We have a problem with reading in the 21st century. When we discuss reading as a society, we are not merely talking about a pastime disappearing such as kids no longer collecting baseball cards or playing marbles, we are talking about the loss of access to the treasures of wisdom from our shared tradition. We are—without fully understanding the ins and outs of the reality—lamenting the loss of reading as a loss of virtue in our culture.
Why the Study of Music Can Be far More than We Imagine
Modern music education focuses narrowly on instrumental performance, composer biographies, and concert-hall repertoire from the past 300 years—treating music as extracurricular refinement or a tool for boosting test scores. Classical and medieval thinkers from Pythagoras to Augustine understood music differently: not as content to memorize but as a fundamental mode of thinking essential for all students. Boethius codified this vision through three categories of music: musica instrumentalis (heard music and its study), musica humana (the harmony of body and soul—rightly ordered loves and relationships), and musica mundana (the ordered cosmos revealing God's attributes). Like studying Euclid transforms geometric thinking rather than merely teaching formulas, true musical study develops ways of perceiving reality—understanding truth, goodness, and beauty in relationship, time, and motion. Music education should cultivate this comprehensive vision rather than reduce music to pragmatic utility or aesthetic appreciation.
Poetry is humanity's essential inheritance—a discipline that awakens us to full awareness and connects us across time. Beyond aesthetic pleasure, poems serve as witnesses to history, preserve meaning through crisis, and transform our relationship with language itself. Through memorization and embodied engagement, poetry provides shared vocabulary for naming experience, reminds us of our fellowship with others living and dead, and rescues us from "Life in Death"—the state of having a heartbeat without being fully alive. Rather than decorative, poetry is fundamental: it teaches us that beauty and truth cannot be separated, that metaphor is our primary way of knowing, and that language is material rather than merely functional. By living with poems, we gain precise tools for recognizing and naming the particular moments that comprise our days.
Education should cultivate distinctly human capacities—counting, naming, measuring, reasoning, moralizing, and creating art—yet modern schooling treats children as workers for industrial systems rather than as humans to be formed. The term "humanitas" once meant both "humanity" and "education" simultaneously, reflecting the understanding that true education trains us to do what humans do best. When education aligns with human nature, we experience the joy and delight that comes from fulfilling our purpose. The Humanitas Institute seeks to restore this understanding of education—not as innovation but as recovery of what education has always been: formation oriented toward human flourishing rather than mere utility. Just as shoes are made for feet, authentic education must be designed for human beings according to our nature.
After a year of planning, collaboration, and strategizing, The Humanitas Institute is preparing to launch in January 2026. The Institute aspires to contribute to the rising tide that advances classical education by igniting awareness, forging connections, and catalyzing resources. Beginning in January, the Institute will release monthly, national-class video stories that show the blessings and benefits of that kind of education that used to be called simply humanitas.
