Christopher Perrin

Episode 44: What We Can Learn from Odysseus, the Man of Many Twists and Turns: The Pros and Cons of Being Curious and Clever

In this episode, Dr. Perrin who teaches the Odyssey to a college class every year, traces the life and quest of Odysseus noting the ways in which his life turns and twists much like our own, and the way his yearning and the story itself anticipate a kind of fulfillment in the life and ministry of Jesus…

Read More

Episode 43: 20 Words You Must Know to Understand Education: What Education Really Is

In this episode, Dr. Perrin notes the ways we have forgotten the meaning of words that related to education and revives the meaning of about 20 key words we need to know in order to better understand what education really is.

Read More

Episode 42: Education as Hospitality and Healing

In this episode, Dr. Perrin describes the way that Christian classical education must offer hospitality to students seeking an intellectual home and healing to the sickness of their souls. While this is not the whole of a robust classical education, it is integral and vital part. (Also with connections to Augustine: Rejoicing in the Truth by Jeffrey Lehman.)

Read More

Episode 41: Scholé over Schooling: Learning to be Mary in a Society of Martha

In this episode, Dr. Perrin discusses the difficulty and the importance of keeping with classical learning throughout the entirety of a student’s education, and of finding times to be wisdom-seeking Mary in a society that expects everyone to be always-busy Martha.

Read More

Episode 40: The Best Teacher is a Good Book

In this episode Dr. Perrin considers this traditional maxim. Can authors and their books become meaningful teachers and even life-long friends? What is the link between an author and authority? Do we still need living teachers if we have really good books?

Read More

Episode 39: Education for the Next Life

In this episode, Dr. Perrin traces that part of the Christian tradition of education that regarded education as a preparation not only for one’s earthly life but ultimately for the next, heavenly life. Can such a heavenly focus be of real, earthly merit? The tradition says yes. 

Read More

Episode 38: Repetition Is the Mother of Memory: The Permanent Learning of Petition

In this episode, Dr. Perrin describes the pedagogical maximum of Repetitio Mater Memoriae, noting that repetition can be a delightful activity of seeking and experiencing the same good thing again and again until it is permanently possessed.

Read More

Episode 37: Multum non Multa: The Pedagogical Principle of Going Deep

In this episode, Dr. Perrin describes the ways that teaching a few things deeply and well accelerates learning much better than by superficially covering or skimming over content. 

Read More

Episode 36: Festina Lente (Make Haste Slowly): The Pedagogical Maxim of Mastering Each Step

In this episode, Dr. Perrin retrieves and describes one of the most essential pedagogical principles every teacher should employ–the art of going farther and faster by going slower. 

Read More

Episode 35: John Henry Newman and True Education

What is an educated mind? Newman says the mature mind “discerns the end in every beginning, the origin in every end, the law in every interruption, the limit in each delay; because it ever knows where it stands, and how its path lies from one point to another.” In this episode, Dr. Perrin summarizes Newman…

Read More