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.
|
Traditional Sources: CCE draws upon educational authorities from the past |
Means: CCE cultivates liberating intellectual habits |
Ends: CCE imparts Christian virtue and piety |
The Association of Classical and Christian Schools (ACCS) |
Education as it was practiced prior to the progressive movement early in the 20th century
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. |
Sharpens students’ reasoning, language, and rhetorical skills
Rather than emphasizing “subjects,” it emphasizes seven “liberal arts,” which liberate the mind to be less subject to controlling influences. |
A Christian vision for all truth and knowledge
The goal is to cultivate wisdom in light of Christ’s creation and kingdom. |
Society for Classical Learning (SCL) |
Grounded in the liberal arts tradition |
Through an ordered exploration of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful…that forms students’ affections and the habits of lifelong learning |
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 |
Clark and Jain, The Liberal Arts Tradition |
through a familiarity with the great books and the great thinkers of the Western tradition |
through meditation on the Good, the True, and the Beautiful… through training in the liberal arts |
the cultivation of wisdom and virtue |
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.
The open book and stack of books is an obvious emblem of classical education: we are educated by the classics, meaning both those canonical works that have stood the test of time and also those particular to the ancient or classical world. De Pizan assumes as much in the first lines of her book, “One day, I was sitting in my study surrounded by many books of different kinds, for it has long been my habit to engage in the pursuit of knowledge.”[1] Within this one line, we could highlight various features of classical education: one seeks “knowledge" outside of the self, in the sources of the tradition, by repeated “habit.” The tradition that she alludes to is spelled out explicitly later in the paragraph as philosophers, poets, and orators.
Their writings de Pizan mulls over in her mind repeatedly, which leads to self-examination: “I began to examine myself.”[2] In classical education, a person leans not on their own understanding but comes to greater self-knowledge through an exploration of the writings of others. Recall Lady Reason’s mirror. These writings offer a gift for seeing oneself more clearly.
From considering previous writers, de Pizan discovers that she disagrees with some of the authors of the past, for it is not a monolithic tradition. Classical education must be wary of ideology and ready to refute errors, as de Pizan does here. She begins her refutation with a prayer and, in response, the Lord blesses her with three teachers. In classical schools, we assume that students require teachers: Boethius needed Lady Philosophy, Dante required Beatrice, and Christine de Pizan received her allegorical ladies. Additionally, these descending figures show that learning must be graced by revelation; knowledge comes not only from reason but also from imagination, the muses, and the divine Word.
In The Book of the City of Ladies, these three women instruct Christine’s wayward thinking through classical methods: conversation and narrative. Each lady allows Christine to ask her questions and explain the sources of her thought, and then they respond with claims or questions of their own. The dialectic between Christine and the ladies also teaches the readers in the process. In order to prove their points, the women draw up examples from history, myths, and Scripture. Their canon of illustrations is expansive, including Persians, Greeks, Hebrews, Romans, and more. Just as in classical education, where we teach students through dialogue and story, so Christine’s teachers instruct her.
While the interlocution is depicted on the left side of the illumination, the right side shows Christine’s actions. She is building a city. This building project is a metaphor for the book, but also a reminder that the conversation results in creation. According to scholar Charlotte Cooper-Davis, Christine oversaw the production of her 54 books herself, and several of them are written in her own hand.[3] The liberal arts that comprise classical education are arts; in other words, you must practice what you learn. In gratitude for the freedom received by this education, one frees others by the way one acts in the world.
Action and contemplation are reciprocal in classical education. At the conclusion of the book, Christine both calls on her readers to act while also praising God for the construction of the city. This dual address outwards to the presumed “honorable ladies” reading the book, in addition to the request that the Lord may “shine His grace upon me” and “do likewise unto you,” illustrates how learning ends in both love of neighbor and love of the Lord. We contemplate and then we act; our virtuous actions also lead to greater contemplation.
As we attempt to define classical education, we should do so by looking backwards, in true classical fashion, to the models of wisdom whom we aspire to imitate. We want to remember that classical education is a way of life, so we cannot come up with a mere list of descriptors and abstract bullet points that define the phrase fully. In Deschooling Society (1970), Ivan Illich narrows education to four channels: elders, teachers, peers, and the things themselves (books, art, nature). Three out of the four are people. To be classically educated may rely on classical things, but more so on people living a certain kind of life together. Without the people, there is no classical education.
I started with an example from 1405, but I did not see this illumination or read this book until 2022. Although I’d spent two decades in classical education from my college great books program, to a masters in great books at one university, a PhD in great books at another university, and teaching K-12 great books, I had never heard of Christine de Pizan. In fact, until 2007, I didn’t know there were women writers prior to Jane Austen. But classical education must be a way of educating that is for all people, draws from both men and women writers of the past, and sees the tradition as a global human story where God’s truth, beauty, and goodness can be found in all sorts of places.
If I can pay Christine the greatest compliment by imitating her, I would like to end with an admonition and a prayer: “pursue virtue and shun vice, thus increasing in number the inhabitants of our city,” and I ask the Lord “to carry on devoting my life to His holy service here on earth.” Ultimately, classical education should offer us the resources to live out those ends.
[1] Book of the City of Ladies, 5.
[2] Ibid, 6.
[3] Christine de Pizan: Life, Work, Legacy by Charlotte Cooper-Davis, London: Reaktion Books, 2021.
Community leaders are usually disturbed by the perceived lack of rigor offered by most modern schools. They want to know if this education is academically challenging and surpasses the expectations offered by the public school. They might ask, “Will it get students into the best schools and help them compete for the best job?” “Yes,” I say, “and classical education is much more.”
Teachers, who begin their teaching journey hopeful, find that education is less about the individual and more about the institution and its pre-determined learning objectives. This, combined with unreal expectations for teaching these learning objectives without a foundation of moral tradition or parental support, causes many teachers to become overwhelmed, defeated, and ready to leave the profession altogether. They want an education that allows them to practice the art of teaching. They might ask, “Will my students and I find joy in learning again?” “Yes,” I say, “and classical education is much more.”
The parents who despise the values of the modern education system want to protect their children from the progressive values of the world. They fear Critical Race Theory and transgender bathrooms. They are running from something unwanted rather than running toward something beautiful. They simply want a quality education for their children that upholds traditional morals in a safe environment. They might ask, “Will my child be safe from controversial ideas?” “No,” I say, "because a classical education is much more.”
No, classical education is not safe. Just as, when Lucy asks if Aslan is “safe” and Mr. Beaver replies, “Safe?...Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.” So it is with classical education.[1] Students will eventually encounter ideas that are not sheltered. Violence, lust, greed, sloth, prejudice, and other vices make appearances in conversations. Humanity can be evil, but discerning this evil can, in fact, lead students towards what is good and help them think on “…whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy…” (Phil 4:8).[2] Classical education teases out the true, the beautiful, and the good in all strands of knowledge and helps students articulate it. When students pursue these things, safety is not guaranteed. However, they receive much more.
Though not safe, classical education embodies all the qualities that allow individual humans to learn to live the “much more” in all its ages and stages. It not only helps a willing student accomplish their life’s vocational calling, it also helps them be good mothers, fathers, friends, church members, and community leaders. The secret to “much more” living is formational virtue.
When education’s primary intent focuses on virtue, all other imperatives fall in line. Leigh Bortins, founder of Classical Conversations homeschool programs, says about educating her own sons:
…my only goal is to raise virtuous men…Virtuous men have no problem going to college because they are studious. They have no problem finding employment because they return hours of work for honest wages. They have no problem starting businesses because they can sacrifice to make others’ lives better. They have no problem serving in missions because they can delay personal desires…virtue should be the goal of education.[3]
Another one of my favorite quotes, which sums up the heart of classical education, is from David Hicks, author of Norms and Nobility: a Treatise on Education. Hicks redeems modern education by saying, “The purpose of education is not the assimilation of facts or the retention of information, but the habituation of the mind and body to will and act in accordance with what one knows.”[4] Education is not just acquiring knowledge for the sake of learning it, even if it is useful. This simple quote says it all: education is for the whole individual to know virtue and to live it out in all areas of life.
Classical education differs from modern education with its pursuit of the true, the good, and the beautiful instead of the new, the popular, and the useful. Universal ideas from enduring texts founded in truth, goodness, and beauty offer opportunities for those made in God’s image to grow. Additionally, students who learn how to read attentively and thoughtfully are able to think deeply and strategically, discern prudently and courageously, write articulately and expressively, and compute carefully and thoroughly. They can integrate truth, goodness, and beauty across all subject areas—a skill which is of the ultimate use. This “much more” education directs students to the things worthy of attention, forming their souls to love the things worth loving. The cultivation of individual virtue is the defining difference of a classical education.
A classical education does not offer safety, nor is it tame. It is much more—it is good. And this goodness offers whole humans a full and flourishing life that prepares them for further education, labor, family, and citizenship through joyful learning. As a Christian classical educator, I believe this goodness is centered around the person of Christ, who embodies all of creation. He is Everything. Christ, the Virtue Giver, woos the human heart to the truth and goodness of Himself with his beautiful creation. He is Good. He is the Much More.
[1] C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, 1970th ed., vol. 1, 7 vols of The Chronicles of Narnia (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1970), 75-76.
[2] Philippians 4:8. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Philippians%204:8&version=NIV.
[3] Leigh A. Bortins, The Conversation: Challenging Your Student with a Classical Education (USA: 2015 Classical Conversations Multimedia, 2015), 27.
[4] David V. Hicks, Norms & Nobility: A Treatise on Education (Lanham, MD, MD: University Press of America, 1999), 20.
Carrie Eben, MSEd (PhD student), is owner of Classical Eben education consulting (www.classicaleben.com), founding board member of Sager Classical Academy in Siloam Springs, AR and adjunct instructor of Integrated Humanities at John Brown University.
The first implied secondary question is, “What is education?”. From ancient cultures and civilizations, we learn that all peoples have a view that education is important. Simply put, education is the importance of passing knowledge, experience, and wisdom to a new generation.
By answering “What is education?,” we flow quite easily into another question which is, “What is the purpose or goal of education?.” I have been living and working in Tanzania for the past eighteen months, and I have learned that local tribes all value educating their children; however, they have different goals for their graduates. The Masai are a very traditional tribe and typically educate their children with the skills, virtues, and knowledge needed to be a good member of their community. They teach practical skills, such as cattle raising, hunting, sewing, and farming, among others. Knowledge that Westerners consider essential, such as reading, writing, and arithmetic, are not considered important to the Masai. The Chaga tribe, on the other hand, has a more modern view of education, and many of their children attend schools with the goal of being trained to be accountants, lawyers, business owners, etc. Both tribes have the same goal: to educate their children so they have the necessary skills and virtues (necessary as defined by the culture) to be positive contributors to the society, and in doing so they emphasize a different set of skills and a different type of knowledge.
We can now apply the answers to these two secondary questions to our primary question, “What is classical education?.” First, we understand that we are passing on knowledge, experience, and wisdom to a new generation. However, the goal of classical education is quite different than many other forms of education. In classical education, the goal is to produce a graduate who will live a virtuous life with the foundational skills and knowledge necessary to be a positive contributor to society.
In classical education, the concept of schole is preeminent. Schole is the idea that learning is a, enjoyable, lifelong process. Classical education during childhood and teenage years is designed to provide everyone with the knowledge and skills considered foundational to any occupation. The graduate is expected to continue being educated in a more specific occupation. Once in that occupation, the person is expected to continue learning about many fields of knowledge, both related and unrelated to their occupation. This is the concept of schole.
Why is this expectation so critical to classical education? Wouldn’t it be better if a person focused on learning knowledge and skills related to their occupation? Why does a carpenter need to know history or a sports journalist need to know art? Many modern forms of education ask these questions and conclude that there is no good reason for this expanded knowledge. However, to classical education proponents, people are defined by more than one specific set of knowledge or skills. Life is complex and someone who lacks knowledge in many areas will not be the best contributor to society.
Our modern times are a great example. Our world and nation grapple with difficult problems—racism, global warming, poverty, etc. Solutions to these problems are complex. Those working to solve these problems, whether in the private or government sector, need to be knowledgeable in many areas, (i.e., history, science, diplomacy, psychology, debate, logic, etc.). Unfortunately, while our leaders are all educated, many with advanced degrees, the education they received was poor and incomplete. They were educated in a specific set of knowledge for a specific occupation. Lifelong learning has been reduced to skimming social media websites rather than focused, intentional reading. Debates are “won” by the person who employs logical fallacies in the cleverest way.
The expectation that certain fundamental skills are taught in the formative years of a person’s life, along with a lifelong pursuit of learning in a rich, deep, and mature way, is critical because everyone is then well-rounded in knowledge. Everyone can present a persuasive, logical argument based on facts and wisdom. Such people can truly be positive contributors to society. We need carpenters who know history and understand how historical events are related and contrasted so they can provide meaningful commentary and opinions on world events. We need sports journalists who appreciate the complexities of art and apply this knowledge to the beauty and grace of the human body moving in an athletic competition so they can improve the quality of their articles. If you ponder our current world, you will begin to think of numerous examples where a classical education would be most beneficial.
In summary, “What is classical education?” Classical education is a means of passing on knowledge, experience, and wisdom to create virtuous people who can be positive contributors to society. A graduate of a classical education is a person who can reason logically and persuasively in both written and oral forms of communication, who appreciates truth, beauty, and goodness, and who is prepared to be trained into any specific occupation.
I did not receive such an education. The education I received was not bad, but it was lacking. Thankfully, anyone at any age can decide to pursue a classical education and fill in the gaps. I hope you will join me in this wonderful journey.
John Cicone is the Head Administrator of the Rafiki Foundation School Tanzania.
Get Involved with The Disputed Question
If you’re enjoying the essays and want to respond with your own charitable and respectful thoughts, objections, and responses, you have two options.
In the fall of 2015, a runaway sheep named Chris was discovered in the Australian bush. Un-sheared for years, Chris was unrecognizable and in grave danger. He could barely walk or see, was about to overheat, and was likely full of concealed infections. To make matters worse, due to isolation, he was terrified of people.
A gateway drug (sedative) was needed to save his life. While Chris was under the enchantment of sedation, champion sheep-shearer Ian Elkins could remove layer upon layer to enlighten Chris’s body and restore him to health and to the care of a shearing shepherd. Classical education is a universal shearing that enlightens our story. Let me explain.
The Invisible and Universal Great Books
First, God made and sustains an invisible world that is incomparably larger, more beautiful, and more real than the visible world we inhabit. Life’s journey is an adventure toward the infinite happiness found in this invisible world, but our fatal wound is an original fallenness that blinds our path to infinite joy. Like Chris, we are prone to wander and lose our place in our own story. We need a champion sheep-shearer to enlighten us.
Johann Alsted (1588–1638) taught that Providence, divine judgement, and life make up God’s invisible books (“a book that He himself has and solely reads”), while human enlightenment comes from three visible books: sacred Scripture, nature, and our mind/conscience (the “universal books … that [God] gives us to read”). The universal enlightenment of classical education is seeing our brokenness in Scripture, nature, and conscience—and how God himself restores. Classical education is the daily re-enchanting of the adventurous journey for everyone. To quote Alstad again, “This triple book of God … is universal … in an open and sunny place for countless people: the book of Scripture for all who are called into the kingdom of grace, the book of nature and the book of conscience or our mind for every single man.”[1]
Educational Boats in a Braided Stream
Alsted’s most famous pupil, John Amos Comenius (1592–1670), is today celebrated as the Father of Modern Education. He labored for ecumenical unity and started schools across Europe to teach “all things to all people in all ways” and to restore peace amidst societal collapse. “According to God’s design,” Comenius writes, “this world to which we were sent at birth, should be God’s school, full of light, God’s temple, full of piety, God’s kingdom, full of order and justice.”[2] In other words, the visible world is God’s theater of re-enchanting vocations in image-bearers designed for infinite happiness.
The last 400 years of educational history are like a braided stream of Comenius’ influence. Every school or educational model is a boat floating in some tributary of his educational revolution. To every school leader today, though, Comenius himself would ask regarding the students: Are they becoming see/sea-worthy? (full of light); Are they becoming temple-worthy? (full of piety); Are they becoming realm-worthy? (full of order and justice). In short: are students becoming whole and holy people?[3]
A Gateway Drug for the Marooned and Cocooned
Today, our way of seeing is blurred by a myopic romantic utopianism.[4] Like Chris the unshorn sheep, nearly all of us are marooned, cocooned, and blinded by deceptive modern incantations with their own mythic power: the myth of progress, the denial of fallen nature, the marginalization of God, and an intoxication with material immanence, expressive individualism, and excessive consumer contentment.
Classical education is an en-lightening process. Goodness, truth, and beauty are the shearing instruments to reveal—through light, justice, and piety—our true condition. We are fallen ruins with a glorious destiny. Educational holiness in community kindles a longing for the healing of this cosmic rupture. C.S. Lewis called it Sehnsucht—a gateway drug to God’s invisible world. When we experience it, we begin to “carry the fire” together.
The Paradise of the Heart
At the end of all this shearing, then, what will we find?
In Comenius’ classic of Christian spirituality, The Labryrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart, Christ himself enters the heart of the pilgrim and there shares the purpose of liberal learning:
“Let the highest point of your learning be to search for me in my deeds, to see how wonderfully I guide you and all things…In place of all libraries, I give you this book [the Bible] in which you will find contained all the liberal arts.
Your grammar will be the contemplation of my words;
your dialectics, faith in them;
your rhetoric, prayers and sighs;
your science, examination of my works;
your metaphysics, delight in me and in eternal things;
your mathematics, calculating, weighing, and measuring my blessings on the one hand, and the ingratitude of the world on the other.
Your ethics will be my love, which will provide you with the rule for all your conduct toward me and toward your neighbors.
You will pursue all this learning not in order to be seen [by others] but rather that you might draw nearer to me. And in all of this, the simpler you become, the more learned you will be. For my light illumines simple hearts.”[5]
May the same be said of the classical education on offer today.
[1] William Alsted, Theologia naturalis, II.242, quoted in Petr Pavlas (2023): Up to Five Books of God: The Metaphorical and Theological Background of Herborn Encyclopaedism, Reformation & Renaissance Review, DOI: 10.1080/14622459.2022.2160686.12.
[2] Quoted in Jan Habl, The Restoration of Human Affairs.
[3] Thanks to my friend David Hoffner for this phrase.
[4] Some of the language in this section is inspired by Anonymous, From Christendom to Apostolic Mission: Pastoral Strategies for an Apostolic Age (University of Mary, 2020), see especially pp. 65-88.
[5] John Comenius, The Labryrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart, The Classics of Western Spirituality. Translated and Introduced by Howard Louthan and Andrea Sterk. Preface by Jan Milic Lochman. Paulist Press, 1989, 191.
Every educational philosophy is grounded on some idea of who it is for, what it hopes to do with those individuals, and why it wants to do this. The answers to these questions reveal the contours of the educational philosophy.
Classical education is for humans. This seems trivial but it is not, because it implies that we have some understanding of what humans are and therefore includes claims about what humans are. And so it is: classical education considers humans to be rational creatures.
Quintilian expresses the rational part well: “Certainly [thinking and learning] are natural to humans, and just as birds are born to fly, horses to run, and beasts to run wild, so activity and agility of mind belong essentially to us.”[1] Thinking is essential to human nature and is part of the definition of “human.”
As for being creatures: a creature is that which comes into existence passively. This means that it comes about through no agency of its own, but rather through the agency of another. Whatever is not a creature is the cause of its own being, and therefore is God.
It is worth noting that the classical tradition, as we have it, is theistic in outlook: first pagan, then Christian. It considers humans as the creations of a divine being or beings, and as placed into the context of a world by which they are conditioned. It belongs equally to this understanding of the human person that we are addressed by spiritual realities to which we somewhat belong but which nevertheless greatly or infinitely exceed us, and which condition us even more than our proximate worldly context.
Indeed, even where the philosophy of classical education is deployed in an atheistic context, this idea of creatureliness persists. For in such circumstances, the human is still viewed as coming into existence through the (impersonal) agency of another, and as standing before a transcendent reality (whether it be the transcendental qualities of a being or simply the sheer immensity of the cosmos, which takes on a qualitative rather than a merely quantitative character) that conditions his being and thinking.
As to its aim, classical education aims at the good life. This is robustly understood as flourishing in all the ways that matter most essentially to humans—that is, the ways that address what humans most fundamentally are. And so it addresses every sphere of the human person: individual, familial, social, political, economic, cultural, and religious.
Classical education wants to do this because it believes that humans are created with the capacity for blessedness and are only fully human to the extent that this capacity has been realized. Thus, classical education aims at the production of full humans, true humans, complete humans.
Given its understanding of who it is for, what it seeks, and why, every educational philosophy recommends a set of controlling values that govern the way it is to be implemented. These arise out of interaction of the aforementioned aspects.
Classical education recognizes that because humans are creatures, a good life in the world is only possible by living in accordance with the nature of the world. And so it aims at an adequation between the human person and the world that person inhabits. This correspondence or harmony is the ground of blessedness, and without it no one can hope to attain to a truly good life. Thus, classical education aims at a reproduction at the microcosmic (individual) level of the order and harmony we see in the cosmos at the macroscopic level. A human thus ordered will be both well-disposed internally (will have virtue) and will resonate sympathetically with the cosmos.
And because humans are rational, this harmony is to be brought about by addressing the rational part of the person. Classically, this is understood to include reason but not to exclude the imagination and the affections. Thus, it is concerned to teach patterns and habits of thinking that are imitations of patterns that we see in the larger world.
And so, both as it aims at the ordering of the human soul and the regulating of human ways of thinking, classical education is mimetic. It recognizes that humans belong to their world and that the world is ordered under transcendent reality, and seeks to properly modulate the human in relation to these external realities.
In addition, the creaturely aspect of the human person represents a set of passive virtues that might be summarized as reverence. These passive virtues (by which I mean ways of being in the world that are about receptivity rather than acting on another) are ways of correctly responding to the transcendent reality that creates us and makes us who and what we are. Chief among them are wonder, by which we marvel at the great disparities that define our cosmos, and worship, by which we open our hearts to the presence and molding of the Creator, affirming his authority and basking in his grace.
[1] Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, I.1, translation mine.
Junius Johnson (PhD, Yale University) is an independent scholar with expertise in theology, philosophy, literature, and the classical tradition. He is the author of 5 books including On Teaching Fairy Stories (CAP 2023) and is the Executive Director of Junius Johnson Academics.
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The word “classical” does not name a distinct form of education, but rather an intention to guide our practices today by the wisdom and practices of the past. Few classical educators think they are simply reviving a form of humanistic or scholastic education; we all recognize that we are adapting older practices to our own very different situations. Dorothy Sayers’ “Lost Tools of Learning” and the Great Books movement are examples of adaptation. Naturally, different forms of classical education have arisen that depend, in part, on what in the past strikes different educators, how far back in the past they go, what needs they perceive in the present, what good they hope to achieve, and the depth of their seriousness in considering the wisdom of the past and achieving wisdom for themselves.
Because the tradition of classical learning largely died out in the mid-twentieth century, we have not been able to draw on living experience to perfect our understanding of what made the education of the past so powerful. After several decades of experience, however, we can now approach the old sources with greater perception and new questions.
In some ways, our situation is like that of the Jesuits in the late 1500s. They never intended to found schools. The needs of parents and the opportunity to shape culture led them to open their first school in 1548, only seven years after their order was founded. Explosive growth followed. Twenty-five years into this development, the Jesuits made several efforts to take stock of what they were accomplishing in various parts of the world and unite the best practices in a common plan of education. Eighteen years of collating, sifting, ordering, drafting, seeking feedback, re-drafting, and testing finally produced the famous Ratio Studiorum in 1599 (available online in a translation with excellent notes and commentary by Alan Farrell).
The Jesuits of those days had an advantage over us—they did not need to invent the education they hoped to offer. Rather, they adapted the humanistic education prevalent in Paris, which itself was the fruit of a century of reviving and systematizing the old rhetorical education delineated by Cicero and Quintilian. (See the excellent article by John J. O’Malley, How the First Jesuits Became Involved in Education.)
In keeping with the evangelical mission of their order, they intended to subsume humanitas into Christianitas—something Christian classical educators should keep clearly in mind. The Ratio opens thus:
It is the principal ministry of the Society of Jesus to educate youth in every branch of knowledge that is in keeping with its Institute. The aim of our educational program is to lead men to the knowledge and love of our Creator and Redeemer. The provincial should therefore make every effort to ensure that the various curricula in our schools produce the results which our vocation demands of us.
This was not easy, for the classical education they transmitted was “so identified with the study of one particular culture - that of ancient Greece and Rome - that there was no room left for anything else” (Christopher Dawson, Crisis of Western Education).
One of the best short summaries of that education can be found in an unlikely author, Renee Descartes. In his Discourse on Method, Descartes provided a roadmap of the education he received in one of the finest Jesuit schools in Europe. We can recognize many elements of the education we are trying to offer today incorporated into a complete account that extends into collegiate and even graduate education.
I still continued, however, to hold in esteem the studies of the schools. I was aware that the languages taught in them are necessary to the understanding of the writings of the ancients; that the grace of fable stirs the mind; that the memorable deeds of history elevate it; and, if read with discretion, aid in forming the judgment; that the perusal of all excellent books is, as it were, to interview with the noblest men of past ages, who have written them, and even a studied interview, in which are discovered to us only their choicest thoughts; that eloquence has incomparable force and beauty; that poesy has its ravishing graces and delights; that in mathematics there are many refined discoveries eminently suited to gratify the inquisitive, as well as further all the arts and lessen the labour of man; that numerous highly useful precepts and exhortations to virtue are contained in treatises on morals; that theology points out the path to heaven; that philosophy affords the means of discoursing with an appearance of truth on all matters, and commands the admiration of the more simple; that jurisprudence, medicine, and the other sciences, secure for their cultivators honors and riches; and, in fine, that it is useful to bestow some attention upon all, even upon those abounding the most in superstition and error, that we may be in a position to determine their real value, and guard against being deceived.
Although Descartes lists theology as a rung in the ladder, his description of its role suggests that it had not been fully integrated into the whole, much less did it have the pride of place demanded by Aquinas and Newman. Re-thinking classical education so that it is fully Christian while still drawing on the best of the past is one of the most important tasks before us, though it may take several decades, and a new generation of leaders who have been formed under classical education, to accomplish.
Andrew Seeley, PhD, is Director of Advanced Formation for Educators at the Augustine Institute, a co-founder of the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education, and the President of the Boethius Institute for the Advancement of Liberal Education.
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I invoke distillation, which involves a mash coming to maturity. The mash of our movement takes in the grain bill provided by Sayers, Mason, Wilson, Hicks, Perrin, Kern, Cothran, Clark, Jain, and others in the great tradition. That grain was grown in soil dating back to antiquity, turned and amended through the middle ages and renaissance, and sprinkled with a compost of matured enlightenment thought, but not too much, only that which aligns. Modernity makes the attempt to be turned in, always, but the culture of the soil, being healthy, wards off much of what might otherwise find its way in unbidden. Add to all of this the rye, or perhaps wry, of a few decades of modern medievals pitching amendments to the barrel and we have what we pour over the rocks of our moment.
Classical education is, in essence, exposure to and apprenticeship in the good, the true, and the beautiful. It is an expression of Philippians 4:8–9:
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice.
“Classical” refers to a time before the zeitgeist of modernity asserted a false authority over many frames of life, including work, economy, and even definition of a person. “Education” is the leading out of one’s self, in our case through exposure to the timeless voices that echo through the ages, by which we come face-to-face with ourselves and our condition.
The vehicles of pedagogy associated with these exposures, encounters, experiences, and adventures are the liberal, common, and fine arts. The liberal arts, by which we justify our knowledge, include the arts of language and the arts of mathematics. Grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric give us the frameworks to communicate effectively, while arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy, as understood by the medievals, give us the ability to reckon quantity and quality on the micro and macro scales. Both arts offer glimpses of the poetic: through both we see how quantity and quality dance in resonance, proportion, and poetry. Crowned by philosophy, the love of wisdom, and theology, the study of the divine, the liberal arts give us both the wide field and the wild woods of our school grounds.
Along with these are the common arts, the arts by which we meet our basic, embodied needs in the world through the provision of goods and services. Through application of the arts of language and mathematics, with philosophy and theology ever above and resonant, we grow food, build shelter, defend ourselves, rebalance our bodies, cook nutritious food, and much more. We do all these not simply to survive but to thrive: these arts show us, through material ways, the providence and wisdom of God, the fullness of the logos.
When the liberal and common arts are refined in their practice such that one experiences goodness, truth, and beauty directly through their very performance, then they have ascended to the realm of the fine arts. There are such things as musical speeches and musical cheeseburgers. If you know, you know, and you are blessed by the knowledge.
Our overarching goal is wisdom as well as knowledge. Wisdom starts with fear of the Lord, and she presents a banquet along with folly. By our education, we learn to choose which is best to attend, and upon which fare we should nourish ourselves.
The way that we study is as important as what we study, so we seek to craft our pedagogy and apprenticeships so that the experiences are:
One challenge posed by that last point: some disciplines were not around in their current forms at the times from which we have drawn our pedagogical models. All of the modern sciences, for example, have come about in the last few centuries. We need to be wise enough to ‘re-instaurate’ these disciplines within the classical principles, to use Bacon’s term from the Novum Organum: we need to have them baptized not in materialism, reductionism, and mechanistic thought, but rather, keeping the best of their methodologies intact, we need to add back the fullness of natural philosophy from which they were hewn, and so restore them with salt and light.
And that brings us back to the notion of leading. We are called in whatever we do, whatever we say, whatever we make and in how we make it, to be salt and light. The mechanics and musicians, farmers and craftsmen, will lead as surely as the congressmen and generals, the CEOs and justices. We are called to irrigate deserts. We are called to leaven with the proper yeast, to know that the very rocks cry out, and to tend the vineyards. We are called to feed sheep, to be the blessed peacemakers, even as we are often those who mourn. Fear not, for if we do what we set out to do faithfully, then we will raise carpenters and stonemasons to carry on this project, and the stone that was rejected will become the cornerstone, as well as the counterweight to the follies of our moment, whenever that moment may be.
So, how then can we trace the origins of classical education to Socrates? It would be anachronistic to assert that the Socratic education is a classical education, so it is perhaps more appropriate to say that the Socratic education is essentially a liberal education—an education that liberates us from the received opinions of our times by compelling us to test and make our way through and often, ultimately, past these opinions to pursue the truth about the things around us. In this way, liberal education requires two attitudes from us that may seem to be in tension but are both essential to our progress towards knowledge. A truly liberal education, the education befitting a free and thoughtful human being, requires us to be willing to subject the opinions that we have inherited or adopted from the people and the world around us to rigorous examination in order to sort the true from the false, the good from the bad, or at least the better from the worse. So, liberal education requires us to be objective and to distance ourselves from the love of our own opinions to determine their veracity. And yet it is also true that the practice of liberal education is very personal. It should matter to us a great deal whether we know the truth about the things around us and about ourselves. So, classical, liberal education is the essential means towards the acquisition of wisdom about the world and the self-knowledge that forms our souls.
In the “Republic of Plato,” perhaps the greatest book ever written on the subject of education, Socrates apparently presents two forms or stages of the education the young will receive in the “Just City in Speech” that he, Glaucon, and his other interlocutors are founding. The first account of the education of the young occurs as a result of the necessity to form the souls of the potential guardians of the city, those who will guard it from harm. This education takes the very structured form required to tame and order the “philosophic, spirited, swift, and strong” nature necessary for the work of guarding. The education will have two parts: “gymnastic for bodies and music for the soul,” with the musical education preceding the physical education in importance and order. The content of the musical education will consist of stories of divine and human models who are steadfast and good, without deception. The mode of storytelling will be that of simple narrative without imitation, while the music as such will be characterized by a steady rhythm to produce moderation and composure under pressure, rather than the excitement of the passions. This balanced pattern of education is well ordered, highly disciplined, and censorious. We are left to wonder about the ability of the guardian’s education to resist the curiosity and the questions that arise in the course of education of the young and that can challenge even the good habits of a well-ordered mind.
Socrates returns explicitly to the subject of the education of the citizens of the just city in Book Seven of the “Republic,” where he addresses our initial sense that the earlier education of the guardians, while foundational, was incomplete—like an elementary or middle school education on which to build a higher education. The full liberal education is the education received by the young person dragged up and away from the comfort of the images and common opinions reflected on the cave wall in Socrates’ telling of the allegory of the cave. This student is compelled to ascend through the levels of cognition or understanding. First, the knowledge, acquired in the visual realm of Socrates’ image of the divided line, through the senses and imagination, and moving next to trust or acceptance of the opinions formed. Then, the student crosses into the realm of reason—first, acquiring higher knowledge through thought and hypothesis and then progressing to the level of intellection, the acquisition of knowledge through reason alone and contemplation. Through this education, which Socrates recounts in great detail in the rest of Book Seven, the student arrives at and sees “the truth about fair, just, and good things” (520c).
This Socratic account of the order in which we learn and acquire knowledge is the description of a liberal education. It begins when we learn about the things around us through the careful observation of our senses and know how to separate and categorize objects and ideas according to their kind. Next, we begin to ascertain the opinions of the community, and we come to trust them. The full quest for self-knowledge and an understanding of things as they truly are, the capstone of the liberal education, requires, however, that we learn to question and challenge even the true hypotheses or theories, knowledge of which we have acquired in our early years, and to think through the difficult ideas and questions in a way that makes us truly thoughtful and serious human beings and responsible, free citizens.
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In the first category, that of things that could vary within the boundaries of classical education, I begin with the approach of mathematics in the elementary years. Some schools choose to focus on a program that emphasizes memorization, repetition, and skill building, and defend this choice by correctly noting young students’ natural disposition towards these activities during this stage of development. Others will adopt a program that seeks to develop a sense of awe and wonder of the art of mathematics by guiding students towards understanding of mathematics realities and defend this choice by correctly noting that young students are particularly excited about learning. (It seems that academic cynicism doesn’t set in until middle school.) Both of these approaches will use some form of Socratic inquiry as lessons are delivered. Further, it should be said that each approach does not ignore the benefit of the other. More often than not, a program that puts memorization and repetition at the focal point still guides students towards understanding in the presentation of the material, and a program that emphasizes understanding still offers skill development and memorized math facts. The difference in approach is also not to suggest that one might be better than the other, but it is to suggest that either approach can find a home in a classical academy.
In the second category, that of things that should be found in every classical academy, I offer the example of the great books. While there will be good and healthy disagreement about what criteria should be used to designate a book as a “great book,” which of these should be read at each of the grade levels, and even the pedagogical approach to presenting the works in class, it would be hard to justify a school as classical if it didn’t commit to having students read the best that has been written. This is because classical education adopts a posture of humility in honoring Chesterton’s “democracy of the dead.” We receive that which has come before us and has stood the test of time. For literature, the great books endure precisely because they communicate some part of human nature and the nature of the universe that transcends time and place.
The order of the great books is, to me, squarely in the first category. Many a classical academy orders the books in high school chronologically, preferring to start with the ancients and end with the moderns. There is a certain beauty in this presentation, which gives students the chance to see how later works are in dialog with those that came before. It does, however, lead to a particular challenge with students’ reading comprehension. High school students find it much more difficult to comprehend the Ethics in the ninth grade than they do in their senior year. For this reason, some academies choose to present the works in an order that is not strictly chronological—for example, starting with American books in the ninth grade.
For a final example, the study of Latin is squarely in the second category. It would be difficult to claim to have a classical education if one had not at least been exposed to a few years of Latin. Language itself is central to a classical model, and the Latin language is given pride of place both for its privileged historical and linguistic place within our tradition. That said, how and when Latin is done is very much in the first category. Some academies start as early as Kindergarten with Latin songs, prayers, and sayings. Others wait until the second grade, when students can read and understand the basics of grammar. Still others wait until middle school or high school. The pedagogy with which Latin is delivered varies from one academy to another, with some opting for a spoken approach, others a written approach, and still others a blend of both.
I offer this approach and these examples not to circumvent the basic question: what is a classical education?. Instead, I offer it as a humble starting point and a caution to avoid the two extremes—the purist approach and the generic approach. I leave it to others to build a more systematic definition within this guideline.
Jake Tawney is the Chief Academic Officer for Great Heart Academies, a national network of classical schools serving 28,000 students in grades K-12.
The second word in our phrase of discourse is “education." The word “education" comes from a Latin word “eductar,” the root of which is “ducar," which means “to lead out from or away from self." Therefore, education is the process of leading away from self-centeredness and selfishness so as to understand the infinite beauty and harmony of human variety.
Classical education is therefore a way of acquiring insight and an evolution that is infinite and beyond human scope. The Roman Patricians understood this sacred truth pretty well and from them rose great human beings, such as Plato, Socrates, St. Augustine of Hippo, and William Wilberforce. These are just a few reformers and thinkers who were trained in the liberal arts and made it their purpose to understand the rhythm inherent in the infinite beauty and harmony of humanity.
Now, this brings us to a very important question in our discussion: What are these liberal arts that transformed the Roman Patricians into being the standard of excellence? The free arts are divided into two broad categories. The trivium and the quadrivium.
The trivium is the verbal art of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. William Wilberforce, who I mentioned earlier, is probably one of the greatest reformers in all of history. Mr. Wilberforce was a student of grammar at his hometown of Hull in England. During his early teen years, he lived with his uncle William, who introduced him to John Newton—who would become a great friend to Wilberforce, a force behind the end of the slave trade, and the author of the hymn “Amazing Grace.” Later on, at the tender age of seventeen, Wilberforce went to Harvard University for his first degree in grammar and rhetoric.
Wilberforce used his gift in rhetoric to communicate fluently and eloquently in carrying out his mission to reform and later abolish the slave trade. In this mission, Wilberforce fluently and eloquently presented many debates and motions to the English Parliament. This course was universally opposed at the time because the world’s economy was supported by the practice of slavery, an atrocity which was universally accepted. However, Wilberforce ultimately emerged victorious, and humanity won.
Wilberforce was just one among many reformers who grew to world recognition not because of wealth or social status but because of being a human who experienced true liberation through an education in the liberal arts. The liberal arts, well understood within the worldview of God’s mind, is the sure blueprint for holistic human formation and the reformation of manners. These arts are essential for a true understanding and interpretation of the infinite beauty of humanity and God’s order of creation.
Next, we have the quadrivium. The quadrivium consists of arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy. These four arts train humans in the understanding of harmony and proportion through discrete and continuous patterns in time and space.
Studying the seven liberal arts (grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy) culminates not only into intellectual formation but also the love of order, and the love of God’s creation as being beautiful in all its forms. This immaculate formation leads to understanding what is holy and pious, and acquiring practical skills for service and civic virtue. Classical education is therefore a universal language that tells my story, your story, our story, and everyone else’s story to the world without prejudice.
Ms. Josephine Mrema is a math and science teacher at the Rafiki Foundation Classical Christian School in Moshi, Tanzania, which is the only classical school in Tanzania. Josephine has been teaching with Rafiki for about 6 months. Madam Josephine completed her secondary education at private schools in Kenya. She attended her first conference on classical education in Nairobi, Kenya in October 2023, and has been passionate about learning and implementing classical pedagogy. At this conference she was able to hear from such CCE educators as: Dr. Brian Williams, Dr. Grant Horner, Dr. David Diener, Mrs. Robyn Burlew, Mr. Ravi Jain, and Dr. Tim Dernlan – plus others! Her essay reflects what she has learned so far, and we expect that she will become a leading proponent of classical education in Tanzania. We at Rafiki are grateful to have her as an educator at our Rafiki Classical Christian school near Moshi Tanzania – her grasp of CCE is even more remarkable when you consider that English is a 3rd language for her.
To begin with, classical education introduces students to reality by emphasizing the practical side of learning rather than the theoretical part, the latter of which being what most schools emphasize through continuous assessments and final examinations.
Secondly, classical education emphasizes learning through imitation, recognizing that students follow the example of others, especially teachers and parents, among other important figures in their lives. Students develop by practicing and forming new habits that they see modeled day-in-day-out by these important people in their lives.
Finally, classical education helps students develop their minds through memorization of songs, catechisms, and patterns.
Classical education offers accessible resources to the students for understanding, interpreting, and responding to the community in which they live. Classical education is designed to prepare students not just for college or employment, but for life, preparing them to be productive human beings by cultivating virtues such us humility, perseverance, and generosity, which are the core values of a humane society. Making college the main goal for education objectifies the human person and thus reduces their innate value. College might be one among many benefits that a classical education can provide, but the goal of classical education is much broader in preparing students to face the challenges of life.
To cultivate an independent human being, classical education primarily focuses on the three initial stages of learning—the trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Grammar focuses on the skills of memorizing facts, learning rules and recalling essential information. This stage emphasizes active student formation and lays the foundation for advanced understanding because with a basic knowledge facts one can understand and interpret information accurately.
Logic is the stage in which students learn to build arguments, think coherently, and analyze information presented to them. They develop logical, well-ordered and reasoned arguments, and learn to question everything carefully.
Rhetoric is the verbal art of fluently and eloquently presenting ideas. This stage of learning requires students to express their ideas to others after they have acquired the skills of reasoning and thinking logically. To this end, many classical schools allow students to conduct debates, providing them with the opportunity to clearly communicate what they have learned and discovered.
The combination of these three initial stages of learning—grammar, logic, and rhetoric—enable students to read with understanding, reason the right way, and speak eloquently. They also help students to understand the language of learning and logic before moving to higher-level studies. Consequently, the trivium is the foundation for the quadrivium.
The quadrivium refers to the mathematical arts. These arts consist of music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. The first art, music, explains numbers rhythmically in time and space. The second art, arithmetic, deals with the study of numbers as they occur in nature. The third art, geometry, deals with the study of numbers in the context of figures and space. The fourth art, astronomy, deals with the study of numbers in space and motion. These four mathematical arts are very important in the preparation of students for advanced mathematical, scientific, philosophical, and theological studies.
Classical education is therefore defined as an excellent and quality way of learning that cultivates independent and totally free human beings who can engage their minds and utilize their already acquired knowledge in thinking through any societal problem in a civilized manner.
Ms. Evaline Mmari is math and science teacher at the Rafiki Foundation Classical Christian School in Moshi, Tanzania, which is the only classical school in Tanzania. Evaline has been with Rafiki for 6 years. Madam Evaline completed her secondary education at government schools in Tanzania. She attended her first conference on classical education in Nairobi, Kenya in October 2023, and has been passionate about learning and implementing classical pedagogy. At this conference she was able to hear from such CCE educators as: Dr. Brian Williams, Dr. Grant Horner, Dr. David Diener, Mrs. Robyn Burlew, Mr. Ravi Jain, and Dr. Tim Dernlan – plus others! Her essay reflects what she has learned so far, and we expect that she will become a leading proponent of classical education in Tanzania. We at Rafiki are grateful to have her as an educator at our Rafiki Classical Christian school near Moshi Tanzania – her grasp of CCE is even more remarkable when you consider that English is a 3rd language for her.
Classical education bases its roots in a rich tradition extending back to the ancient Greeks and Romans. Amazingly, the qualities and characteristics that made it such a time-proven model over the span of history are the very ones necessary to meet the needs of students in today’s modern hyper-technological world. If anything, the classical model is needed now more than ever for modern-day students.
As a classical Christian educator for more than two decades, I often tell parents to think of the classical model as an “ancient future education” because we look to the past to inform and ignite future learners. Unlike the modern educational tendency to tear down and start again with trends and preferences, we build upon a classical model that lays a firm foundation for students.
The classical educator’s ancient future toolbox employs many instruments and techniques to help mold modern minds. The great books and memorization of beautiful literature and historical documents guide students to reflect on the humanity, virtue, and struggle that every human heart encounters. Latin allows students to grasp the roots and meaning of our modern-day vocabulary. The formal study of logic shapes their minds to argue well using objective truth as their goal. Participating in Socratic discussions trains students in the robust exchange of ideas and how to wrestle humbly with the art of argument.
Ultimately, however, classical education is more than cognitive tools, a conveyance of information, and the application of time-tested methods. A classical education uses these methods to form what our children love. It shapes their hearts through their joyful discovery of the true, the good, and the beautiful, leading to a flourishing life.
The Apostle Paul in Ephesians 6:4 refers to this formation as “paideia,” commonly translated as “training” or “disciplining.” This time-proven model strives to form the whole person. It does so by penetrating and directing a student's deepest longings and loves.
First and foremost, a classical education anchors the object of one’s affection in transcendent truth. Classical education, as historically practiced, is unashamedly Christian. Far more than a Bible class or chapel, the classical method permeates the curriculum to guide students to aspire to something greater than themselves and integrates faith in an infinite, personal God. Stories within this framework reinforce a biblical understanding of an infinite, personal God who redeemed a lost and dying people and called them to live out their calling and purpose, answering and filling what Blaise Pascal identified as the “
Another key element of classical education is the emphasis on community. Classical education forms a student’s paideia by inviting students into a beautiful learning community where the influence of the hallway is as molding as the classroom. Students are surrounded by a vibrant community of master teachers as well as peers in engaging experiences like house programs where life-on-life mentoring shapes what is loved and valued. The community aspires and celebrates a higher aesthetic—all that is true, good, and beautiful, reflected in everything from the artwork on the wall to the value of uniforms and higher-order affections. This community should naturally include the reinforcing voices of the home and church, rounding out and resonating with what is valued and celebrated in the classical schools.
Finally, classical education is the best preparation possible for a young person to flourish in life. A classically educated student is real-world ready, far more vital than college readiness, which is a given. They are adapted for a life ahead where particular jobs and vocations will frequently change. But more, they will flourish as they are grounded in who they are as persons and are courageous in their calling and the contribution they want to make to the world as zealous, lifelong learners. All the while, they have the core wisdom to discern what Lewis calls the “cataract of nonsense” from a cacophony of competing voices and manipulative forces in the larger secular world. Classical education prepares students for lives of service and sacrifice and is one of the few antidotes to the persuasive, and often barbaric, narratives of the surrounding secular world. Classically educated students can stand as a beacon, live well, form sustaining civilizations, and love God and neighbor.
Raising students in this modern world that challenges truth at every turn means that we must equip them with an education that meets their needs. Classical education does exactly that—it trains the head and the heart. It looks to the past but is designed perfectly for the future. As technology advances more and more, our humanity and the ability to think rightly and act virtuously will be challenged. Those classically trained will be ready.
W. Davies Owens, DMin, MDiv, is president of Ancient Future Education, where he provides training and support resources to classical Christian school parents and leaders, through platforms like the BaseCamp Live podcast. He also serves as an adjunct professor in the Gordon Graduate Leadership program teaching institutional advancement.
The best way, I believe, to define classical education is to isolate and describe five elements that are essential to any form of education that would call itself classical.
First and foremost, classical education is neither utilitarian nor vocational in its methods or goals. It is committed, rather, to providing a liberal arts education, one that frees (liberates) the mind. In fact, the phrases “liberal arts” and “classical” are essentially synonymous. The only reason we need to use the word “classical" today is because the liberal arts have been so watered down that they no longer mean what they used to mean!
All of that is not to say that students who receive a classical education will not be able to compete in the marketplace. On the contrary, the grasp of critical and creative skills, the ability to think outside the box and on one’s feet, and the facility for making connections between various kinds of thinking and areas of thought make classically trained students more marketable in the long run. Still, getting a job is not the goal of classical education; its goal is to equip young minds to think logically, love learning, and participate in the great conversation that has been going on since Homer’s epics and the books of Moses.
And that leads to the second key component of a classical education: it is firmly and unapologetically grounded in the Great Books of the western intellectual tradition. It believes that the best method for nurturing virtuous, morally self-regulating citizens is to teach them to wrestle with the great ideas that have shaped the western world. While not denying the importance of other world traditions, classical education focuses on the western tradition, not only because it is ours, but because it is the tradition that has produced the greatest degree of freedom, justice, and self-determination.
In its wrestling with the Great Books, classical education takes an interdisciplinary approach that studies together the literature, philosophy, history, art, and science of the historical periods that stretch from the ancient world to our own. It seeks to learn, assess, and appreciate wisdom from each age, while also measuring that wisdom against transcendent standards of goodness, truth, and beauty.
Third, classical education adopts and instills a humanistic rather than a social science view of man and society. It treats people as individuals rather than as groups, even as it trains its charges to understand the importance of community and family. Though not all classical schools are specifically Christian, they rest on a vision of man as possessing inherent worth and value (the Christian doctrine of the imago Dei) while yet existing in a state of brokenness and rebellion (the Christian doctrine of the Fall).
Because of its essential anthropological belief in man’s glory and shame, classical education can uphold the dignity and integrity of each individual child while also understanding the need for rules and discipline. It knows that children thrive best when they are given liberty within limits, freedom within structure.
Fourth, no classical school can call itself truly classical if it does not provide an education in virtue. That virtue, however, is not synonymous with a simple list of do's and don'ts. Classical education rejects pharisaical moralism in favor of Aristotle’s definition of virtue as the mean between the extremes. To be a virtuous person is to be properly aligned with that which is good, true, and beautiful.
In sharp contrast to public schools that promote such fashionable, man-made, negative values as diversity, equity, inclusion, multiculturalism, and environmentalism, classical schools hold up the seven traditional, enduring, positive virtues of courage, temperance, wisdom, justice, faith, hope, and love. They seek to instill such virtues in their students, not in a dry, abstract manner, but by introducing them to the heroes of literature and the Bible.
I save for my fifth and final essential element what many would have put first in their definition of classical education. I speak of the centrality of the trivium, of a method of education that believes in conducting students through the threefold path of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Though the exact implementation of the trivium will vary slightly from school to school, all understand the need for memorizing foundational names, dates, and events at the grammar-school level. They neither shy away from this necessary building block of education nor demonize it by calling it “rote” memorization.
From there, all classical schools believe that students must be taught to think logically and to see through logical fallacies. They treat students as rational beings able to think objectively and dispassionately rather than relying solely on emotion, prejudice, and what Orwell called “groupthink.” Finally, all classical schools are committed to training students to communicate what they know effectively and defend it persuasively (rhetoric).
In an age of moral, philosophical, and aesthetic relativism, classical education remains dedicated to what T. S. Eliot called the “permanent” things. Those who receive such an education will be the glue that holds together our unmoored and fragmented society.
Classical education can do this because it aims, as Cardinal Newman said of the liberal arts in Discourse Seven, chapter ten of his Idea of the University, “at raising the intellectual tone of society, at cultivating the public mind, at purifying the national taste, at supplying true principles to popular enthusiasm and fixed aims to popular aspiration, at giving enlargement and sobriety to the ideas of the age, at facilitating the exercise of political power, and refining the intercourse of private life.”
Louis Markos, Professor in English and Scholar in Residence at Houston Christian Univ., holds the Robert H. Ray Chair in Humanities; his 25 books include The Myth Made Fact, From Plato to Christ, and Apologetics for the 21st Century. His Passing Down the Torch: How to Educate the Next Generation is due out in 2024 from IVP Academic.
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In doing so, Athena, Nestor, Eumaeus, and Eurycleia reveal an important thread woven throughout the long tradition of classic liberal education. This thread is its enduring emphasis on the multi-dimensional formation of students under the tutelage of virtuous guides for the sake of long-term flourishing. Classical education, therefore, aspires to form students by nurturing them intellectually on the true, morally on the good, aesthetically on the beautiful, spiritually on the holy, physically on the healthy, practically by training them for good work, and socially by helping them love and serve their neighbors. This is what the Telemachus of Homer’s epic needed, and at least partially received, and it is what every Telemachus who has ever walked into my class needs. In this way, classical education begins at the end, because it knows that the child is the father of the man or the mother of the woman the child will become. Therefore, classical educators are not simply responsible to the eight- or eighteen-year-old Telemachus sitting in front of them but also to the thirty-eight-, fifty-eight-, and seventy-eight-year-old man or woman that Telemachus will become.
This is why classical education carefully considers what curricular materials, pedagogical methods, and formative school culture will best nurture the holistic and integrated formation of students. The ends do not justify the means, but they should determine them. For this reason, with respect to curriculum, classical education prioritizes works of art, literature, music, history, mathematics, natural science, philosophy, and theology that explore and exhibit the human condition, the natural world, and the divine in rich, beautiful, and revealing ways. This means that, contrary to expectation, “classical antiquity” is not the criteria for inclusion in classical curricula. Classical schools are not primary and secondary versions of Classics departments. Therefore, students may read Beatrix Potter and Boethius, Flannery O’Connor and Sophocles, Dostoevsky and Dante, Anna Julia Cooper and Christine de Pizan, Sayers and Shakespeare, and they may learn from both Giotto and Georges Rouault, Hildegard von Bingen and Arvo Pärt, Euclid and Euler, Theophrastus and George Washington Carver, Vitruvius and Wren.
Even so, the goal is not simply that students know about the discoveries, inventions, and creations of others, but that they develop the skills necessary to discover, invent, and create on their own. To that end, classical education helps them learn the liberal arts of words and numbers through the trivium and quadrivium, the fine and performing arts like painting and theatre, and the common or mechanical arts like cooking and carpentry. The first liberates students to learn, the second to create, and the third to make. To achieve these ends, the classical tradition has employed many different pedagogical methods over the centuries, but always aims to select those best tailored to the child’s nature, the stage of their development, and the ends being pursued.
Along with material content and pedagogical methods, classical education also closely attends to the school culture within which students are formed and to the faculty of friends at the heart of the school from which that culture emerges. Classical educators across the centuries have insisted that classical teachers holistically embody the tradition in their own lives. John Henry Newman once even uses the great Renaissance phrase “to the fountains” (ad fontes) to refer not to the “great books” but to teachers as fountains of wisdom and inspiration from which students may drink and learn. His novel use of the metaphor implies that contemporary classical teachers should be local wells nourishing their culturally and intellectually parched students adrift in the desert wastelands of social media and shallow pop culture. This requires classical teachers to sink their own wells deep into the tradition and allow the waters of that tradition to flow into their wells and from there overflow to their students. In other words, teachers need to be the kind of people they want their students to become. Because while the writings of Aristotle, Dante, and Austen may be present in schools, Aristotle, Dante, and Austen themselves are not. But classroom teachers are. That is significant because, as I argue above, classical education is not simply about passing on classical skills or knowledge, but about passing on a classical way of life. This is mimesis—learning by imitation. It is the incarnate pedagogy captured in St. Paul’s injunction to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3, “Follow me as I follow Christ,” and, to use another Newman phrase, it is a “rhetoric of conduct.”
And so, classical education places each and every Telemachus under the guidance of mentor-teachers who embody the tradition, can introduce him to the human endowment of classical and contemporary riches, and can help him develop the skills of thinking, creating, and making using the best pedagogical methods available. Though the materials and methods sometimes change, the end never does. That end is the life-long pursuit of holistic, integrated formation that fosters his own flourishing and prepares him to love God, serve his neighbors, and care for creation regardless of where he finds himself in the world or what he finds himself doing.
Brian Williams (MPhil, DPhil) works at Eastern University as the Dean of the Templeton Honors College, an Associate Professor of Ethics & Liberal Studies, and the Dean of the College of Arts & Humanities.
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Deracination is a tenacious problem in our times. We are great trees, like the one in my back yard, uprooted and fallen and with no way for our roots to be nourished and watered. Putting the trees back in the good soil is a tremendous task. It is not simply a curriculum that gives this, it is a gathering of people who strive for this together with common purpose and concern for all involved in the effort. We cannot avoid the commerce of this situation and yet it so often blinds us to what is elemental in the task—if the teachers, administrators, parents, students, and place aren’t replanted into something alive, they cannot be alive, and the effort cannot achieve its bloom and shade. If there isn’t care and attention to each party (and this is relevant to those homeschooling as well—mothers, fathers, children, etc.) the effort is like that of those old horses, sometimes seen in city centers, trying to pull people in a cart without having been watered, fed, shod, and brushed. In so many Russian novels you have the harrowing image of a horse beaten to death, an image that is relevant for our subject. So often it is the teachers who bear the brunt of this demand, sometimes it is the students. Habitually, the individual groups listed above behave as “special interest groups” and are vying for entirely different ends. The person in front of us, be it the teacher, child, administrator, or parent, becomes the object and loses its status as subject, transforming into a means to the end we have fantastically desired as individuals.
Fantasy is a word that Dostoevsky uses frequently (along with rapture, dream, and imagine). Whenever a character is dreaming or imagining, we are right to pay attention as readers. Often the dreaming is attended by comments like the following and frequently precede horrible outcomes (worse than a dead horse):
... active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed, and with everyone watching. Indeed, it will go as far as the giving even of one's life, provided it does not take long but is soon over, as on stage, and everyone is looking on and praising. Whereas active love is labor and perseverance, and for some people, perhaps, a whole science (58 Dostoevsky).
Classical education is active love and the love of a lifetime, and not just for some abstract ideals or ideas or even texts but for people whose lives you want to water and feed and to whom you want to give practices and patterns discovered over centuries that will serve them here and now in their lives and bodies.
Another frequent character-type and character flaw we encounter in Dostoevsky is the person that would say “I love mankind…but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind in general, the less I love people in particular…” (57 Dostoevsky). We find this in those drawn to and influential in classical education as well. Naturally, we must have ideals to take a path like this in the 21st century. But idealism can also be a way of refusing to co-suffer with the people or epoch of which we are a part, and when classical education becomes this it obscures the real good it offers. Here is the good: it offers the remembered treasures of our humanity—astonishing riches piled high like Tutankhamun’s burial site, or Smaug’s cave, or the Anglo-Saxon treasures unearthed at Sutton Hoo—offered through the intelligence and love of a human being riveted by this beauty, to another human being who is learning how to receive and increasingly belong to a place and a people.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Brother’s Karamazov. Trans. Pevear and Volokhonsky. Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1990.
Christine Perrin has taught at Messiah University and in classical schools since 1999. She and her husband, Christopher, currently teach the course Architecture of Virtue to seniors. She has published two books: Bright Mirror (poems) and The Art of Poetry.
The trouble with the question "What is classical education?" is that it contains a perverse redundancy. There is the noun "education" and it is modified by the adjective "classical." We normally use an adjective to reduce the scope of the meaning of the noun. If I say I would like a brown coat, I mean to include only brown coats and to exclude all non-brown coats. If I say I want to put white flowers in the vase, I mean to include white flowers and exclude all that are not white.
What is it we are excluding when we attach the adjective "classical" to the noun"education"?
I have found in recent years that when I enter a coffee shop and ask for a cup of coffee, I am asked, with increasing frequency, whether I want it hot or iced. What I want to say is that iced coffee is not coffee at all. That “iced coffee” is the product of some dangerous conspiracy against the integrity of coffee. I want my coffee to be cold about as much as I want my ice cream to be warm. And I hold to the now apparently controversial position that the hotness is an essential, not accidental, characteristic of coffee. If is not hot coffee, it is not coffee at all.
So when we say "classical education" do we mean to say that that there is some other education out there that is not classical? If someone were to say that they preferred "non-classical" education, what could they mean?
I propose that to say "classical education" is like saying "hot coffee"—at least, saying it to me! It is redundant. And that using the term “education” to mean anything other than what we refer to as classical education is like saying "artificial meat." It is a poor imitation. It might look like education, but it is really not education at all. All education is classical insofar as it is education: to be classical is part of the essence of what education is, not some different kind of the same thing.
There might be an etymological argument in favor of using the word "education" in another way. The two roots of the word are educare and educere, the former meaning to train or mold, and the latter having the sense of "leading out.” But if we look at how the term "education" has been used in the Western tradition, we find it means something more and different. It has traditionally indicated the formal passing on of one's civilization. It referred to acculturation via the inculcation of wisdom and virtue through the study of the system of arts and sciences that had been developed over centuries. These arts and sciences originated with the Greeks, were adopted by the Romans, and handed on to Christian Europe and then the United States.
The word "education" has only taken on a different meaning in modern times as a result of changes that took place in the early 20th century at the hands of progressives like John Dewey and pragmatists like William Heard Kilpatrick. Dewey tried to change the meaning of education from passing on a culture to changing the culture, a political usage of the word. Kilpatrick tried to change it from cultural transmission to the fitting of children to the culture through vocationalism.
The purpose of a thing dictates all else. When Aristotle detailed his "four causes"—his four ways of defining something—he emphasizes one of them in particular as being the most important, the one closest to the heart of a thing. This was called the "final" cause, what the thing was for, its purpose. The final cause is the most important cause because it is closest to its essence. It is what something is for.
In organic beings in particular, every particle is "pointed" toward the purpose of the organic thing of which it is a part, whether it is a human, an animal, or a plant. The same particle could appear in one being and also, later, in another. But its orientation in one biological body would be different in a different body because of the controlling purpose. This purpose is the most important thing about a thing.
It is no different when it comes to education. Here, too, its purpose is the most important thing about it. The purpose of education to every civilization up until about 100 years ago was to transmit itself to the succeeding generation. This would have been true of Athens and Rome as much as it would have been true of a primitive tribe.
To change the purpose is to change the thing. And if we are going to do that, we should, in the interest of full disclosure, call it something else.
I take my education like I take my coffee—hot.
Martin Cothran is Provost of Memoria College and editor of The Classical Teacher magazine.
When it comes to the renewal of classical education, we know you have questions and we have them too! Classical Academic Press has invited a host of authors, educators, philosophers, and theologians, from a wide range of backgrounds, to participate in the ages old tradition of disputatio: an academic forum where big ideas can be explained and debated with charity and respect.
The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas is perhaps one of the most famous examples of disputed questions explored. In that seminal work, Aquinas embarks on intellectual exploration in search of the Truth. By employing practical wisdom, he discovers and reveals the relationship between God and man. Aquinas followed a prescribed process to navigate and govern his reasoning. To navigate the complex theological questions, he began by isolating specific questions, focusing on those issues, acknowledging objections, discovering his own arguments, and arriving at conclusions. Perhaps one of the chief reasons Aquinas’s work has been so successful was due to the fact that he didn’t shy away from tough questions, but always found “some important truth hidden in each objection” (A Shorter Summa: The Essential Philosophical Passages of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica Edited and Explained by Peter Kreeft, Ignatius Press).
In an attempt to learn from this great master of debate and wise discourse, we created a new forum here at Classical Academic Press: The Disputed Question: Quarterly Questions on Classical Education. We intend to host conversations which thoughtfully and charitably address the many questions we all have asked related to the renewal of classical education.
Each quarter, we will publish the essays we have gathered in response to a new disputed question. We hope you will enjoy reading while watching these issues and ideas unfold. Most importantly, we hope these essays will contextualize and explain the many and varied interpretations, historic voices and arguments, points of view, and biblical foundations shaping the great conversations and cultural issues of today.
We believe teachers, school leaders, thought leaders, and parents will find these essays helpful as they interpret the complexities of the world we live in and how the renewal of classical education contributes to a right understanding of the issues governing our times.
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~ Written by Joelle Hodge ~
Why have men always longed to be free? As we celebrate Veterans Day, I find myself thinking again about the nature of freedom. Whether I look at Christianity, the nature of a free society, or liberal arts education I find myself asking the same questions: Where did the fundamental desire for freedom originate? Why is liberty so closely tied to what it means to be human? How can it be that freedom has been prized throughout the centuries regardless of culture? Why is liberty so costly? And why are some willing to sacrifice so much so that others can have it?
These are the questions I ponder as I think about the sacrifices made by our veterans. John 15:13 reminds us that “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” We see that even first century Christians (recently experiencing the greatest sacrifice through Christ’s death and resurrection) were articulating an ages old truth: Sacrifice is love, and love is often costly. The men and women of our armed forces evidence for us this sacrificial love.
Everywhere in the news when I see members of our armed forces (and sadly, this is all too frequent), I am reminded that they have answered “yes” to the call to lay down their life for their country. Of course they don’t personally know me, or you. And yet they serve for us, in our place; thousands of them: sons and daughters, fathers and mothers. I wonder what they think when they see our society. I wonder how they wish we would use the freedom we have been given.
To isolate freedom to one single purpose would be reductionist and an oversimplification. But, it might be safest to say that our use of freedom ought to help us and our fellow man avoid the bonds of slavery, in whatever forms it might come. In Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he writes, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Gal. 5:1). I imagine our veterans might hope for something similar. At great cost they secured this liberty, it would be a sad devaluation of their sacrifice for us to return to bondage.
Our opportunity to live in a free society, then, requires something of us. So, what do we need to do in order to avoid “submitting again to the yoke of slavery” in our own lives? This is where l believe the liberal arts comes alongside a life of faith to equip us for living. Historically, and long before the birth of Christ, the artes liberales (the liberating arts) were offered to free men to help them become good citizens and to pursue a life of arete (excellence). A liberating education would not have been offered to slaves (or women) because they were not offered the opportunity to contribute to society in the same ways as free men. They could not hold positions of power, of leadership, or in the structuring of society.
Today such demographic limits are not in place, and a free life is offered to all of us. Therefore, it is our responsibility to offer all of our children a paideia education, one where we focus on the development of the whole person –– including the virtuous formation of the soul. While the earliest practitioners of a liberal arts education could neither claim to know or understand the Gospel, they did inherently know and prefer a life of freedom to a life of slavery; and they wanted to prepare for it. They knew they would need specific tools, refined over a lifetime, to make valuable contributions to their society, strengthen it, and to set that society on course to survive into the future.
The work you do as parents, providing a liberal arts education, participating in the renewal of classical education, is part of that great tradition, of valuing the legacy of freedom we have been given. You do this by raising men and women of faith, virtue, knowledge, and wisdom. And with these tools, our children will participate in the strengthening, shaping, and endurance of our society. Thank a veteran for this opportunity to live free!
]]>Last week, on October 24, 2023, I listened in person as Dr. Bernice King—CEO of The King Center and Daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr.—engaged in a conversation with two others about the current state of education in America. It was an honor for my colleague Joelle Hodge and I as we heard Dr. King sharing with Dr. Kelisha Graves and Dr. Anika Prather at an event hosted by Liberty Classical Schools in Atlanta, Georgia, and moderated by Josh Andrew, Head of School at Atlanta Classical Academy. Joelle and I were there at the invitation of Dr. Prather, a co-author of The Black Intellectual Tradition: Reading Freedom in Classical Literature published by Classical Academic Press.
At multiple points during a stimulating conversation about critical insights into the place of our humanity and personhood within a specifically Kingian philosophy of education, all three of women were prophetic and on the same page regarding some radical critiques of our nation’s current educational methods. Their conversation titled “A Discussion of ‘Kingian’ Education: How Classical Education Supports Civil Discourse in Democracy” covered several reasons why our nation’s current default toward a “factory model of education” within many of our schools is inhuman and failing us all.
Early in the conversation, Dr. King shared how the factory model of education overemphasized the value of finding “efficiencies” at the expense of the time and the real human interaction required to nurture and care for the personhood of each student. Referencing the work of her father and her mother, Coretta Scott King—both of whom wrote substantially about the need for a humaning philosophy of education—Dr. Bernice King said that schools must place character, the dignity of the whole person, and virtue, including specifically the Christian virtues of humility and love, at the forefront of their educational objectives. She noted that her father, specifically, drew from a vast range of great thinkers regardless of how fully he agreed with every aspect of their thought or what tradition or school of thought might be associated with them.
Dr. Prather and Dr. Graves both appreciated and elaborated on several of these points with insight and enthusiasm that was contagious, leading to multiple interruptions for applause and to a standing ovation as the conversation and the Q&A came to close. Dr. Kelisha Graves is an author and educator who serves as Chief Research, Education, and Programs Officer at The King Center. Among other publications, she has written Nannie Helen Burroughs: A Documentary Portrait of an Early Civil Rights Pioneer, 1900-1959 (Notre Dame, 2019). Engaging with the other two ladies on stage, Dr. Graves spoke of the “tyranny of metrics” within the factory model of education as an aspect of its fixation on efficiency at the expense of student’s growing in character, virtue, and their capacity for inquiry and civil discourse. According to Dr. Graves, MLK showed us that “principles are forever” while our methods and techniques will always come and go. Moreover, as MLK understood, this has direct application to education. Dr. Graves joined Dr. Bernice King in praising the classical liberal arts approach to education for its track record of keeping these human values front and center within the classroom. With passion and laughter in reference to her own experiences as a professor and teacher, Dr. Graves called for reformation of our contemporary testing and grading systems and described the need for students to have direct experience with civil discourse in response to reading a wide range of compelling thinkers rather than sitting through endless hours of standardized testing and being crammed with information that they will only quickly forget. Education should aim at a full and flourishing life throughout adulthood, Dr. Graves insisted, rather than giving students the impression that the only aim of education is how to pass the next test and succeed in the short term within the areas of schooling, work, and career.
On a related topic, Dr. Graves spoke about how “MLK did not throw anybody out” as she criticized the harm done to students in our “cancel culture” as students are kept from following the examples of both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King in drawing from the deepest possible range of great thinkers even when there are substantial problems in some of these sources of inspiration. Dr. Graves described how students are being taught to shut down and disengage instead of interrogating and growing through the process of learning about the fullness—both positive and negative—that exists in great texts from various traditions. She was fearless in criticizing the status quo in our schools, both K-12 and at the college and university level, as current trends close off areas of exploration and reading for students by creating and reinforcing a growing list of ideological taboos.
While the agreement was strongly reinforced on all of these points above with raised hands, head nods, and audible amens between all three conversation partners, one area of some back-and-forth between Dr. Graves and Dr. Prather was with regard to the need for an appreciation of the “many canons” of great works as Dr. Graves expressed it. Without at all dismissing the value of seeing and reading from multiple traditions, Dr. Anika Prather responded that there was a blessing in recognizing the centrality in our own shared story of the specifically Western canon of great books. Dr. Prather pointed out how strongly Anna Julia Cooper advocated for the way in which the great books of the Western canon belonged to all people and how these text provided inspiration to so many black leaders including Huey P. Newton’s reading of Plato. As with so many other points covered in this rich dialog between these three women, Dr. Prather’s defense of a traditional Western canon received a warm response from Dr. Graves as a point well worth serious consideration in the development of a rehumanized vision for education in America. The opportunity to hear these three women engage with each other with such warmth and openness renewed my own hope and excitement for our nation’s students who are so in need of such examples. I was given a concrete demonstration of what a restoration of civil discourse and of the liberal arts can offer to our classrooms and our lives together.
Want to read more from Jesse Hake? Check out "Finding God Amid the Goodness of Summer: Keeping the Borders of Eden" and "Classical Education is Not at the Heart of the Culture Wars." Plus, listen to the ClassicalU Podcast to hear him interview a variety of guests about their contributions to the renewal of classical education!
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Florida recently approved the Classic Learning Test (CLT) as an accepted college admissions test, fueling the larger conversation about Classical Education.
Although The Sunshine State’s decision surprised some and struck others as too radical, this isn't the first time an alternative to the SAT and ACT has made headlines. “The ‘Smarter Balanced Exam’ is being considered or accepted by colleges in California and South Dakota. It's already the state standard in several other states across grade levels, from elementary to high school,” reports Chris Stewart.
If the CLT wasn’t the first standardized test to deviate from the status quo, why has it sparked so much debate? “The controversy is focused on the content within the test, which critics say focuses too heavily on religious texts and writings and claims overemphasizes Christian sources,” says Stewart.
While opponents have been quick to call out the CLT (and Classical Education, on the whole) for its countercultural messages, they haven’t dissuaded the administrators in Florida’s Miami-Dade County school district from considering the classical model for their elementary students. “By considering its implementation in traditional public schools, the district aims to provide students with a different educational approach that focuses on the classics and religious theories,” writes Leo Gallagher. “This move is part of a broader trend in Florida, where classical education has gained attention and support in recent years.”
Those of us who have experience with the field of classical education should encourage skeptics to investigate, while embracing those who are ready to adopt the tried-and-true liberal arts approach.
]]>Classical educators and students know the goal of learning is to retain and understand; but doing well on an exam to earn college credit is certainly a nice outcome, too!
This past spring, the College Board altered the curriculum for Advanced Placement Latin, changing the content of their tests as well. This has stirred the world of Latin education, causing scholars to consider and question the value of what has been omitted and what has been added.
While students could previously expect to translate selections of Caesar’s De Bello Gallico in the prose section of the exam, they can now anticipate meeting works of Pliny the Younger. What does this modification mean for the world of Latin?
Inevitably, countless students will abandon Caesar’s works and prioritize Pliny the Younger’s in preparation for the exam. Whether you believe this is a benefit or a drawback depends on your goals as an educator.
Caesar is quite the household name — from Shakespeare to salads, his name is hardly foreign to any student. Pliny the Younger? Not so much. Perhaps bringing more attention to his works would diversify his readers and bring him into the spotlight as young classicists begin their Latin translation journey with him.
Another key factor is the importance of the text itself. In a class aiming to teach students about the Latin language and its literature, is Caesar the best representation of Latin prose? Is Caesar, a man famous for his military victories rather than his eloquent works, the best steward to the language to inspire students to diligently carry on with their studies? In a class aiming to teach the history of Rome, is De Bello Gallico the most pivotal work that aligns with an AP student’s reading comprehension level? Perhaps not. Perhaps Pliny the Younger’s texts aren’t, either.
Some proponents of this change cite Caesar’s character as a cause to remove him from the curriculum. The accusation is not without basis; Caesar was responsible for countless deaths and betrayals in his time. However, when granting limitations based on religious texts in Latin, teachers will struggle to find a writer with spotless character. The poets, historians, orators, and senators alike are known to have committed grave crimes against their fellow men. While they shouldn’t serve as role models, these complex figures should teach us lessons in morality.
Consider, also, that if the sole aim of teaching a text was to encourage students to emulate the writer’s behavior, canons would be rewritten every day. Weighing the importance of a historical figure’s influence against a written work’s quality (with consideration to student reading level, of course) falls to the teacher wishing to strike a balance.
Ultimately, the change in the exam will lead to a decrease in readers of Caesar in favor of Pliny the Younger. The question remains whether this is something to combat. This relies on your classroom, your students, and the texts that will suit you best. Perhaps the writings of Caesar, Pliny the Younger, or even one of their contemporaries will foster your students’ learning. (I won’t prescribe you Livy, but I certainly won’t discourage it either!)
Regardless, we need not worry that the College Board is killing Caesar — partially because Brutus took care of that centuries ago. His work, located in the digital libraries built for this very purpose, will be available to you whenever you need it. When you’re ready to research, Perseus Digital Library is a great place to start!
Looking for Latin curriculum? Discover Song School Latin, Latin for Children, and Latin Alive!
]]>In 2015, Jeremy Tate set out to revolutionize the standardized testing practices in the United States by creating the Classic Learning Test (CLT), an alternative to options like the SAT and the ACT. While the test has gained momentum in classical circles over the past eight years, it stayed largely hidden from the public's eye until last week, when Florida’s Board of Governors approved it as an accepted admissions test for all public universities.
“This long-awaited decision marks a monumental day for both CLT and students across the state of Florida. With expanded options for admissions testing, young Floridians now have greater opportunities to showcase their academic potential and reach their college goals,” wrote the company.
Upon hearing the announcement, classical educators nationwide expressed well wishes for the team that works to “engage students with the thinkers and writings that have most meaningfully shaped our culture for the past two millennia,” according to the company’s website.
"From its inception, we have supported the development of the CLT as an excellent test superbly-suited for students receiving a classical and liberal arts education. Now that Florida has approved the test for all students in the state, we hope and expect that many other states will do likewise," says Dr. Christopher Perrin.
Joelle Hodge, our Vice President of Sales and Marketing, offered a similar sentiment, saying, “Classical Academic Press is delighted to see the good work being done by the CLT to continue to advance and support the renewal of classical education. Congratulations to the entire team who worked to produce this important assessment tool. We wish them continued success as they venture more fully into the various educational sectors and respond to the needs and goals yet to come!”
Although the company has garnered attention for their college entrance exams, they also create assessments for younger learners, as Scholé Academy Director Joylynn Blake notes. “Scholé Academy and CLT have partnered to support homeschooling families by providing a good and beautiful measure of a child's achievement and aptitude. We are thrilled that this meaningful assessment is now available to a host of Florida families and schools!”
ClassicalU Director Jesse Hake also commended the company for this "exciting next step in bringing their assessment tool as an option to more students in America. It's encouraging to see the leadership of CLT in providing such increased visibility to the ongoing renewal of classical education.”
Want to learn how the Classic Learning Test differs from its competitors? Visit their website to see what makes it unique! Plus, stay tuned for information about our upcoming collaborations with their team.
]]>As you prepare for the upcoming school year, consider how you might infuse your days with melodic inspiration. As Plato said, “Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything." Classical music, in particular, offers myriad benefits, from cognitive development to emotional intelligence and cultural appreciation. With these tips, you can easily incorporate this fascinating subject into your weekly routine.
While this step isn’t necessary, it would be fun to transform your space into a haven where classical music takes center stage:
What better way to discover the wonders of classical music than by diving into the captivating stories of its legendary composers? Here’s how you can do it:
Classical music is a treasure trove of enchanting narratives and captivating storytelling. When you bring these stories to life, you help your students fully experience the power of music. Consider planning lessons around these famous pieces:
Active engagement is the key to developing a genuine appreciation for classical music. Start with these delightful ideas:
As you incorporate classical music into your routine, allow it to uplift your spirits, fuel your imaginations, and fill your hearts with inspiration.
"The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul." — Johann Sebastian Bach
Looking for more resources on classical music? Check out, The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Philosophy of Classical Christian Education, Essential Music, and Echoes of Eternity: A Classical Guide to Music
]]>Summer is the perfect time for families to bond over fun activities and create lasting memories. Whether you're looking for imaginative projects, outdoor adventures, or delicious treats, we've got you covered! Use these engaging ideas and classical resources to help your kids cultivate new hobbies and sharpen their existing skills.
Gardening is a relaxing activity that can help your children develop greater patience. Clear a space for a small garden in your backyard, or purchase pots if you have limited space. Your kids can help choose the plants, prepare the soil, and water the garden. It will be immensely rewarding to watch the plants grow and to enjoy the fruits of your labor.
Related Resources: A New Natural Philosophy
It’s time to give your old furniture a new lease on life! Pick a piece that needs a makeover and involve your kids in sanding, painting, and adding personal touches. Whether it's a colorful desk, a funky chair, or a decorative shelf, you'll be amazed at the transformation you can achieve together. This activity could simultaneously serve as an arithmetic lesson if it involves measurements.
Related Resources: Common Arts Education book and CU course
Encourage your child's curiosity by helping them start a collection of their own. It could be anything from seashells and rocks to stamps or trading cards. Set up a display area where they can showcase their treasures and discuss their collection's significance. Alternatively, show them how to create a commonplace book, where they can keep a collection of thoughtful quotes, questions, musings, and more.
Related Resource: “Dickinson, Commonplacing, and a Bump on the Head”
What better way to teach your kids about astronomy than to step outside on a clear summer night and gaze up at the awe-inspiring sky? If you want to enhance the experience and make it easier to locate different constellations, consider using a stargazing app or a star chart.
Related Resource: The Liberal Arts Tradition book and CU course; “What in the World Is the Cosmos?”
Want to turn your backyard into a bird paradise? Start with bird feeders, birdbaths, and nesting boxes to attract feathered friends; then grab your binoculars and wait for them to arrive! If you want to take your new hobby to the next level, invest in a bird identification guide or an app so you can differentiate the species you encounter. You can also take pictures and create a scrapbook of the birds you've spotted. This pastime will regularly remind your family that God cares for His creation (Matthew 6:25-27).
Related Resource: Science and the Symphony of Creation
Let your kids pick a theme like pirates, superheroes, or outer space, then dress up in costumes and engage in related activities. Whether you're embarking on a thrilling quest, defending the city from villains, or exploring distant galaxies, the immersive experience will foster creativity and become an unforgettable memory. With a little extra planning, it could also serve as a rhetorical exercise (think about scripts, gestures, and voice projection.
Related Resource: Performing Shakespeare in Your Classroom
Gather your ingredients, don your aprons, and prepare to indulge your sweet tooth! Now is the perfect time to pass down your family’s secret recipes or experiment with a trendier treat that took the internet by storm. Try a geode cake with colorful rock candy crystals or a fault line cake with a surprise design inside. Your kids can help with the mixing, decorating, and, of course, the tasting! While you’re waiting for the timer to go off, turn on some background music and challenge your kids to a game of Go Fish; or breeze through a chapter of that book you’ve been meaning to finish.
Related Resources: Common Arts Education book and CU course; Essential Music; Echoes of Eternity
Slow down and spend quality time together by decorating mugs, plates, or figurines at a pottery painting studio. Pro tip — put a date on the bottom of your kids’ keepsakes. You’ll want to remember how old they were when they were obsessed with the color purple and doodled a star on every piece of handiwork.
Related Resource: Essentials of Drawing; The Age of Martha
Escape the confines of your home and enjoy a delightful picnic lunch in a nearby park or your backyard. After preparing delicious sandwiches, fruit salads, and snacks together, you can pack a blanket, grab a frisbee or a soccer ball, and relish the beautiful outdoors while bonding over good food and fun games. Want to make this leisurely time more educational? Read a book together as a family and point out different grammatical concepts and rhetorical devices.
Related Resources: The Read-Aloud Family; The Lost Seeds of Learning; The Classical Reader
Related Resources: The Curious Historian; Teaching From Rest
Written by Ken Alexander, the winner of our June 2023 Father's Day Poetry Contest.
I remember how we struggled up
the logging trail like pack mules in tandem,
the air so clear and cold the condensation
in our nostrils crystalized as we
sucked breath, but still, so that we didn’t feel
the cold. The track climbed steep where other sons—
another generation—snaked oak logs
down the mountain leaving only stumps
that squatted in the snow between the trees
like hooded dwarves or cowled monks in prayer.
Dad kept saying, “Just a little higher
to where we see the light that floods the gorge.”
“It’s all about the light,” he said as we
stood to our shins in snow at easels he had
made from broom sticks, “See the black spears
of spruce against the snow field? Paint them like God
cut them with a cold chisel and make the snow
behind them sing like angels in the sun.
You have to show them or they won’t believe.
They said photography would put an end to
painting while it captures light waves in a box
and puts them down on paper to record
reality precisely like no painter can.
But they were wrong. A painter goes beyond
reality behind it, changes it,
transforms the light inside his head to substance.”
And as he spoke he jabbed the frigid air,
his sable brush a sword against the dark
or a baton conducting light waves into
symphonies that played upon his easel—
while fire began to burn inside my boots
and gloves, as cold seeped through the insulation
until I thought I’d die, a sacrifice
to art.
Today in searching for a scrap of history
I’d misplaced, I rifled through a box
unopened now for thirty years. Surprised,
I found our watercolors tucked inside
a folder labelled in my father’s hand—
the crude attempts of amateurs, not brilliant.
I noticed frost fronds fixed into the paint
where the wash froze before it dried that winter
day when I was twelve and followed father
up a mountain—a bundle of sticks on my back—
to learn about the light inside his brain.
And I remember what I lost. What I forgot.
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“Conjunction Junction, what’s your function?” a Schoolhouse Rock singer asks during the popular 1970s song of the same name. “I like tying up words and phrases and clauses,” responds another vocalist. Without the incorporation of whimsical, thought-provoking elements, the study of grammar can quickly become a formulaic experience. (I don’t know about you, but I can still hear my classmates groaning as the teacher prompts us to answer questions about subject-verb agreement.) Looking for a series that harnesses the power of creativity and classical principles to teach your students the building blocks of grammar? Well-Ordered Language fits the bill. (Not the bill that sits on Capitol Hill. That’s a song for another day.)
If grammar isn’t your best subject, don’t worry. Well-Ordered Language will help you and your students engage with the concepts presented in each lesson. “Well-Ordered Language has changed the way I look at grammar. The program is so straightforward and makes grammar clear and easy to understand. The analysis strategy makes even challenging sentences simple to diagram,” says Sarah W. from Tennessee. As your students delight in rearranging sentences and learning how words behave, you can sharpen your grammatical skills by reviewing the pedagogical tips and extensive explanations in the Teacher’s Edition.
“After a year of ‘trying something different,’ my daughter was begging to return to the Well-Ordered Language program,” says Colleen from Wyoming. “We loved the simplicity, relevancy, and ease of use. The books are lovely, the writing engaging, and the examples and exercises are helpful and easy to use. Hands down, our favorite grammar program. And we have tried many!”
As Colleen suggests, the Well-Ordered Language series brims with imaginative ways to encourage engagement. For instance, each book prompts students to read, sing, chant, recite, discuss, and retell narratives. Students will also learn about the parts of speech by playing games, and by analyzing and diagramming sentences.
Wherever the lesson leads you, one thing’s for certain: The fun doesn’t stop at grammatical concepts. Well-Ordered Language seamlessly integrates with (and piques students’ interest in) other subjects. “My son is using Latin for Children and Well-Ordered Language. These two products work so well together. I love how one reinforces the other. My son is enjoying them too and looks forward to his lessons,” says Michelle G. from Maryland.
Well-Ordered Language also works well with Writing & Rhetoric. As students grasp the fundamentals of grammar, they can move beyond sentences and apply their knowledge to paragraphs and essays. Additionally, the Well-Ordered Language texts incorporate poems and encourage students to research the settings mentioned in the sentences, such as the Mammoth Cave National Park in Mammoth, Kentucky.
Does this grammar series sound different from the other grammar programs you’ve tried? That’s exactly what the authors intended. Any grammar textbook can teach your students the difference between an adjective and an adverb; Well-Ordered Language makes an impact because it stays true to the principles of classical education. As A. Jeffries from New York explains, he “was not raised in the classical way,” yet he finds Well-Ordered Language (as well as Writing & Rhetoric and Song School Latin) “to be excellent in guiding me as I teach my children. I feel more and more confident every time I teach a lesson,” he says. By employing the Well-Ordered Language curriculum, you can introduce your students to the rich heritage of classical education, foster an appreciation for the liberal arts, and promote the cultivation of wisdom and virtue.
Thanks for learning about our Well-Ordered Language series! Now, save 10% when you use the discount code WOL23 at checkout. *Some restrictions apply.
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*The WOL23 coupon code is applicable to individual items only. Minimum purchase is 1 item. It will not be applied to already discounted programs or bundles, or to the following products: Ambrose Curriculum Guide, programs or bundles, online courses (such as Scholé Academy, St. Raphael School, or the Canterbury House of Studies), and some test packets or yearlong licenses (such as The Discovery of Deduction Quizzes & Assessments, Latin for Children and Latin Alive! Test Packets, and Well-Ordered Language Songs & Chants or Extra Practice & Assessment PDFs).
]]>~ Written by Marissa Moldoch and Megan Waardenburg ~
Who else is excited for summer vacation? Whether you're planning to roadtrip across the country, camp in the forest, or relax at the beach, we hope you'll encourage your children to bring a stack of good books. School might be out of session, but that doesn't mean students should refrain from reading imaginative stories! Check out our official reading lists to find recommendations based on grade level.
The adventure of a lifetime is just a page flip away! Which titles and genres will your children explore this summer? For even more parent-approved, classically-vetted options, be sure to check out The Classical Reader!
]]>As a Writing & Rhetoric major, I can’t help but smile when I flip through Classical Academic Press’ texts of the same name and read about all the concepts that fill my heart with joy. It might sound corny, but it’s true.
Growing up, I didn’t study these materials, but I wish I would have had that option. My school’s curriculum asked us to read stories, then answer a few questions that ranged from simplistic to overly complicated and awkwardly worded. It wasn’t an engaging experience, and we were never prompted to think deeply about what we had learned.
Although I enjoyed reading books and writing stories in my free time, I had a distaste for these kinds of lessons at school and struggled to develop my language arts skills.
Then, in the seventh grade, my frustration turned to wonder. My teacher, who also served as an English professor at our local college, understood that the curriculum was not preparing us to be strong writers. She started to teach us the fundamentals of writing, and she incorporated classic literature into the lesson plans to demonstrate the concepts she was explaining. Because of her guidance, I fell in love with writing and wanted to become a wordsmith.
Our Writing & Rhetoric series gives me that same rush of excitement. In case you need a little extra persuading about why you should choose this curriculum for your children, here are seven reasons.
Everyone writes, but not everyone writes well. Writing & Rhetoric teaches students about grammar and syntax, as well as proofreading and editing, so they’ll be able to construct clear sentences and paragraphs. “I was looking for a writing program for my third grader. Writing & Rhetoric does a great job at establishing writing basics and encouraging developing writers to add their own creative mark to well-known stories. We are looking forward to continuing our progress with the next levels!” says homeschool mom Heather. While younger students learn the basics, older students learn how to put those skills to good use. They will construct argumentative essays that have descriptive thesis statements, powerful points, and supporting evidence from various sources. Students who go to college will regularly employ these skills, regardless of their major.
The writing process can be difficult, even for those who study it in college and practice it professionally. However, we know that challenges aren’t always a bad thing. As I sit here, looking at my mess of a first draft for this blog post, I imagine all the unorganized paragraphs and random thoughts as pieces of a larger puzzle that have yet to be assembled. It is very satisfying to put those pieces together, and to enhance the final product with the writing skills that I have at my disposal. Writing doesn’t have to be a grueling experience. That’s something Karen from Maryland learned after she switched to the Writing & Rhetoric series. “As a mother with more than 20 years of homeschooling behind her, it was a joy to find a curriculum company that took the frustration out of teaching my children to write. Writing & Rhetoric takes the ancient way of teaching writing and makes it accessible to the modern student. As a result, my 7 homeschooled children wanted to write!”
Have you ever been asked to write about a concept that you really don’t understand? If not, let’s just say that the final product tends to contain a lot of filler words and generalizations, rather than clear points backed by supporting evidence or imaginative ideas. With Writing & Rhetoric, students learn how to think through the stories they consume, so they can express the main ideas to someone else or write an essay in response. “I recommend Classical Academic Press—especially their grammar and Writing & Rhetoric programs—to all my friends. We have seen such growth in our children as they work their way through this whole language approach. It teaches them much more than just how to do well on a test; they learn to think and express themselves through language. I’ve learned along the way as well!” says homeschool mom Julie. Homeschool mom Holly concurs, saying, “CAP's Writing & Rhetoric program has revived both my sons' love of writing and storytelling, while also challenging their thinking skills.” Given the amount of information (and misinformation) that floods our screens every day, it is imperative that students begin to develop their reading comprehension and critical thinking skills at a young age.
Writing & Rhetoric features familiar tales and excerpts from classic literature. As students imitate these models, they will build their vocabulary and understand how to make their own writing more effective. “My son has loved writing and playing with words in Writing & Rhetoric,” says homeschool mom Evelyn. "’Copious’ is a word I never knew existed, but my son loves it! He changes sentences that are told to him, reordering them and just plain having fun with them. If he doesn't understand something he's told, he just muddles it around until it clicks. I am really thankful for the input CAP has in our daily routine.” After they’ve learned how to make their writing more colorful, older students craft cohesive narratives and organize supporting details.
What do the vast majority of people have in common? A fear of public speaking. With Writing & Rhetoric, students will learn how to embrace public speaking and perfect the qualities necessary for being a good speaker. For example, Book 4 prompts students to “divide Tennyson’s Godiva into parts and use it to create a dramatic reading, recitation, or pageant for parents or other students.” To make this “Speak It” exercise more fun, the book encourages students to wear costumes, use hand gestures, and project their voice. Homeschool mom Gina says that this method works for her family. “I have finally found the writing program that both my children and I enjoy. My children have improved in their writing while delighting in the stories provided in the Writing & Rhetoric program. Each lesson provides a story that the children must then tell back (narration practice). Summarizing and amplification of a story are taught, as well as outlining and much more. We have used Writing & Rhetoric Book 1: Fable, Book 2: Narrative I, and Book 3: Narrative II. I will definitely be progressing with this series,” she says.
You might not be able to name many literary or rhetorical devices off the top of your head, but you use them more often than you think. For instance, if you claim that your grandmother is as blind as a bat, or that your child is as good as gold, you’ve used a simile. If you say that life is a highway or that you’re a night owl, you’ve employed a metaphor. Writing & Rhetoric teaches students about these kinds of devices, which spark the imagination, persuade audiences, and make writing and conversations more memorable.
It’s easy to see how much Paul Kortepeter, the primary author of Writing & Rhetoric, cares about this curriculum. He has masterfully designed it so that students can serve as apprentices to the great writers and stories of history. “I have found CAP's Rhetoric Alive! and Writing & Rhetoric series to be very capable guides to learning how to write and speak well. The authors are clearly knowledgeable and actively demonstrate the styles of writing and speaking they are teaching. The material is approachable for all kinds of students and teachers without compromising on quality or sufficient rigor,” says Todd from New Jersey. Homeschool mom Cat agrees, saying that she is “thankful for the support of such qualified individuals.”
Thanks for learning about our Writing & Rhetoric series! Now, save 10% when you use the discount code WR23 at checkout. *Some restrictions apply.
Visit our website to learn more about this comprehensive curriculum, and discover why our Latin and logic texts are perfect for your middle schooler.
*The WR23 coupon code is applicable to individual items only. Minimum purchase is 1 item. It will not be applied to already discounted programs or bundles, or to the following products: Ambrose Curriculum Guide, programs or bundles, online courses (such as Scholé Academy, St. Raphael School, or the Canterbury House of Studies), and some test packets or yearlong licenses (such as The Discovery of Deduction Quizzes & Assessments, Latin for Children and Latin Alive! Test Packets, and Well-Ordered Language Songs & Chants or Extra Practice & Assessment PDFs).
]]>For a few minutes, imagine that you’re standing in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Feel the sand squishing beneath your feet as you stride forward. For better or worse, you’ve chosen the hottest part of the day to set out on this grand adventure, and now you’re drenched in sweat. It’s not a comfortable feeling, but it’ll all be worth it once you reach your destination. You can’t see anything yet, but you hear chatter in the distance. You excitedly turn to your fellow travelers and feel grateful to be on this adventure with them.
As you move toward the noise, a large workforce comes into view. You’re greeted by the sight of construction workers, sculptors, and craftsmen, executing their tasks with precision. That’s right—you’re in ancient Egypt, watching these laborers build a pyramid. You stare in disbelief. You couldn’t have imagined how magnificent it would look in person!
Two workers approach you and explain that they need volunteers to help with this enormous undertaking. “You can live in our village so you don’t have to journey back and forth every day,” they say. You gladly accept, knowing that you’re participating in something special—something that will go down in history.
As they read The Curious Historian, students will go back in time to explore the thriving civilizations of the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the Classical Age, and the Middle Ages. Here are 5 reasons why they’ll love this creative curriculum.
From leaders and rulers to writers and inventors, The Curious Historian introduces students to a handful of notable figures, such as Hammurabi, Sargon the Great, Confucius, Alexander the Great, and Julius Caesar. “You will read about why we remember them, what they did, and what they tried but failed to do. You will learn about what they have left behind that are still of great value to historians: monuments, writings, personal belongings, and more. You will learn these people’s stories,” says Christopher Perrin.
Each chapter in The Curious Historian presents students with opportunities to apply their critical thinking skills and showcase their creativity. They’ll complete crossword puzzles and word searches, draw pictures, sing songs, translate hieroglyphics, write short fiction and non-fiction pieces, and more! For instance, Level 2A asks students to consider which mystery of Greek history they would like to help solve. In their writing, they can describe what kind of clues they’d search for, as well as what answers their discovery might reveal.
The Curious Historian’s stunning imagery provides additional context and enriches the reading experience. After all, it’s one thing to envision an ancient coin, cosmetic box, or musical instrument, but it’s much more fun to see a real-life example. “The full-color art and artifacts pictured throughout each book will help you understand what these civilizations created and will give you an appreciation of the wonder and beauty of history,” writes Christopher Perrin.
The Curious Historian poses captivating questions that set the stage for riveting discussions. For example, The Curious Historian Level 1A explains how kings and warriors built monuments and pyramids to tell people about their amazing deeds. Then, it asks students to consider what famous people do today to ensure that people will remember them and what they have done. When students begin to understand the past and how it has shaped the world we live in today, they gain context about current events and recognize how societies and cultures have evolved over time.
Each chapter contains numerous sidebars that provide additional information or summarize key facts. Some of them point out places where ancient history intersects with historical events or figures mentioned in the Bible, while others explain the Latin or Greek root words for key vocabulary. Since the sidebars are optional, students don’t have to study them to complete the chapter reviews. However, they make for delightful reads and give the students something else to ponder and take away from the lesson.
Additionally, a fictional “archaeologist extraordinaire” named Archibald Diggs has ripped pages from his own notebook and left them throughout the texts for students to examine. In these notations, he shares interesting tidbits and fascinating archaeological discoveries. For instance, he says, “The stories about the Mesopotamian gods did not always make good sense. As archaeologists, we would say these were ‘disorderly stories,’ because the facts or the order of events don’t stay the same in every version of the story.”
Thanks for reading! Now, save 10% when you use the discount code TCH23 at checkout. Looking for other textbooks to teach your middle school student? Check out our articles about our Latin and logic curricula.
*The TCH23 coupon code is applicable to individual items only. Minimum purchase is 1 item. It will not be applied to already discounted programs or bundles, or to the following products: Ambrose Curriculum Guide, programs or bundles, online courses (such as Scholé Academy, St. Raphael School, or the Canterbury House of Studies), and some test packets or yearlong licenses (such as The Discovery of Deduction Quizzes & Assessments, Latin for Children and Latin Alive! Test Packets, and Well-Ordered Language Songs & Chants or Extra Practice & Assessment PDFs).
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