Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher

SCHOOL OF AGES

Nick Romeo

Transforming Learning and Cultivating Great Minds Through the Wisdom of Antiquity

Schools and universities prepare their students for the workplace, classrooms resemble corporations, streamlined efficiency and constant evaluation dominate schooling. The superficial knowledge instilled by what we call teaching today was precisely what Socrates exposed in the fifth century BC.

The insights of the philosophers and intellectuals from two of history's most creative cultures are a vital but neglected resource for anyone interested in answering basic questions about the value of schooling and knowledge. This book will offer guidance, through the wisdom of the ancients, on how best to cultivate the mind and spirit. SCHOOL OF AGES argues for a contemporary vision of education based on five concepts of enduring relevance from antiquity: 1. Good education provides more than the capacity to make a living 2. Leisure is both a precondition for and the goal of education 3. Memorizing something doesn't mean understanding it. To understand you must discuss it. 4. Develop an erotic desire to acquire knowledge 5. Confusion is essential to learning Nick Romeo is a journalist writing on education and culture for The Atlantic, TLS, Boston Globe and others. He holds a BA in English from Northwestern and an MA in Classical History and Philosophy from the Uni of Colorado at Boulder.

Comments

"Nick Romeo helpfully reminds us of the benefits of using the lessons of the past to illuminate the future, particularly in a field as important and universal as education. The cultural context and technology may have changed, but the underlying principles, and many of the debates associated with them, have not. Romeo reminds us that, in education as so many other fields, the ancients still have a great deal to teach us."

“The purpose of our institutions of higher learning has recently come under severe scrutiny, revealing the deep philosophical differences that underlie quarrels about what education ought to achieve. Nick Romeo provides a wonderfully expanded context in which to consider these questions, providing a historical analysis which he continuously relates to contemporary pedagogical issues facing us. This is a book that will enrich our future discussions of what it means to be educated. "