Note:  This talk has been transcribed digitally and will be edited over time. Today is Sunday, July 4. And while I’m out for walks on Sundays, I like to try and use the time for meditations that I’d consider more spiritual than those that I normally engage in. Normally, I may talk about political questions or topics in education, but on Sundays, I like to devote my mind to more spiritual questions and topics and try to make good use of the Lord’s day as a day of rest from temporal concerns and temporal work, and treat it as what … Continue

In the Academy’s English Reading course, the flashcards parents use to teach children the sounds and symbols of the lessons contain symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet.  While this phonetic alphabet is commonly used by modern dictionaries and language resources, it is not common knowledge among homeschool parents or school teachers, so I’d like to take a few minutes and introduce this system of marking pronunciation. The video below is intended to help parents teaching with our English Reading program, and may be of interest to students as well. God bless your studies, William C. Michael, Headmaster Classical Liberal Arts … Continue

Transcribed by https://otter.ai Introduction:  The Danger of Mommy Culture Today is Monday, June 25. And I’m going to use my walk time today to talk about a topic that I’ve been talking to my wife about for 22 years now. It’s a topic that’s always been central to our discussions as a married couple, to what I believe has been my duty, as head of household and as her husband. My wife, as a woman living in modern American society, is constantly under assault by false ideas about her own role in the world, about the family, about relationships within … Continue

This morning, I realized that for the past 13 years, I have been asked a question by parents and I have answered it wrongly.  The question is, “How much time does this curriculum require?“. When I have received this question, I have thought that parents were asking how much time students will need to complete the classical Catholic curriculum.  I have answered that the classical Catholic curriculum can never be “completed” and that students may grow and continue studying these subjects for their entire lives. Parents, however, were not asking about their children.  I realize now that parents have been trying to … Continue

This transcript was generated by https://otter.ai Today is Friday, June 18. And on my walk today, I’m going to answer a question that my wife asked me to talk about. Question that she’s received a number of times this week from other homeschooling mothers, and which she’d also like to think about. And the question is, what should homeschooling mothers study? What should homeschooling mothers study? The reason why it’s worth answering this question and talking about is because when we’re dealing with homeschooling, it’s normally the mothers who are responsible for the day to day management of the children’s … Continue

This transcript was generated by https://otter.ai Today is Saturday, June 19. And I’m receiving more and more requests for these walk talk topics, with questions being sent in every day. And there are a lot of really good topics and questions, and I’m going to try to spend some more time producing some more videos so I can address them. Because like I said, there are some really great questions, great topics. And topics lead to new topics, and that that snowball is starting to roll now. And that’s what I was hoping that these talks will do. And I’m going … Continue

The Socratic Method is spoken of today in a thousands different contexts.  Some speak about the “Socratic Method” as a way of teaching classes in schools.  Others speak of the “Socratic Method” as a way of solving problems.  What should concern us is that most of the people who are talking about the Socratic Method offer no evidence that they’ve every studied the teaching of Socrates or any true “method” that might be named after him.  As a classicist, I’d like to answer the question, “What is the Socratic method?” The Fake Socratic Method The primary source of the fake … Continue

Dear friends, One problem I speak of frequently is the tendency for Catholic homeschool families to drift away from challenging classical studies and allow the homeschool to degenerate into modern grade level studies.  I have to resist this in the Academy because it is not our mission. I see many students in the Academy who rarely work on courses other than modern, grade level courses like Elementary Grammar and Modern Arithmetic.  We get support requests throughout the week for help with these courses and I am not interested in giving more attention to them. If parents are interested in receiving … Continue