"True teaching is a ‘winnowing’, a wind to blow the chaff from our minds and hearts. It is an ‘unquenchable fire’ to burn away all that is false and unreal." (Irma Zaleski, 2002, p. 50) "Life slumbers. It needs to be roused, to be awakened to a drunken marriage with divine feeling." (Thomas Mann, 1927, p. 603) Mythopoetry, the imagistic voice of the muses which manifests in myth and natural poetry, has been invoked as an impression of ideal curriculum with which to cherish intimate, vital experience (and to oppose its exile from educational life). In this statement, I intend to see through the pleasant surface of the label, mythopoetry, to see what image may lie just out of sight, beyond the "inspired writing" that mythopoetry implies. Beyond words themselves, meaning is found in sound and in expressive representation. “Music, when soft voices die, / Vibrates in the memory” (Shelley)

Drawing primarily from Roland Barthes’ Mythologies (1972a), I argue that Barthes’ semiological and ideological descriptions of myth can be useful tools to confront what is given as natural, commonsensical, or depoliticized in education. Through confrontation and critique, educators can effectively become ‘mythologists’. After giving a synopsis of the essay ‘Myth Today’, where Barthes lays out his theoretical semiology for myth, I argue that educators can engage in myth(ologist) writing to disrupt taken-for-granted cultural practices. In the last section, I present four pieces of creative non-fiction (‘The Dean’s Speech’, ‘International School’, ‘False Debates in Science Education (FOS versus NOS)’, and ‘The Rubric’) as examples of myth(ologist) writing used to disrupt taken-for-granted (depoliticized) aspects of education.

Abstract: The golden pommel is a mythological allegory representing inestimable value, providing immortality, or an insignia of great power, in this work, we understand it as a prominent personality, worthy of note and to be studied further, to elucidate its nuances and highlight its made throughout history. This bibliographic survey traces a brief historical context about female education, or rather, its defenders, mostly great philosophers and renowned writers. We started our presentation by the cradle of democracy, with Plato’s thoughts and, conventionally accepted positions, reported by Plutarch, where the first defended greater rights and freedom for women and the second, despite following a middle platonic line of thought (transition phase between the skeptical platonism of the hellenistic period and the neoplatonism of the 3rd century), he described female education as an activity of the domestic scope and for the preparation of children. In antiquity, women had a reproductive into the same mistakes already known. The patriarchal system still has strong remnants in the popular mentality, the result of an understanding perpetuated in time, naturally transmitted from one generation to the next, without significant questioning, however, when someone manages to argue and change the rigid paradigms of commonly accepted social standards, this dissonant voice stands out as a landmark, even if in its own time it was not fully recognized. This is exactly the theme of this work, what were the most important voices in order to identify women as worthy of education? The Golden Snitch is a recurring allegory function, preferably generating men to strengthen armies. We approach a little of the vise-familia still existing in ancient Rome. We arrive at the Middle Ages, with its religious peculiarities, attributing responsibility to Eve for the original sin. We pass by Cristina de Pisan, Maria de Gournay, François Poullain de La Barre, Madame de Rambouillet and Madeleine de Scudéry to reach the Enlightenment, a period that we highlight, Olympe de Gouges, Mary Astell, Daniel Defoe, the Blue Stockings and Mary Wollstonecraft.

The golden pommel is a mythological allegory representing inestimable value, providing immortality, or an insignia of great power, in this work, we understand it as a prominent personality, worthy of note and to be studied further, to elucidate its nuances and highlight its made throughout history. This bibliographic survey traces a brief historical context about female education, or rather, its defenders, mostly great philosophers and renowned writers. We started our presentation by the cradle of democracy, with Plato's thoughts and, conventionally accepted positions, reported by Plutarch, where the first defended greater rights and freedom for women and the second, despite following a middle platonic line of thought (transition phase between the skeptical platonism of the hellenistic period and the neoplatonism of the 3rd century), he described female education as an activity of the domestic scope and for the preparation of children. In antiquity, women had a reproductive function, preferably generating men to strengthen armies. We approach a little of the vise-familia still existing in ancient Rome. We arrive at the Middle Ages, with its religious peculiarities, attributing responsibility to Eve for the original sin. We pass by Cristina de Pisan, Maria de Gournay, François Poullain de La Barre, Madame de Rambouillet and Madeleine de Scudéry to reach the Enlightenment, a period that we highlight, Olympe de Gouges, Mary Astell, Daniel Defoe, the Blue Stockings and Mary Wollstonecraft.

Originally presented at Grove City College, this paper explores the frames of reference that constitute historically Truth, Goodness, and Beauty; we then examine the eclipse of these cosmic values in our secular age and the adverse effects such an eclipse has wrought on the church’s witness to transcendent values; and then look at how the renaissance of classical Christian education represents nothing less than an effectual recovery of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in our own time.