I am a classical educator and I have been at this for over thirty years. So when Joelle at Classical Academic Press asks me, “What is classical education?” she puts the question to someone who has skin in the game. For me, the term indicates a glorious endeavor that promotes truth and goodness and beauty and virtue and mom and apple pie and cute puppies and dancing in the moonlight and, of course, world peace. As a devotee, my natural impulse is to promote rather than define. But the question, “What is classical education?” does not investigate what I wish classical education meant, rather it investigates what the term truly means. To generate a proper definition, then, I will not reach into my favorite bag of educational slogans—instead, I will examine how folks actually use the term.

            We discover classical education’s natural ore within the rich mines of Christendom. Classical (generic) education is an awkward lexical byproduct of classical Christian education (CCE). We have to start there to find the meaning we’re searching for. Our search is helped by the fact that today’s classical Christian educators have organized themselves in various ways—through publications and associations—thereby constituting a universe of discourse that supplies mineral content to the meaning of CCE. I will survey some of their usages, reprinted below, in order to extract the elements they share in common.

The Association of Classical and Christian Schools (ACCS): Classical Christian Education (CCE) is education as it was practiced prior to the progressive movement early in the 20th century, which focused on job training. Instead, CCE sharpens students’ reasoning, language, and rhetorical skills with a Christian vision for all truth and knowledge. Classical education was created by the Greeks to train citizens to self-govern and live in freedom. Later, it was Christianized to become “Classical Christian.” In the medieval era, “scholastics” refined the form into what inspires classical Christian education today. Rather than emphasizing “subjects,” it emphasizes seven “liberal arts,” which liberate the mind to be less subject to controlling influences. The goal is to cultivate wisdom in light of Christ’s creation and kingdom.^[1]

Society for Classical Learning (SCL): Classical Christian Education aims to cultivate virtue and wisdom in students so they will live for the glory of God, flourishing as human beings and loving both God and neighbor. It pursues these goals through an ordered exploration of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful that is grounded in the liberal arts tradition and that forms students’ affections and the habits of lifelong learning.^[2]

Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain, The Liberal Arts Tradition: Grounded in piety, Christian classical education is the transmission of the culture of the church through a faculty of friends who love the truth by cultivating virtue in the students in body, heart, and mind, and nurturing their love for wisdom and faithful service of the Lord Jesus Christ.^[3]

            In the chart below, I place these definitions alongside one another for comparison. As you can see, they share three elements in common: a traditional source for an educational program, a means of educating, and the ends served by education.

These prominent formulations yield the following composite definition of classical Christian education: an education that draws upon educational authorities from the past as it cultivates liberating intellectual habits in order to impart Christian virtue and piety. This definition aligns this educational tradition’s sources with its means and ends.

            Working from this definition of classical Christian education, how might we make our way to classical (generic) education? Here we run into a challenge, for if we fail to specify an education’s traditional source, means, and ends, then the term becomes meaningless. From which tradition is our authoritative source? Which means do we deploy? For which ends are we aiming? Any education that does not address these questions—one that lacks rooting in a tradition and that sidesteps ultimate issues—does not rightly carry the adjective classical. That said, we also recognize that there are different cultural traditions that promote competing visions of humanity and its ultimate purpose. Consequently, we might properly recognize various classical educations (plural). Just as we have classical Christian education, there can be classical Islamic education, classical Marxist education, and classical nationalist education, to name a few possibilities. However, there can be no such thing as classical (generic) education. To suggest otherwise strips the adjective classical of its meaning.

^[1] https://classicalchristian.org/glossary-of-terms-home/?v=a44707111a05

^[2] This definition was publicly introduced by my friend David Diener at the 2023 SCL Summer Conference.

^[3] Ravi Jain and Kevin Clark, The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Philosophy of Christian Classical Education, Revised Edition (Camp Hill, PA: Classical Academic Press, 2019), 3. Compare this to Memoria Press’s definition: https://www.memoriapress.com/classical-education/

Christopher Schlect, PhD, is senior fellow of history at New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho, where he serves as Head of Humanities and Director of the College’s graduate program in Classical and Christian Studies.

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