Episode 45: Putting Feet Where the Romans Walked: Teaching Through Italy

What, um, what would you add, Grant, as far as the value, you know, for educators in particular of, um-

Sure

...

these kinds of experiences? You know, like you and Karen are g- are gonna be leading, um, together, but you've done so much of, uh, independently as well.

Yeah.

I've, uh...

I, I don't know what Karen's number is, but I'll throw out the gauntlet.

I just came back, well, I went straight to Oxford.

I j- I just finished my 36th academic trip to Italy, um, you know, leading students and/or studying and/or working in archives and things like that, you know, anywhere f- as short as one week, which is really too short even for one city, uh, up to about three months.

So I- I've spent thousands of days in Italy, and it really is a second home.

And one of the things that, that, uh, uh, Karen and I and, and people like us who share this very powerful vision of classical, but specifically classical Christian education, is that we want to collapse the distinction between books and the world-

Mm

... and ideas and some, you know, external reality that isn't in the world of ideas.

And so no, no one who gets even just a couple years, let's say, of middle school classical education, maybe they don't get primary and, and maybe they don't get, get, um, uh, you know, the last couple years of high school.

But even if they got a couple of years of middle school, they are going to become familiar with "The Odyssey," the greatest of the Greek epics, along with "The Iliad," and with, um, Virgil's "Aeneid." [clears throat] And what happens is you read these stories that just...

You know, they take work.

It's, it's...

You know, the narthex, the entry hall is big and wide and deep.

It's hard to get into.

Their stories are strange, and they're alien, and they're weird, and they're in another language, and it's not really our world, even though our world is built on that foundation.

But, but once you get into the story, it's so gripping.

That's why, you know, the top director in Hollywood in the last 25 years makes a movie about "The Odyssey," which I have not yet seen.

I plan to see it probably this week.

[clears throat] Um, and this is why, you know, a, an incredible thinker like C.S. Lewis, his favorite book is Virgil's "Aeneid."

Mm.