The word ‘familiar’ implies having something be like a member of your family. To be made familiar is to be incorporated into the same family, the same body of people.
To become familiar with particular book, a particular mystery, or a particular bit of knowledge is to, in a sense, become part of the same family with it — or rather, make it part of your family, to domesticate it, to bring it into your house: the house of your mind, the house of your heart. This is the process of learning.
Gregory the Great once said that
“We ought to transform what we read into our very selves, so that when our mind is stirred up what it hears, our life may concur by practicing what has been heard.”The ancient metaphor for this is the image of eating and digesting food. In the same way we chew our food and absorb it into our very selves, in the same way we should “chew over” and “digest” what we read. Indeed, the exact word used by the scholars of antiquity was that of “ruminating” over the text in the same way a cow ruminates and chews its cud. This is the way to truly learn what is read — to make it part of ourselves.
Four Things to Improve Your Memory:
1. First, You should associate the Thing to be remembered with some fitting but unusual image, and keep that image in mind.
This is because you remember sensory things much better than you do abstract things, since the memory is in the same part of your mind and brain as the senses and emotions. The image should be unusual or grotesque that which is unusual is more easily remembered than what is normal.
2. Second, you should carefully think about the thing you want to remember and put its corresponding image or sign in your mind in some sort of visual/spatial order, and do so in relation to other things you want to remember. This is so that you can pass easily from one memory to another and more easily from the image in your mind to the thing you want to remember.
3. Third, you should attach strong emotion and vivid sensory experience to the image of the thing to be remembered, because you’re much more likely to remember something the more deeply it is impressed in your emotional memory.
4. Fourth, you should reflect frequently on the thing it is you want to remember. This is done by re-visualizing and looking over and exploring the space, as it were, where you have these images in your mind, since such reflection more deeply impresses the images of these things and preserves them in your memory.
These are the basic elements of what is sometimes called the “Memory Palace” technique.
“Though there were times when the old traditions seemed to be on the point of failing, somehow it has happened that they have never failed; for the instinct of Civilization and the common sense of Society prevailed, and the danger passed away, and the studies which seemed to be going out gained their ancient place, and were acknowledged, as before, to be the best instruments of mental cultivation, and the best guarantees for intellectual progress.”
~ Bl. John Henry Newman, Idea of a University
Welcome to the blog of Acropolis Scholars, LLC.
Who are we and what are we about? We are scholars and educators who care about Truth, about living a more fully human life, and about working together to bring about a renaissance of learning and culture in society – a culture of authentic human flourishing.
Looking around, we saw a need for renewal in education today – something different, something more than what is currently out there. We also saw a need for a real renewal of culture – one that would create the ideal conditions for human flourishing and personal excellence. We wanted to create something that connects people, connects them with the traditions of the past, with the whole world, and with reality itself in a real and authentic way.
So we created Acropolis Scholars, LLC.
We have a vision for a new way of doing things: not one that will replace the conventional school, public or private, but work alongside it, in harmony with it. Rather than replace it, this is meant to enrich and integrate the education otherwise gotten.
We want to create a method at once innovative and classical, challenging the mediocrity of the status quo. This method is a new approach to the very presuppositions of the way education is done today, and yet is also the primary method of education in use during all the high periods of cultural flourishing and advancement throughout human history.
Our approach is built on the idea that a true education is more than memorization of facts and figures, but rather about learning how to learn, learning a new way of thinking. It integrates the different branches of knowledge to show the Unity of Truth, and its Beauty and Goodness. Acropolis Scholars is built on the method of heart speaking to heart, as Blessed J.H. Newman put it. It is the way we are most naturally disposed to learn: person to person through conversation and dialogue, through the experience of authentic understanding. This is probably why, by the way, studies show that students who receive private or semi-private tutoring in addition to standard classroom education do significantly better than with conventional classroom education alone.
We want to create a means of learning where heart speaks to heart, addressing the whole human person. True education is education for a whole way of life, education for living a fully human life, for living most authentically. Acropolis Scholars provides an education of the heart as well as the head, virtue as well as vision, moral character as well as academic performance. Acropolis Scholars brings together abstract knowledge and the concrete experience of human life to form an integrated whole that addresses the whole human person. This method is what the Ancient Greeks called paideia: the classical kind of education directed at forming the student in greater maturity and virtue to the fullness of their human potential.
We want to create a place where you can discover…
So that’s what we do at Acropolis Scholars, LLC.
Acropolis Scholars, LLC 