since 1300 by Donald Kagan, Steven Ozment, Frank M. Turner, and Gregory F. Viggiano
• The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won by Victor Davis Hanson
• Holy Sonnets by John Donne
• The Oxford Edition of Blackstone's: Commentaries on the Laws of England: Book I, II, III, and IVPack by William Blackstone
• The book of Deuteronomy
• The book of Exodus
• The Declaration of Independence
• The U.S. Constitution
• The Bill of Rights
• Cana Academy
• HISTORY250®
• The Curious Historian 
• Humanitas

Description

Christopher Perrin explores why “classical education” is both widely used and widely misunderstood—and why the language we choose matters. He surveys common assumptions people attach to the word classical (Greek and Roman history, Great Books, elitism, Eurocentrism) and explains why the modern renewal is, for better or worse, “stuck” with the adjective. Perrin argues that we cannot speak clearly about education without metaphor and analogy, since language itself is rooted in metaphor (from lingua, “tongue”). He then turns to the ancient Greek and Latin vocabularies of education—especially paideia (formation) and trophē (nourishment)—to show how earlier cultures understood education as shaping a human person, not merely transmitting information. Using Ephesians 6:4, he compares Greek and Latin renderings (Paul and Jerome) to illustrate how meaning is often “lost in translation” when rich terms are flattened into single English words. Perrin closes by suggesting that if he had to choose one word to gather the tradition, it would be formation—a metaphor that points to education’s deepest aim.

Episode Outline

• Why “classical education” is misunderstood: common reactions and cultural assumptions
• Why we keep the word classical: branding, public discourse, and the need for clearer definition
• Metaphor is unavoidable: language, analogy, and the “dead metaphors” we no longer notice
• Greek terms for education: paideia (formation) and paidia (play), plus other educational vocabulary
• Trophe as nourishment: education as bringing up, feeding, and forming a child
• Ephesians 6:4 as a case study: Paul’s Greek terms and Jerome’s Latin translation
•  Translation problems: why one English word rarely matches a rich Greek/Latin term
•  The need for “economy with clarity”: using more words (and better words) to describe education
• A proposed center-word: formation as the best single term to gather education’s aims
• Where to continue learning: the podcast, ClassicalU, and ongoing reflections on definitions

Key Topics & Takeaways

• Words carry history—and drift over time: Even identical spellings (like “educate”) may not mean what they once meant.
• Metaphor isn’t optional: We describe complex realities (like education) through images, comparisons, and inherited figures of speech.
• Education is formation, not mere information: Ancient terms frame schooling as upbringing, cultivation, and shaping character.
• Greek paideia is richer than a single English equivalent: Translations often require multiple terms (training, discipline, instruction) to approximate meaning.
• Education is nourishment (trophe): The image of feeding and raising up reinforces education’s humane, embodied, relational nature.
• Translation always involves choices: Comparing Paul’s Greek with Jerome’s Latin exposes what can be gained—and lost—across languages.
• Clear speech requires more words, not fewer: When society forgets education’s purpose, precision often demands fuller description.

Questions & Discussion

• What does it mean to study the past “in its pastness”?
  Discuss why people in the past may act in ways we do not recognize—or approve. How can teachers pursue truth without turning history into propaganda or therapy?
• What do people assume when they hear “classical education” in your context?
  List the top three assumptions you encounter (e.g., “Great Books only,” elitist, Eurocentric, test-driven). Draft one sentence you could use to clarify what you mean—and what you don’t mean.
• Where do you see metaphor doing “hidden work” in the way educators talk?
  Identify common metaphors you use (pipeline, outcomes, delivery, rigor, standards, growth). What do those metaphors emphasize—and what might they obscure?
• If education is “formation,” what exactly is being formed?
  Name the top three aims you believe education should form (virtue, wisdom, piety, civic responsibility, attention, love of truth). How does your school’s daily life (not just its curriculum) support those aims?
• How does the image of education as “nourishment” challenge modern schooling?
  What “diet” are students receiving—intellectually, morally, spiritually, culturally? What might “malnourishment” look like in a school (and what would renewal look like)?

Suggested Reading & Resources

• Mortimer Adler: The Paideia Way of Classical Education by Robert Woods, Edited by David Diener
• The Good Teacher: Ten Key Pedagogical Principles That Will Transform Your Teaching by Christopher A. Perrin, PhD and Carrie Eben, MSEd 
• Festive School by Father Nathan Carr
• An Introduction to Classical Education: A Guide for Parents by Christopher A. Perrin, MDiv, PhD
• A Student's Guide to Classical Education by Zoë Perrin
• The Liberal Arts Tradition by Kevin Clark, DLS, and Ravi Scott Jain
• Latin Vulgate: Ephesians 6:4 
• Amplified Bible: Ephesians 6:4
• Expanded Bible: Ephesians 6:4 
• ClassicalU
• ClassicalU Course: Introduction to Classical Education
• ClassicalU Course: ParentU: Is Classical Education Right for Your Children?
• ClassicalU Course: A Brief History of Classical Education
• ClassicalU Course: The Liberal Arts Tradition
• ClassicalU Course: Classical Education History and Introduction