Real Learning

“No enforced study abides in the soul”
Socrates

Alcuin understood that the movement of the mind from a state of ignorance to a state of knowledge, though at times difficult, ought not be a cold, sterile, and impersonal act that hardens the soul.  

Education should instead resemble a well-planned meal, advancing from course to course, each plate preparing the next, in the end leaving the guest utterly satisfied yet somehow desiring more. The pleasure of the feast is a result of the company kept and the food served. Alcuin maintained that the best intellectual diet consisted of ‘ancient’ fare, that is ‘toothsome food’ that has been proven to cause health and vitality.

The Alcuin Institute seeks to return to this kind of education, one that is at once broad and deep, yet light and whimsical and thoroughly grounded in the primary sources of the Christian West, the deer and pheasant to be found in our very own precincts.

Such a feast among friends in Christ is “the best that life can offer.”