"But poetry acts in another and a diviner manner. It awakens and enlarges the mind itself by rendering it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought. Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world; and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar; it re-produces all that it represents, and the impersonations clothed in its Elysian light stand thenceforward in the minds of those who have once contemplated them, as memorials of that gentle and exalted content which extends itself over all thoughts and actions with which it co-exists. The great secret of morals is Love; or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action or person, not our own. A man to be greatly good, must imagine in tensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination: and poetry administers to the effect by acting upon the cause. Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagination by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilating to their own nature all other thoughts, and which form new intervals and interstices whose void forever craves fresh food. Poetry strengthens the faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man in the same manner as exercise strengthens a limb.”
Percy Shelley, from A Defence of Poetry
October 7, 2009
Update
Well, since school has started up for me you can see we've done a horrible job of keeping up the blog. Don't give up on us yet, though! I've been in Maryland starting my senior year at St. John's, and Mary has also been increasingly busy with her job at Teleos.
Though my life now revolves more around the soaking-up rather than the pouring-out kind of learning, I am getting the chance to stay involved with teaching in some small ways. I got a job tutoring high school students, mostly in SAT prep, which looks like it will be a valuable experience. Also—and this really wild—some kind souls at St. Anne's school here hired me along with two other guys to co-teach a lego robotics course in their after school program. Who knew that engineering and computer programming were in the cards for me? It's already been quite fun, if not a frenzy trying to stay ahead of our boys. We are preparing a team of 12 boys to build their own robot and take it to a national competition in January where it will complete all sorts of tasks and maneuvers for time.
So. Life is hectic for les deux right now. We'll be back soon though with pensees and questions and more sophistry. I'm sure Mary will have something quite perspicacious for us in time. Stay with us.
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Jesse and Mary both began teaching during the summer of 2009, Jesse at Phillips Academy in Andover, MA, and Mary at Teleos Preparatory Academy in Phoenix, AZ. They met while working at a great books summer program together at the University of Dallas, which brought them together into the relationship they have now. Their shared love for liberal education, philosophy, and above all the pursuit of wisdom has led them through a plethora of ongoing conversations about these issues, and they've decided they need to keep track of them on paper. Here you will find their incipient reflections on education and the experience of teaching. Feel free to jump in on the discussion.
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