This was perhaps the most succinct example of the Classical Christian Paradigm. I will be pointing people to this as a primer for it. Thank you!
Also, could you clarify what you mean when you say "to perceive the Logos (not just the moral of the story, but the moral as Christ would have it)? What does that look like in an lower school setting?
Of course. When I ask the students to perceive the Logos, I'm asking them to tell me what the moral of the fable is according to Christ's teachings. I don't give them the moral that's written in the book. Most of the time, the Logos that they put forth is consistent with whatever moral is given by Aesop, but we do it this way because sometimes Aesop's moral conflicts with the Logos and imparts a wrong or irrelevant teaching or omits a certain aspect of the story that I want the students to identify.
For example, this past week we read The Lamb and the Wolf. Like any fable there are multiple variations of it, but in the one I have a lamb encounters a wolf trapped behind a gate. The wolf pretends to be a herbivore in order to trick the lamb into opening the gate, and then it eats the lamb. In the book, the moral is something to the effect of "the young are easily condemned by ignorance," which is true enough, but also not what I want my students to take away from the story.
Thankfully, they were on top of things that morning and hit upon the fact that while the lamb made a terrible error in judgement, it was kind and didn't do anything wrong. Additionally, they recognized that the wolf demonstrated patience in his manipulation of the lamb, which opened up an entirely new discussion about how the Fruits of the Spirit can be misused by the wicked. By focusing on the Logos and not the moral, students are directly applying what they're taught by their parents and teachers to interpret and understand the transcendent virtue that permeates even non-Christian stories.
This was perhaps the most succinct example of the Classical Christian Paradigm. I will be pointing people to this as a primer for it. Thank you!
Also, could you clarify what you mean when you say "to perceive the Logos (not just the moral of the story, but the moral as Christ would have it)? What does that look like in an lower school setting?
Of course. When I ask the students to perceive the Logos, I'm asking them to tell me what the moral of the fable is according to Christ's teachings. I don't give them the moral that's written in the book. Most of the time, the Logos that they put forth is consistent with whatever moral is given by Aesop, but we do it this way because sometimes Aesop's moral conflicts with the Logos and imparts a wrong or irrelevant teaching or omits a certain aspect of the story that I want the students to identify.
For example, this past week we read The Lamb and the Wolf. Like any fable there are multiple variations of it, but in the one I have a lamb encounters a wolf trapped behind a gate. The wolf pretends to be a herbivore in order to trick the lamb into opening the gate, and then it eats the lamb. In the book, the moral is something to the effect of "the young are easily condemned by ignorance," which is true enough, but also not what I want my students to take away from the story.
Thankfully, they were on top of things that morning and hit upon the fact that while the lamb made a terrible error in judgement, it was kind and didn't do anything wrong. Additionally, they recognized that the wolf demonstrated patience in his manipulation of the lamb, which opened up an entirely new discussion about how the Fruits of the Spirit can be misused by the wicked. By focusing on the Logos and not the moral, students are directly applying what they're taught by their parents and teachers to interpret and understand the transcendent virtue that permeates even non-Christian stories.