Glowing praise for our new book on Art, Music, Faith, and Education:
The team of artists and thinkers assembled in Teaching Beauty have blessed art educators within the Body of Christ with an essential and timely discourse regarding the place of beauty, divine inspiration, and the role of the hand of the artist. As da Vinci once declared, “Unless the Spirit works with the hand, there is no art." —Tim High, Associate Professor of Studio Art, University of Texas at Austin
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Teaching Beauty is certain to open important conversations about teaching art and music within the Christian community and beyond. I believe this book will be a valuable asset especially to all of us now involved—or yet to be involved—in arts education from a Christian perspective. —Peter Mollenkof, Professor of Art at Messiah College
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Christian education has grown in leaps and bounds since I cut my teeth in the early 90’s. We have observed areas of weakness and made vast improvements. But by and large, the one area that seems to have been the red-haired step-child is the teaching of the arts. It is high time we realize that teaching beauty should have been central to it all. This volume is a glorious leap in that direction. —Bruce Etter, Head of School, Wilson Hill Academy
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At the heart and in the soul of Christianity and classical education rests the soul-nourishing energy of Beauty: building bridges between souls, between communities, between spirit and body, heaven and earth, God and man; and drawing us to our eternal home.
Beauty, however, eludes us (and can mislead us) and its hard to understand how to teach it. The essays presented to us by this extraordinary fellowship of authorities and artists and doers gives us eyes to see, ideas to understand, and practices to imitate. I receive it as a gift of grace—even of “grace notes.” —Andrew Kern, President of CiRCE Institute
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I cannot say how glad I am that [these] reflections are now available for all of us, maybe especially those of us not connected to the classical schooling movement, who might otherwise not get to read this kind of stuff very often. As I regularly say, agree or not with every sentence, I heartily commend this book.
. . . But, again, I hope I am clear in saying this is not just a book for those working in classical Christian schools, or even for those who are working in Christian schools. In fact, it’s not even just for those who are in schools. Parents, choir-directors, church school teachers, Christian ed professionals all will all be informed and aided in their efforts to think well about shaping the lives of those God has given them to influence. Anybody who wants to learn more—maybe not having been schooled in aesthetics all . . . will benefit from listening in to these thinkers and educators about how to teach music and art within a context of learning to love goodness, truth, and beauty. —Byron Borger, Hearts & Minds Bookstore
CLICK HERE for Hearts & Minds Bookstore's lengthy (and quite insightful) review of this book.