|
|
by Mary Helen Mayer, M.A.
|
Philosophy of Teaching of St Thomas Aquinas
|
| |
|
Quantity in Basket:
None
Code: 9781929291953
Price: $25.95
Shipping Weight: 1.00 pounds
|
| |
|
How to teach—and learn—like the
clearest teacher in history: St.Thomas Aquinas
St. Thomas Aquinas is Catholicism’s greatest teacher.
His crowning achievement, the Summa Theologiae,
was written as an introductory text for his students.
But how many realize that his genius for teaching
went hand in hand with his technique for learning
from his own great teachers, St. Albertus Magnus and
Aristotle? That connection becomes clear in this
inspiring guidebook, as useful to students (formal or
armchair readers) as it is to teachers and homeschooling
parents. Highlights:
Aquinas’s rules for memory training
How teachers and textbooks are merely aids to
self-development
How this growth and development applies not
only to knowledge, but to character
Key characteristics of “ideal teacher” and of “ideal pupil”
The four requirements of a good teacher
How St. Thomas anticipates by centuries the best insights
of modern educators—but acts as a corrective to their
most harmful errors
“All learning comes from previous knowledge”
Two key characteristics of the best teachers
The relation of truth to character
The meaning of character as an “acquired self”
Why the ability to acquire and retain habits is central to
forming character—and to education
How the formation of habits depends on the ability to
conceive an ideal
Importance of great virtue on the formation of ideals
The four stages of character formation and growth
The four principles of learning as “self-activity”—and the
role of a teacher
How all learning begins with a problem which the student
must solve with the guidance of the teacher
Why experience is necessary for learning—and how the
teacher helps the student organize his experience
Bad news for some “education majors”: Why the teacher
must not follow contemporary fad educational theories
How the teacher must protect students from “the
disintegrating effects of error”
How the mind knows a thing not only by what it is but by
what it does
The medieval method of the disputando—how to
use it, and why it is far superior to the modern
“lecture” method of teaching
Why it’s wrong to abuse or manipulate words and
other symbols
How man’s “constructive imagination” enables him
to be different from any other creature
How this imaginative power is under the control of
the will
How good teaching stimulates “reflective thinking”
God Himself as the model and pattern for teachers
How God, as man's Head Teacher, arranged the
universe so that man would sense problems—and
so that the universe itself would suggest solutions
How God made it easy for man to sort error and truth
The significance of “symbols”—chiefly, words—in
education—and why the failure to understand this is one
of the chief failings of modern education
How public education is taking on the nature of animal
training
The teacher as mediator between child and curriculum
The importance of logic: exactly how—and why—
teachers must present material
Reviewing learned material—why it's crucial
How Thomas’s view of teaching and learning relates to
his complete philosophy of life
The core of this volume is the complete text of St. Thomas' treatise
on education, De Magistro (On the Teacher), presented here for the
first time in English. An introduction and extensive commentary
draw out its profound lessons for modern teachers and students.
Here you will discover St. Thomas's most penetrating insights
about education—and about why there can be no teaching without
learning. The timeless principles of education laid out here are also
a much-needed corrective to the destructive “fad” theories that
dominate educational thinking today.
“A valuable contribution to educational theory… will no doubt
come as a surprise to many readers not familiar with medieval
literature or the philosophy of the Schools. It discloses the fact
that problems, commonly supposed to be of purely
contemporary origin, were studied carefully centuries ago. The
notion of education as growth, the function of symbols, the
nature of reflection, the principle of self-activity, the value of
experience, the conception of educational processes as selfdevelopment—
all these are ancient, not modern, discoveries.”
—Catholic World (1929)
Hardcover
|
|
|
|
