The Liberal Arts Tradition

Since the publication of the first edition of The Liberal Arts Tradition in 2014, this book has been read and circulated by thoughtful educators around the world who are interested in what great education once was and can be again. The book has been assigned in college classes, read by school faculties, and studied in homeschooling communities. It has been widely reviewed and recommended by many scholars, bloggers, and experts. Now the authors have thoroughly revised the text, expanding and deepening their presentation of the core elements of the liberal arts tradition, which include piety, music, gymnastic, liberal arts, philosophy, and theology. Particularly noteworthy in the revised edition of this important work is the new section on the cultivation and formation of virtue.


The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Philosophy of Christian Classical Education introduces readers to a paradigm for understanding a classical education that transcends the familiar 3-stage pattern of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Instead, this book describes the liberal arts as a central part of a larger and more robust paradigm of classical education that should consist of piety, gymnastic, music, liberal arts, philosophy, and theology. The Liberal Arts Tradition also recovers the means by which classical educators developed more than just intellectual virtue (by means of the 7 liberal arts) but holistically cultivated the mind, body, will, and affections. This is a must-read for educators who want to take a second big step toward recovering the tradition of classical education.