Classical and Christian education is like a good meal. Can individuals of any sort—from any culture, ethnicity, era, capacity, or calling—benefit from receiving a good meal? Yes, of course they can. Moreover, like a good meal, Classical and Christian education (CCE) should be tailored to meet students in a variety of situations and settings. This observation invites us to consider a slightly different question: can individuals of any sort—from any culture, etc.—benefit from receiving a meal of good sushi? Here I answer differently. Some people can benefit from sushi, but others cannot stomach raw fish. A good meal is one that is right for its setting—it nourishes those who gather around a particular table. Classical and Christian education is always a good meal but only sometimes is it sushi, and only in those settings where sushi is fitting.

    My own children grew up attending a Classical and Christian school in Idaho, and they flourished there. This school served up a rich meal of curriculum and pedagogy that blessed our family, and many other families in our community. It was the best choice for us. This does not mean it would have been the best choice for Christian families in, say, Seoul or Mexico City. Nor would our local school have been the best choice for a Christian family in 11^th-century Aquitaine, or 4^th-century Carthage. Yet all these families would benefit from a Classical and Christian education, which is a form of education that adapts to its context.

    I am not suggesting that everybody can benefit from the same instructional program. CCE is an approach to education that manifests in many different forms; it is not a one-size-fits-all project. This takes us back to the question of what CCE is in the first place. I have argued elsewhere that CCE is an education that draws upon educational authorities from the past as it cultivates liberating intellectual habits in order to impart Christian virtue and piety. (See my piece, “Defining our Educational Project,” in the first installment of The Disputed Question.)

    Note that Classical Christian educators aim to graduate students who are virtuous and pious. Pious graduates are those who live to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Virtuous graduates are those who exhibit those excellences that are proper to human nature. These virtues include the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude, as well as the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. Piety and virtue are universal human qualities that are accessible to people of all eras, ethnicities, and intellectual capacities. So it is with an education that promotes these qualities.

    This much is not likely to stir controversy. But what about an education that cultivates liberating intellectual habits? This is a longer conversation.

    The term “liberal arts” originated with Cicero (1) and indicates a class of arts associated with liberation—but liberation from what? Cicero, like many intellectuals in classical antiquity, disparaged human activity that served the material necessities of food, clothing, shelter, and procreation. The liberation they associated with the liberal arts was freedom from having to perform subsistence work. Thus, many Roman teachers characterized the liberal arts as the arts taught exclusively to freemen. Consider Seneca the Younger, who wrote the following to his friend Lucillus:

I respect no study, and deem no study good, which results in money-making. Such studies are profit-bringing occupations, useful only in so far as they give the mind a preparation and do not engage it permanently. One should linger upon them only so long as the mind can occupy itself with nothing greater; they are our apprenticeship, not our real work. Hence you see why “liberal studies” are so called; it is because they are studies worthy of a free-born gentleman.(2)

Seneca held that the liberal arts are liberal because they free students from the supposedly base pursuits of subsistence work and wage labor. For Seneca, then, a liberal arts education was not for everyone.

    The Christian tradition challenged this outlook by insisting that all humans, regardless of station, possess unique dignity as image-bearers of God. Thus even a humble plough-man or scullery maid can benefit from a liberating education. Comenius expressed such an outlook when he wrote that “all who have been born to man’s estate have been born with the same end in view, namely, that they may be men, that is to say, rational creatures, the lords of other creatures, and the images of their Creator.” This is why every man was created to receive a lordly education. This is true even of those whose capacities are limited. “The slower and the weaker the disposition of any man,” Comenius explained, “the more he needs assistance, that he may throw off his brutish dullness and stupidity as much as possible. Nor can any man be found whose intellect is so weak that it cannot be improved by culture.”(3) Thus, while not everyone has the same capacity for learning, everyone can benefit from learning—even from liberal learning. Of course, we optimize this benefit as we tailor our instruction to the capacity and cultural setting of the students we serve. Every student can benefit from a good meal, but not everyone benefits from a helping of sushi.

1. Marcus Tullius Cicero, “De Inventione,” in De Inventione, De Optimo Genere Oratorum, Topica, trans. H. M. Hubbell, Loeb Classical Library 386 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949), I.xxv.35.

2. Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, trans. Richard M. Gummere, vol. 2, Loeb Classical Library 75 (New York, NY: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1920), Letter LXXXVIII.

3. Johann Amos Comenius, The Great Didactic, Part II.—Text, trans. M. W. Keatinge (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1907), IX.3-4 (pp 66-67).

 

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.

 

Dr. Christopher Schlect
CCS Program Director, Senior Fellow of History,
& Head of Humanities

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