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The Great Tradition: Classic Readings on What It Means to Be an Educated Human Being
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Product Description
Frustrated with the continuing educational crisis of our time, concerned parents, teachers, and students sense that true reform requires more than innovative classroom technology, standardized tests, or skills training. An older tradition—the Great Tradition—of education in the West is waiting to be heard. Since antiquity, the Great Tradition has defined education first and foremost as the hard work of rightly ordering the human soul, helping it to love what it ought to love, and helping it to know itself and its maker. In the classical and Christian tradition, the formation of the soul in wisdom, virtue, and eloquence took precedence over all else, including instrumental training aimed at the inculcation of "useful" knowledge.
Edited by historian Richard Gamble, this anthology reconstructs a centuries-long conversation about the goals, conditions, and ultimate value of true education. Spanning more than two millennia, from the ancient Greeks to contemporary writers, it includes substantial excerpts from more than sixty seminal writings on education. Represented here are the wisdom and insight of such figures as Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Cicero, Basil, Augustine, Hugh of St. Victor, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Erasmus, Edmund Burke, John Henry Newman, Thomas Arnold, Albert Jay Nock, Dorothy Sayers, C. S. Lewis, and Eric Voegelin.
In an unbroken chain of giving and receiving, The Great Tradition embraced the accumulated wisdom of the past and understood education as the initiation of students into a body of truth. This unique collection is designed to help parents, students, and teachers reconnect with this noble legacy, to articulate a coherent defense of the liberal arts tradition, and to do battle with the modern utilitarians and vocationalists who dominate educational theory and practice.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #132001 in Books
- Published on: 2009-01-15
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 500 pages
Customer Reviews
One of the finest works of Christian Humanist scholarship
One of the finest works of Christian Humanist scholarship to come out in the last decade, Dr. Gamble's new book, The Great Tradition, should open forgotten but vital realms of the past to the modern reader. Expertly chosen selections--forming the narrative and educational backbone of western civilization--pull the past, the present, and the future back into continuity. Dr. Gamble lovingly and painstakingly introduces us to a vast treasury of wisdom from Plato, Cicero, Seneca, Tacitus, St. Augustine, St. Gregory the Great, John of Salisbury, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, Petrarch, Melanchthon, John Calvin, Edmund Burke, Cardinal Newman, Paul Elmer More, T.S. Eliot, and Christopher Dawson, to name just a few of the authors. Truly, Gamble ably demonstrates, one can find a direct line of thought and a continuing conversation transcending the generations about the most vital questions regarding the nature, limitations, and potential of our humanity. Indeed, Gamble, a true scholar and gentleman, understands liberal education in its proper sense. A proper education liberates the human person from the tyranny of the moment, allowing him to see the wisdom of the human race across time, the cardinal virtues, and the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. Most importantly, an educated person sees behind all of these things the One who made them each not only possible but also desirable.
Highly recommended, especially for public and college libraries.
Historian Richard M. Gamble edits The Great Tradition: Classic Readings on What It Means to be an Educated Human Being is an anthology of essays written by great figures throughout history concerning what it truly means to be educated. Since ancient times, the Great Tradition has described education as the hard work the human soul undergoes in order to better understand itself and its maker. Individual writings quote Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot, and many other historical, literary, religious, and scientific figures concerning the goals and true value of education. Each selection is prefaced by a brief yet insightful commentary about the author's life and identity, as well as comments about the selection itself and why it was chosen. The result is a cohesive picture offering much-needed insights into the ever-evolving education system, its purpose and its needs, particularly in today's era of debate concerning public schools and the rise of homeschooling. Highly recommended, especially for public and college libraries.
The Great Tradition
Richard Gamble has accomplished a Herculean task that we should hope bears fruit worthy of his efforts. Between the covers of this large, but very moderately priced book, is the distillation of thousands of years of thinking about education and what it is to be an educated human being. Every parent, teacher, and educational administrator who is truly concerned about educating our youth, would do well to have this book at hand. Let us hope Gamble's work becomes the inspiration for a new wave of educational reform in America that undoes some of the most damaging trends of the 20th century.
