Each week teaching and learning alongside my children, I am reminded that there is no way to understand or take lessons from what we learn without understanding the context.
This week they learned about several paintings created during the Renaissance which describe stories from The Aeneid. It is amazing to me that the founder’s of our great country were all well versed in the story of the Aeneid. It turns out that in much of America, until the 50’s and 60’s, children in public schools learned the Aeneid (in English as well as in Latin). That is how important that story is. It is important in order to understand literature and art that came after it, from Dante’s Inferno to the Renaissance art my children were learning about this week.
Beyond ancient poetry, myths are critical to understanding as well. Literary allusions, cultural references, and even vocabulary has found its way to us through many generations learning about our past and its context. This includes Norse myths that show similarity to many other myths and stories from the other great ancient cultures.
Appreciating, or even understanding, requires knowing the history, the old guiding truths, stories, and fables, and the pieces that contributed to the mindset of an artist or author or statesman or poet. Context is everything. Without it, we dehumanize ourselves.
The context paves the path to understanding. Without understanding history, stories, and lives of those who came before us in the context of the time period and through the lens of the values my husband and I hold, my children would be reduced of their humanity in a profound and debilitating manner. That is why my children are learning according to classical education methods and that is one of the biggest reasons why we homeschool.
Context with values.
