Parent's Bookclub Kick-off!
Classical Christian Education… what’s that?
You are probably at the start-line or somewhere towards the beginning of that journey to understanding more and more of what we are seeking to cultivate in students here at New Covenant. That’s the beauty of recovering a thousand year long tradition with rich turns and developments along the way.
Welcome to the life-long journey!
And we think the best way to see it is to dive right in!
That’s why we’ve launched the NCS & Scholé Parents Book Club for parents, by parents.
We either want that education our children are getting that we didn’t get, or we’re seeking to understand this classical and Christian emphasis, or we’re looking to immerse ourselves in the same things our children are in for conversation and communion with them.
All of these reason draw us together every 3-weeks to study a classic. This semester is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus.
We kicked off this Book Club last week by exploring how we approach a text. I wanted to leave some nuggets here so we can revisit good truths and to help stir up an interest in future New Cov Book Club Members!
Pier Paulo Vergerio, a Christian Humanist, in his The Character and Studies Befitting a Free-Born Youth written in 1403 A.D, talked about the liveliness of books and how we our to converse and immerse ourselves in them and hear from our authors— he writes:
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“What way of life, then, can be more delightful, or indeed more beneficial, than to read and write all the time: for moderns to understand ancient things; for the present generation to converse with their posterity; and thus to make every time our own, both past and future? What excellent furniture books make! As we say; and as Cicero says, What a happy family books make! Absolutely honest and well-behaved! A family that does not fuss or shout… that speaks or remains silent as it is bidden, that always stands ready to execute your every command, and that you never hear saying anything you don’t want to hear, and that only says as much as you want to hear. ”
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The great master writer and thinker C.S. Lewis in his An Experiment in Criticism spoke of books in a way I had never thought of, he says that we are indebted to good authors who allow us to extend of beings in the stories and books we open— Mr. Lewis himself writes:
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“Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom fully realize the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors. We realize it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world. In it, we should be suffocated. The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented. Even the eyes of all humanity are not enough. I regret that the brutes cannot write books. Very gladly would I learn what face things present to a mouse or a bee; more gladly still would I perceive the olfactory world charged with all the information and emotion it carries for a dog.”
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