Saving Pedagogy: Dante as the Poet of Education

Scott F. Criderr, University of Dallas, Constantin College of Liberal Arts, at Public Discourse.

"Of the many forms of human association that the Western Tradition thinks of as paradigmatic—the friend, the lover, the spouse, the parent, the child, the sibling, the fellow worker, the fellow citizen—the pedagogic form (often confused with those others) is, on the one hand, seldom discussed, yet, on the other, represented throughout. Drawing on Athens and Jerusalem, we can think of Plato’s dialogues or Christianity’s Gospels. Add to that Paris and Rousseau’s Emile, and you begin to have a curriculum."

See Dante, "On World Government" from De Monarchia in Gateway to the Great Books (10 Vol., 1963) volume 7, and The Divine Comedy in Great Books of the Western World (first edition, 52 Vol., 1952) volume 21, (second edition, 60 Vol., 1990) volume 19.