Common Arts Education with Chris Hall

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 Are you familiar with the Common Arts? Could you describe them if someone asked you the difference between the Liberal Arts, the Fine Arts, and the Common Arts? This month's podcast is going to delve into the definition of the Common Arts and practical activities you can incorporate into your schools and homes that nurture these vital arts.

Today’s episode is going to be a little different. For the first time in this podcast, I am going to share with you a lecture I recorded this past month during one of Templeton’s special evening lectures that was open to students, faculty, and the community. Our guest speaker was Chris Hall, one of our special teachers in my Pedagogy 2 class, which was led by Dr. Brian Williams, Dean of the Templeton Honors College here. Chris Hall is the founder of Always Learning Education, and practitioner, teacher, and author on the Common Arts. 

You may recall from last year my interview with fellow classmate, Rose Tomassi, who shared with us about how she incorporated the Common Arts in her school here, Martin Saints Classical High School in Orland, PA. In it we highlighted Chris Hall and his book and this summer I was treated to a couple days of insight from this wise and talented teacher and homesteader. 

Favorite Resources:

• Common Arts Education: Renewing the Classical Tradition of Training the Hands, Head, and Heart by Chris Hall
• A New Natural Philosophy: Recovering a Natural Science and Christian Pedagogy by Chris Hall and Ravi Scott Jain
• Didascalicon of Hugh of St. Victor: A Medieval Guide to the Arts, "On the Study of Reading" (Book Two) via Internet Archive
• "When I Heard the Learned Astronomer" poem by Walt Witman via Poets.org
• Owl Moon by Jane Yolen
• Always Learning Education
• Sewing School, Sewing School 2, Sewing School: Fashion Design, Sewing School Quilts books
• Shop Class as Soul Craft: An Inquiry About the Value of Work by Michael Crawford
• Wood Whittling Kit For Beginners
• Swiss Army Knife Whittling Book by Chris Lubkemann
• Vogue Knitting The Ultimate Knitting Book: Completely Revised & Updated 
• The Practical Potter: A Step By Step Handbook by Josie Warshaw
• The Potter's Studio Handbook: A Start-to-Finish Guide to Handbuilt and Wheel-thrown Ceramics by Kristin Muller
• Found and Ground: A Practical Guide to Making Your Own Foraged Paints by Caroline Ross

 "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down frm the Father of Lights," says James in the first chapter of his epistle. These words of Sacred Scripture not only indicate the source of all illumination but they likewise point out the generous flow of the manifold rays which issue from that Fount of light. Notwithstanding the fact that every ilumination of knowledge is within, still we can with reason distinguish what we may call the external light, or the light of mechanical art; the lower light, or the light of sense perception; the inner light, or the light of philosophical kowledge; and the higher light, or the light of grace and of Sacred Scripture. The first light illumines in regard to structure of artifacts; the second, in regard to natural forms; the thrid, in regard to intellectual truth; the fourth and last, in regard to saving truth." - St. Bonaventure, "Retracing the Arts to Theology"

. . . give a child a single valuable idea, and you have done more for his education than if you had laid upon his mind the burden of bushels of information . . . - Charlotte Mason, Volume 1: Home Education, p. 174

1. Get a copy of The Didascalicon of Hugh of St. Victor and read "Book Two" about the Liberal and Mechanical Arts; and Chris Hall's book Common Arts Teaching and pick one or two to try for yourself.
2. If you are skilled already in a Common Art (cooking, stars, whittling, auto mechanics, sewing, crocheting, foraging, hunting, raising chickens, fishing, dancing, etc.), think about who you can apprentice: your kids or grandkids? Your soccer team or History class? Your neighborhood or church? There are people out there who are craving to know what you know! (even if they don't know they want to know it yet!)
3. As an educator in the classroom or home, think about how you can include a Common Art in your lesson plans: putting together a Medieval Feast for History Class, sewing on patches or baking cookies for a soccer fundraiser, knitting baby beanies on a loom during Read Aloud, observing animal tracks on your nature hikes and making casts with a ziplock bag, water, and plaster of paris, hanging a bird feeder outside your kitchen window with a field guide and binoculars on the windowsill, canning raspberry jam over the summer with the neighbors, raising zinnias and selling by the side of the road along with homemade lemonade, etc.