Chris Hall is a teacher and scholar, but he’s also a musician, a craftsman in arts such as leatherwork and woodworking, an auto mechanic, a longtime practitioner of the martial arts, a marksman, a hunter, a farmer, a brewer, and a baker.
These pursuits fall into the category of what Hall calls the common arts, which he defines as “the arts and skills that allow us to meet our basic, embodied needs in the world. … But you see from that definition just how broad that is—everything from agriculture to armament and a number of skills in between.”
To the ancient Greeks and Romans, these were “the vulgar arts, the servile arts,” Hall told American Essence. “They were arts that were done by the people with dirty hands.”
The restoration of doing for ourselves has become Hall’s passion and mission in life. Passing on that knowledge to students opens their eyes to the value of hands-on work and excellence in craftsmanship.
Though today these arts go by the name of the common arts, as Hall emphasized, “they’re also far from common, because if you practice these arts to such a degree that the person who uses the artifacts produced by them encounters goodness, truth, and beauty, then they’ve really ascended into something that’s a fine art. We all know the difference between a McDonald’s cheeseburger and one that’s very finely produced at a restaurant that knows cheeseburgers. That’s the difference in the skill of craft that makes some common arts uncommon.”
Yet neglect and diminished use have left the common arts in danger of extinction. In his 2022 book “Common Arts Education: Renewing the Classical Tradition of Training the Hands, Head, and Heart,” Hall writes, “We not only don’t do for ourselves now, we have forgotten how to do for ourselves, and that costs us in profound ways.”
Educator Chris Hall feeds sugar syrup to honeybees on his Virginia homestead. Courtesy of Chris Hall
Learning Virtues Through the Common Arts
Hall sees the acquisition of one or more of the common arts as closely linked to the liberal arts found in a classical education. “They’re like two sides of a coin. The more you trace the common arts, the more the liberal arts come out of the mix. They’re deep in there. They’re embedded.”Like the classic liberal arts, the common arts have as much to do with soul craft as they do with metallurgy or cooking. To stress this connection, Hall has invented the term “thrival.” He wrote, “The common arts are more than the arts of survival. They are the arts of thrival.”
Just as one aim of a classical education is to teach students virtue, the same lesson may occur when learning a life skill.
“Think about the way Tolkien wrote his crafters,” said Hall, who regularly rereads “The Lord of the Rings,” “You have the orcs who craft primarily for destruction and mayhem, and then you’ve got the dwarves who primarily craft for the joy of craft, but also with that little bit of avarice, the pursuit of gold. Humans fall somewhere in between them and the elves, who craft out of a love of things that are beautiful and harmonious.
“I find that a lot of our virtue formation with liberal or common arts can follow something similar. We can use our liberal and common arts for destruction and avarice, or we can seek higher things that are good, true, and beautiful.”
Teaching our children, baking bread, writing a poem, or raising chickens: All fall within the scope of Hall’s arts of thrival. Encouraged by his words and example, we can strive to make ourselves a bit more like Tolkien’s elves, add some beauty and harmony to all that we do, and craft our souls for the better.
The common arts include tending to animals. Courtesy of Chris Hall
A Living Atelier
Some 20 years ago, Hall and his wife Cathy lived in a tent and a tiny cabin while they built a home for themselves in rural Virginia. Since then, their homestead has grown into a living atelier modeling the common arts. This is where they homeschool their three sons.“We have gardens on both sides of the house. We have a back field plot. We keep rabbits, chickens, ducks. In the past, we’ve had goats and sheep. Our boys are pretty much raised on goats’ milk,” Hall said.
The property also includes an archery range, a pond, and a tool shed shop with a concrete pad in front, where automotive maintenance takes place, and many projects are built.
Of all his hands-on work, Hall takes particular pride in the .50 caliber muzzleloader he assembled from a kit. “That’s the piece I use to put meat on the table. It’s my primary hunting weapon in the fall,” he said.
More recently, this Renaissance man has taken up ham radio operation. “One of the best things I’ve had the chance to do across the last year is earn my amateur extra license—that’s the highest class of amateur radio license—and talk to people around the world every day using just an antenna in my backyard. It’s a wonderful thing.”
Teaching a child how to make a wooden sword is not only about woodworking skills. It sparks his imagination—a gateway to curiosity and learning. Biba Kayewich for American Essence
Teaching the Common Arts
Through his website “Always Learning Education,” Hall offers courses in several life skills, like small-scale farming and wilderness survival. In addition to other subjects, he teaches courses on the common arts to students in grades 6 through 12 at Scholé Academy, an online classical school. He speaks frequently to different groups on the importance of acquiring and incorporating the common arts into their children’s schooling and lives.His book “Common Arts Education” introduces readers to subjects like sewing, weaving, stone masonry, navigation, and animal husbandry. It includes lists of resources for those who want to further develop these skills and build a hands-on curriculum for their children or students.
Children working in a greenhouse. Courtesy of Chris Hall
Hall also encourages schools to bring the common arts into the classroom and reminds administrators that people like school custodians, secretaries, and grandparents may have skills they could share with students.
“Don’t go big. Start small,” he advised. “Taste that success and let it motivate others to continue the journey—things like growing a container garden, where every kid grows a tomato plant in a 2-gallon pot.”
“We had a group of fourth graders who learned how to knit, and they were making hats for the babies in the NICU hospital,” he added. “We had a cooking club, a group of kids learning how to use pots and pans on hot plates, and they produced spaghetti sauce and things that, for the first time in their lives, gave them a taste of food that wasn’t out of the microwave.” As Hall said, it was a taste of success.
This article was originally published in American Essence magazine.
