Echoing in Celebration: The Studying of Beauty and Harmony in Music

Classroom Help, Uncategorized

 

By Leigh Bortins

 

We no longer dare to believe in beauty and we make of it a mere appearance in order the more easily to dispose of it. Our situation today shows that beauty demands of itself as least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in a mysterious act of vengeance.

          The Glory of the Lord by Hans Urs von Balthasar

Quoted in Beauty for Truth’s Sake by Stratford Caldecott

Classical, Christian educators see the goals of education as a passionate pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty. Instruction in beauty must include instruction in music.

People in ancient times had a very different understanding of music than we do today. Music had a vital role in a classical education. In fact, the ancients regarded the study of music as a study of numbers. They divided education into seven liberal arts and subdivided them into three language arts—the Trivium—and four arts of number—the Quadrivium. The Trivium trained students in the arts of Grammar, Dialectic and Rhetoric, while the Quadrivium trained them in Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, and Harmony (music).

The ancients included music with the arts of number because they focused musical study on harmony. The Pythagoreans and later students studied the ratios between notes that were played together to form chords. Even more foreign to our modern minds is the fact that the ancients linked music to the virtues. In fact, Plato argued in The Republic that music is critical to the development of a rightly ordered, harmonious soul:    (more…)

READ MORE

Try Unit Studies During the Holidays

Classroom Help

Written by Jessica Hulcy

Do you feel like you have no time to enjoy the holidays? Are you drawn to unit studies, but you do not want to let go of your curriculum? Solution: Turn several holidays into kid-friendly units sprinkled with learning! Learn about the holiday’s history and traditions, the songs of the holiday, the people of the holiday, the stories associated with the holiday, the different ways the holiday is celebrated around the world, and also make crafts and cook special holiday dishes. You can have your cake and eat it too!

How does one plan a holiday unit? Pick one main activity and then add to it. You will have to make choices. You cannot cook every treat; instead, prepare your favorite recipe. Remember, we are not trying for 30 minutes of art and 30 minutes of history each day. Some units are more art and some are more Bible and some are more history. Be content with the flow, and always try to combine activities to kill two birds with one stone.    (more…)

READ MORE

A New Season

Classroom Help, Informative, Preparing for College

Published with Permission
Written by Leigh Bortins
www.TOSMagazine.com

 

I am in a season of deep thinking about the future of my two youngest sons. My husband and I have a different plan for our two youngest sons than we had for our older sons. When our oldest two children graduated high school, we had been part of the generation of homeschool pioneers. We had tried something radically new, and we were so excited that it had worked! As we sent them off to state institutions of higher education, we did it with great confidence that we had prepared them well for the logical next step in a young person’s life.

Over a decade later, as our two younger sons approach graduation, we have different thoughts. Rob and I are wondering why we would work so hard to give them a solidly Christian education for so many years and then turn them over to secular institutions. Can’t we find an option that serves our mission and vision? In my book Echo in Celebration, I wrote that the final end of a classical, Christian education is doxology. Echoing in celebration is the obvious response to learning more about our Lord through His creation. Shouldn’t our higher education plans serve this mission?

As Christians, we live in constant tension. The Lord commands us to be in the world, but not of the world. One of the ways people have responded to this tension has been to homeschool their children. Christian homeschoolers have rejected the thought that our children can be vivisected into parts—the soul for the church, the mind for the state school, and the body for juvenile pleasures. Instead, we have claimed each child wholly for Christ. Nonetheless, each beloved child inevitably approaches adulthood, and then the question of what to do after homeschooling looms large.   (more…)

READ MORE