The Ancient Texts That Teach You to Be Human
Reading the classics is a kind of learning that helps you become someone.
Reading the classics is a kind of learning that helps you become someone.
The Ancient Texts That Teach You to Be Human
The Atlantic • Elias Wachtel
In an age when artificial intelligence can master ever more “useful” skills, the ancient question returns with new force: What is education for? This reflection makes a timely case for the classics as more than knowledge to possess—as an encounter with enduring wisdom that helps shape the kind of human being a child may become.
After nearly 20 years of homeschooling, this mother is honest about both the work and the gift of educating her children at home.
Classical Christian education in Africa is not a cultural import or a luxury reserved for the materially secure. It is a humane education that equips students to think, speak, serve, and flourish within their own communities.
What kind of person is formed by songs, stories, gardens, books, and the patient work of making? This episode is a living picture of classical education beyond the classroom. In this conversation, Brian Williams speaks with singer-songwriter, author, and Rabbit Room founder Andrew Peterson about how truth, goodness, and beauty are carried through embodied practices: reading aloud, making music, gathering around tables, learning from creation, and practicing a craft over time. Andrew invites parents, educators, and ordinary makers to recover the courage to begin badly, the discipline to keep going, and the joy of telling the truth as beautifully as we can. Together, Brian and Andrew explore the Rabbit Room as a “wayside inn” for artists and readers, the formative power of handmade work, the goodness of amateur creativity rooted in love, and the danger of bypassing craft. This conversation offers a hopeful vision for homes, schools, and communities where beauty is not an extra, but part of how children and adults become fully human.