Editorial Staff

Independent Institute’s Dr. Morgan Hunter on Teaching Greco-Roman History to High Schoolers

/in , /by Editorial Staff
Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Share on
LinkedIn
+

This week on “The Learning Curve,” co-hosts Gerard Robinson and Cara Candal talk with Dr. Morgan Hunter, Research Fellow at the Independent Institute in California, and co-author with Dr. Victor Davis Hanson and Dr. Williamson Evers, of the white paper, Is It Time for a “490 B.C. Project”?: High Schoolers Need to Know Our Classical Heritage. Dr. Hunter shares the main arguments from her report, on why studying antiquity is vital to the education of young people in the early 21st century. She explores how Greco-Roman history and culture have influenced great statesmen, artists, and writers through the ages, from Shakespeare to the American Founders and Winston Churchill. They then discuss the importance of the enduring wisdom of the ancients in the writings of African-American leaders such as Frederick Douglass and MLK, as noted recently by Cornel West. They delve into lessons students can draw from Cicero, other key figures of the Roman Republic, and from the Athenian democracy, about self-government in the 21st century.

Stories of the Week: Writing in EducationNext, Chad Aldeman and recent Learning Curve guest Marguerite Roza suggest targeted approaches to spending stimulus funds for education, such as tutoring and summer programs, rather than hiring more staff. In Forbes, EdChoice’s Mike McShane shares the impressive list of states that have enacted or expanded school choice programs that will give tens of thousands more families access to better educational options.

The next episode will air on Wednesday, July 21st, 2021 at 12 pm ET with guest, Mariam Memarsadeghi, co-founder and co-director of Tavaana, a civic education capacity building initiative for a free and open Iran. She was among the 43 individuals whose portrait President George W. Bush painted for his new book, Out of Many, One: Portraits of America’s Immigrants.

Guest:

Dr. Morgan Hunter is a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. In 2020, with Dr. Victor Davis Hanson and Dr. Williamson Evers, she co-authored the white paper, Is It Time for a “490 B.C. Project”?: High Schoolers Need to Know Our Classical Heritage. Hunter has taught classical philosophy, political science, 19th-century U.S. social history, ancient and medieval political philosophy, and Latin at UC Berkeley, as well as Latin at the Bowman International School. In her work, she has a reading knowledge of Latin, Greek, French, German, Italian, and Russian. She received her B.A. summa cum laude in Latin and Greek from Santa Clara University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Classics from the UC Berkeley.

 

Tweet of the Week:

News Links:

McShane op-ed: School Choice Keeps Winning

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemcshane/2021/07/12/school-choice-keeps-winning/?sh=3d54fff06a97

Roza: New Federal Money is Coming to Schools. There Are Other Options for Spending it Than Hiring Lots More Staff

https://www.educationnext.org/new-federal-money-coming-to-schools-other-options-for-spending-it-than-hiring-more-staff/

Get new episodes of The Learning Curve in your inbox!

Related Posts

OECD’s Andreas Schleicher on PISA & K-12 Global Education

0 Comments
/
This week on The Learning Curve, Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), discusses global K-12 education, skills, and competition.

India Unbound: Gurcharan Das on the Rise of the World’s Largest Free-Market Democracy

0 Comments
/
This week on The Learning Curve, Gurcharan Das, author, public intellectual, and former CEO of Procter & Gamble India, discusses the rise of India since independence to become a thriving, incredibly diverse nation of 1.4 billion people—the world's largest free-market democracy.

Dr. Deborah Plant on Zora Neale Hurston’s Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo”

0 Comments
/
This week on The Learning Curve, Dr. Deborah Plant, editor of the 2018 book Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo" discusses Zora Neale Hurston's work as an anthropologist telling the story of one of the last survivors of the infamous Middle Passage.

George Weigel Discusses Pope St. John Paul II for National Catholic Schools Week

0 Comments
/
This week on The Learning Curve, George Weigel, the biographer of Pope St. John Paul II explores how Karol Wojtyla's education, deep faith, and experiences during World War II shaped his life as a spiritual leader and helped lead to the fall of Communism.

Award-Winning UK Author & Filmmaker Laurence Rees on the Holocaust, Auschwitz, and Remembrance

0 Comments
/
To mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Laurence Rees, a former head of BBC TV History Programmes and author of The Holocaust: A New History, sheds light on Germany in the 1920s and 1930s and the cultural and political conditions that led to the Holocaust.

D.C.’s Kevin Chavous on National School Choice Week

0 Comments
/
This week on The Learning Curve, Cara and Gerard talk with Kevin Chavous, president of Stride K12, Inc. and a former member of the Council of the District of Columbia, on the growing movement toward school choice in education. Chavous discusses recent Supreme Court rulings and the expansion of school choice programs, education savings accounts, and vouchers.

Pulitzer Winner Prof. David Garrow on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement

0 Comments
/
https://chrt.fm/track/4655F8/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/53284998/tlc_davidgarrow.mp3 This…

Independent Institute’s Dr. Richard Vedder on Higher Education, Skyrocketing Tuitions, & the Student Debt Crisis

This week on “The Learning Curve," co-hosts Cara Candal and Gerard Robinson talk with Dr. Richard Vedder, Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute and Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Economics at Ohio University. He shares analysis on the macro impact of COVID on the U.S. labor market, and the long-term economic prospects of American college students. He reviews insights from his recent book, "Restoring the Promise: Higher Education in America."

Columbia’s Prof. Roosevelt Montás on the Great Books & a Liberal Arts Education

Professor Roosevelt Montás, Director of the Freedom and Citizenship Program at Columbia University, and author of Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation, shares his immigrant story and what inspired his appreciation for the Great Books tradition.

UK’s Prof. Michael Slater on Charles Dickens, Ebenezer Scrooge, and A Christmas Carol

This week on “The Learning Curve," co-host Gerard Robinson and guest co-host Mary Connaughton talk with Prof. Michael Slater, Emeritus Professor of Victorian Literature at Birkbeck College, University of London, and the world's foremost expert on Charles Dickens and his works. They discuss some of the main elements of Dickens’ brilliant, prolific, and complicated life, as the 19th century’s most influential, best-selling writer of memorable works, from Oliver Twist to Great Expectations.