From the Director:
Read about Dr. Andrew Seeley's time at the annual conference of the Center for Thomas More Studies, learning about the great statesman and celebrating the perseverance of the Center's founder, Dr. Gerard Wegemer. Read More
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"It Changed My Life"
This month, Dr. Seeley interviewed Paul Boyer, a graduate of the University of Dallas's Classical Education program and a state senator for Arizona. Paul talks about discovering classical education and about the lessons it has taught him. Read More
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Items of Interest in the World of Liberal Education
Witherspoon Institute -- Princeton, New Jersey -- Register now for summer seminars for high school, undergraduates, and graduates.
Albertus Magnus Institute -- February -- Free Online Courses on Tolkien, John Paul II, Kristen Lavransdattar, and Metaphysics.
Institute for Classical Education -- March 23-25, Phoenix -- National Conference -- For the Love of Making: Teaching the Fine Arts
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This Week's Resource Recommendation on Thomas More
 Dr. Gerard Wegemer's Young Thomas More and the Arts of Liberty
What does it mean to be a free citizen in times of war and tyranny? What kind of education is needed to be a “first” or leading citizen in a disunited country? And what does it mean to be free when freedom is forcibly opposed? This book analyzes More's earliest writings, exploring how More's education shaped his responses to these questions.
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Consider donating to the Arts of Liberty project and help us spread the liberal arts and liberal education to yet more students, teachers, and lifelong learners!
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For over fifteen years, I have been actively involved in the national revival of liberal education. Time and again I have been amazed at what has been accomplished by those who probably never dreamed they would become leaders in a counter-cultural movement. This article is going out to scores of those who saw a crying public need and no one else to address it, who felt inadequately prepared yet interiorly compelled to do what they could that the light of human education might not be completely extinguished, who have persevered through many lonely hours of uncertainty, and have been blessed to see the first fruits of their labors.
Last November, I was privileged to be a guest at the celebration of a milestone for one such individual. My first activity as the Director of Arts of Liberty was to attend the annual gathering of the fellows of the Center for Thomas More Studies at the University of Dallas. They were celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Center. I was moved by the nostalgic reminiscences of the Center’s first beginnings, when a handful of young fellows (including the founder of Arts of Liberty) began to be influenced by the vision of its founder, Gerard Wegemer.
Wegemer, a revered professor in the English department at UD, had become convinced that Thomas More offered a much-needed model for our times of the classically educated, Christian layman. His view was confirmed in 2000, when Pope John Paul II declared More the Patron of Statesmen and Politicians. Yet he also saw that More had been largely neglected in the academic world. Other than Utopia, his works were little known, and hardly even available in contemporary editions and translations. He responded to the need by founding the Center and its annual conference, hoping to build a fellowship of scholars devoted to publishing and promoting his works.
I was affected as I listened in on the directed conversations of more than 30 committed fellows from a wide variety of academies and learned professions. Each fellow had submitted a paper related to the conference topic several months in advance, and, in order to make the conference discussions more productive, had read all of the other submitted papers. They made me eager to deepen my knowledge of More’s thoughts on and example of liberal education. For example, fellow Erik Ellis of the University of the Andes led us through a series of six of More’s epigrams, which revealed More as a master of Renaissance educational practices. The presenter used an experimental color-coded format to highlight the gradual changes in vocabulary and thought More made in his Latin translations of the Greek original. He showed how More appropriated the Greek material, finally shifting it from the original’s moral focus to express More’s political and social concerns.
Twenty years from its modest beginning, the Center has achieved much, and is confidently preparing for much more to come, particularly in preparation for the 500th anniversary of More’s death in 2035. It recently published a thousand-page, beautifully formatted, Essential Works of Thomas More. The Center’s two websites (ThomasMoreStudies.org and EssentialMore.org) are models of online research libraries. Over the years, fellows have published over a dozen volumes and countless articles on More; the Center hosts the website for the Cambridge journal, Moreana.
I came away enriched by the experience and grateful for Professor Wegemer’s perseverance, as well as for all the others whose efforts have put the revival of liberal education in a position of growing strength. I look forward to sharing more of their stories and the resources they have made available.
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An Interview with Paul Boyer
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"It Changed My Life!"
State Senator Paul Boyer (R-AZ) attributes his introduction to liberal education to politics -- in a very accidental way. The day he was sworn in as a state representative was the day, according to Arizona’s Constitution, that he had to resign from his much higher paying job as spokesman for Mesa Public schools. Teaching remains the only exception to the Arizona ban on public employment for elected officials, so Boyer began teaching at Veritas Preparatory Academy, the first of the Great Hearts Academies network of liberal arts schools whose motto is “Where ancient books live and breathe”. Boyer was hired to teach the tenth grade Humane Letters course – 500 years of modern European history integrated with daily two-hour seminar discussions of authors ranging from Plato to Mary Shelley to Rousseau to Dostoevsky.
Boyer had never encountered anything like this course in his own education so he had to spend hours and hours reading to prepare for the discussions. “Thankfully, I had some reading time built in – state representatives never stop talking until each one has said everything everyone else has already said. So I spent much time reading great texts in the Members’ Lounge rather than hear the same floor speeches several times.”
Though his first year was tough, he discovered he loved teaching. He also noticed that the more he read great authors, the more he led discussions of them, the better he became as a legislator. The daily process of asking questions, listening attentively, and looking carefully at difficult texts developed habits of mind that carried over into investigating challenging policy areas, conversations with lobbyists, and speaking persuasively. Recently Boyer has been working to address Arizona’s pressing water concerns, collaborating with Mexican officials to work out details of a possible multi-billion dollar desalination plant in the Sea of Cortez.
In 2017, Boyer entered the University of Dallas’s Masters of Classical Education program. “I have gained much greater depth in my understanding and practice of liberal education. The professors have helped me begin to see the layers of meaning in the texts of master teachers like Plato and Augustine I would never have arrived at on my own. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave made me wonder how much of what we discuss either on the campaign trail or in the chambers of the Senate itself are merely shadows of artifacts, three times removed from reality, and thus inconsequential. So I always attempt to focus on things that matter.” With success -- a September article in Arizona Central credited Boyer with three of 2021’s most impactful pieces of legislation.
Boyer says he thinks much more clearly now because of the training he received in the Trivium course. “I had never diagrammed sentences before; now I can provide a complete grammatical analysis of Shakespeare’s St. Crispin Day speech!” Boyer’s study of rhetoric made him understand that persuasive power must always aim at educating in truth. He discovered that education should turn the inner eye of students to reality, so that they will become free and capable of governing themselves.
Boyer is not hesitant to encourage Veritas graduates and others blessed to have had a serious liberal education to enter politics. “We need good people in politics that have the courage that made Socrates vote against popular but unjust convictions. Not only has my UD program made me more articulate in how I communicate ideas in committees and during Floor debates, but it’s also helped me to place an emphasis on the true, the good, and the beautiful, giving me more conviction as I argue for timeless truths in the public arena.” He himself is going in another direction -- he plans to devote himself to full-time teaching after the end of his current term. “If Plato and Aristotle are right about how democracy morphs into tyranny, then we’re in trouble as a nation unless we make some major changes, I think starting with our approach to K12 education in particular as a country.”
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