The Slow School movement

The "Slow Movement" that started in Italy and comprises, most famously, Slow Food and Slow Cities, is now spreading to education.

The idea of Slow is to counter the rush and hurry in the modern world, and the emphasis on efficiency, by slowing things down, giving them more attention and love, and aiming at quality rather than merely quantity. You can read on Wikipedia about Slow Fashion, Slow Money, Slow Parenting, and even a World Institute of Slowness. In a recent issue The Sower, a magazine for Catholic teachers, Leonie Caldecott and I argued for the concept of "Slow Evangelization".

The application to education is an obvious one. Schools are subject to the same pressures as the rest of modern society – the pressure to churn out good exam results and employable citizens. The old ideals of a liberal arts education for freedom and wisdom have fallen by the wayside. In my two books on education I try to indicate the way this ideal might be reclaimed, and the importance of doing so. I don't explicitly link this approach to the Slow Movement, but it is an obvious next step. The Slow Movement website writes about education here. The article asks:

Where has the education system in schools gone wrong? It started with taking the responsibility for education away from parents and families and making it compulsory for children to go to school. While schools were accountable to the parents and community the education process had some chance of meeting students and community needs. But where governments have acquired central authority over education, education seems to have become a matter of outcomes – standardised test results.

The Times Education Supplement covered the topic on 2 November 2012. Teachers and parents interested in this approach will find much of interest if they pursue these leads.

We need to move away from the "fast food" model of education as quickly as possible.

McLuhan and Radical Orthodoxy

An interesting new online journal appeared on 1 April. Called SECOND NATURE, it is for critical thinking about technology and new media in light of the Christian tradition. The first issue contains an interesting article about Marshall McLuhan's thinking on the Trivium (see also an earlier post on this site) and Radical Orthodoxy.

Summer School 2013

Second Spring Oxford is now advertising the 2013 Summer School of the Centre for Faith and Culture and Thomas More College. The dates are 12th-26th August. The summer school will explore the cultural crisis which has gradually overtaken the Christian world, by examining the historical events and perceptions in which it is rooted, particularly the English Reformation. We are also looking at the vocation of the Catholic writer in witnessing to Christ in a hostile environment. We touch on the deeper question of what it means to be human, how a vision of humanity was imperilled by the "tempest of the Times" which helped to create the modern world, and how the writers of the 19th- and 20th-century Catholic revival attempted to recover and reclaim that vision. Detailed information is now available, and a dedicated website will be announced shortly.

Beauty is the seal of truth

In his response to the Lenten spiritual exercises lead by Cardinal Ravasi, Pope Benedict pointed out that 'the medieval theologians translated the word "Logos" not only as "Verbum" [Word], but also as "ars" [art]: "Verbum" and "ars" are interchangeable. For the medieval theologians, it was only with the two words together that the whole meaning of the word “Logos” appeared. The "Logos" is not just a mathematical reason: the "Logos" has a heart, the "Logos" is also love. The truth is beautiful and the true and beautiful go together: beauty is the seal of truth.' 

Evil, of course, is always intent on spoiling creation and defacing it, but cannot succeed. 'The incarnate Son, the incarnate "Logos" is crowned with a crown of thorns and nevertheless is just that: in this suffering figure of the Son of God we begin to see the deepest beauty of our Creator and Redeemer; in the silence of the “dark night” we can, nevertheless, hear the Word. And believing is nothing other than, in the darkness of the world, touching the hand of God, and in this way, in silence, hearing the Word, seeing love.'

Throughout his pontificate, and right to the very end, this Pope has spoken of the Logos and helped us to see the meaning and beauty of the truth revealed in Christ. The 'Pope of the Logos' teaches that faith, reason, and beauty converge in love.

Pope Benedict: Freedom in orthodoxy

The following article by Leonie Caldecott appeared in the Catholic Herald dated 15 February 2013.

When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope on the 19th of April 2005, I rejoiced and was glad. I knew what a great theologian he was, and that he was the person who understood most profoundly the mission of his predecessor, who poured himself out to the bitter end for the Church they both loved.

I rejoiced too because I had happened, a few years earlier, to observe the new pontiff at fairly close quarters, at a liturgical conference he helped to convene in the Abbey of Fontgombault in France. My husband had been asked to give a paper, and I accompanied him as his interpreter. The proceedings were held in the guest-house. The trouble was, no one at this traditionalist monastery had told us that this was technically within the

Beauty in the Word - review

The following review and summary appeared in the journal First Things in December 2012, by Stephen Richard Turley, who teaches at Tall Oaks Classical School in New Castle, Delaware, and at Eastern University.

Beauty in the Word, Stratford Caldecott’s sequel to his Beauty for Truth’s Sake, surveys not the historical outworking of the liberal arts tradition but rather the inspiration that lies behind it. Specifically, the author—the director of Thomas More College’s