The Liberal Arts Tradition

Welcome!

In this seminal course, Dr. Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain (authors of The Liberal Arts Tradition) take us through a thoughtful, clear presentation of a paradigm for the tradition of classical, Christian education. Clark and Jain emphasize that the seven liberal arts are “not enough” to capture the classical tradition of education but that the liberal arts exist within the larger context of a tradition that includes piety, gymnastic, music, philosophy, and theology. To restore a vibrant classical, Christian education, we must recover not only the liberal arts but also this wider tradition that enhances the liberal arts, setting them free to enable the mastery of philosophy and theology.

The course is based on the The Liberal Arts Tradition by Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain. We highly recommend reading the text in conjunction with this course.

This course follows the organizational theme of the book The Liberal Arts Tradition by Dr. Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain. Corresponding readings from this text are listed within each lesson.

Lesson 1: Introduction to the Liberal Arts Tradition
Lesson 2: Introduction to the Paradigm of the Liberal Arts Tradition
Lesson 3: Introduction to the PGMAPT Paradigm
Lesson 4: Piety
Lesson 5: Gymnastic and Music
Lesson 6: Music and Musical Education
Lesson 7: The Trivium and Grammar
Lesson 8: Dialectic (or Logic)
Lesson 9: Rhetoric
Lesson 10: The Quadrivium
Lesson 11: Arithmetic and Geometry
Lesson 12: Astronomy and Music
Lesson 13: Philosophy and Natural Philosophy
Lesson 14: Moral Philosophy
Lesson 15: Metaphysics
Lesson 16: Theology
Lesson 17: Culture, Calling, and Curriculum

Dr. Kevin Clark is the Academic Dean at the Geneva School of Orlando, FL, where he teaches rhetoric and Christian thought and classical guitar. He is an Alcuin fellow with The Society for Classical Learning and a member of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain. Dr. Clark received his BA in Philosophy from the University of Central Florida and his MA in Theological Studies from Reformed Theological Seminary. In May 2016 he successfully defended a doctoral thesis entitled The Hermeneutics of Interdisciplinarity for the Doctor of Liberal Studies degree at Georgetown University.

Kevin is captivated by the poetic, liturgical, and imaginative contexts for Christian liberal arts education. He is an active member of his local parish church, where he serves as a licensed reader and subdeacon. He is a lover of stories—especially reading them aloud together with his children. Andersen’s fairy tales, The Hobbit, and The Chronicles of Narnia are perennial favorites. He dreams one day of walking the Camino de Santiago, the medieval pilgrimage trail from Oviedo to Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

Ravi Jain began teaching calculus and physics at The Geneva School in Orlando, FL, in 2003, and since that time has focused on understanding the role of math and science in a Christian classical curriculum. He has developed a unique integrated math and physics class that uses primary sources to discuss the narrative of discovery. His junior class, “The Scientific Revolution,” studies Kepler, Galileo, Pascal, and Newton, culminating in the Universal Law of Gravitation. He also teaches two senior classes: AP Calculus BC and AP Physics C. These classes lead the students through Faraday and Maxwell and culminate in Einstein’s groundbreaking 1905 manuscript on the relativity of space and time.

Ravi graduated from Davidson College in North Carolina, where he developed a keen interest in both the natural sciences and the humanities. While a political science major with a near minor in classics, he also took a rigorous course of science classes as a pre-medical student and became a teaching assistant in both the physics and classics departments. Directly out of college he taught math through AP calculus at Seminole Presbyterian School in Tampa, FL, and then worked at two different churches in an associate pastoral role while completing an MA from Reformed Theological Seminary. He also earned a graduate certificate in mathematics from the University of Central Florida.

Ravi enjoys reading, being outdoors, and traveling abroad. He spends most of his free hours enjoying time with his wife, Kelley, and their two young sons, Judah and Xavier.

Please Note: ClassicalU is currently developing a certification to accompany our course offerings. The certification credit component of this course is now active but also undergoing refinement and testing.

To obtain a certification credit for this course, simply complete the quiz that follows each presentation in the course, and then also take the certification test at the end of the course. The quizzes are designed to ensure that you have understood the essential content of each presentation, and they can be taken more than once if necessary. The cumulative certification test at the end of the course is given as a pass/fail test and requires that you upload two short essays (of about 600 words) demonstrating your understanding this course. When you have completed the course, a certificate that you can print or email will magically appear under the “My Courses” section of this website.

For this course, the two the essay assignments are:

In 600 to 750 words please answer the following question in a short essay format: What are the essential elements of the Liberal Arts tradition?
In 600 to 750 words please answer the following question in a short essay format: What is the purpose of piety within the Liberal Arts tradition?

By taking the course for certification credit, you also will be on your way to obtaining a Level 2 certification. This course counts toward our Level 1 certification, but it can be taken by anyone.