Academics
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
What comes to mind first when you read this magisterial phrase from The Declaration of Independence? You might be impressed by its style, or by its bold moral clarity. It is less likely that you thought it might make a good introduction to classical education!
What is Classical Education?
Education in America
This famous line comes of course from the pen of Thomas Jefferson, with some help from Benjamin Franklin. One common reaction to the writing of these men and some of their contemporaries is admiration mixed with some despair, because our own age seems so lacking in comparison. Stirring phrases, wise sayings, and pithy pronouncements seemed to flow from the pens of the founding fathers. Many of them wrote large numbers of letters, books, and speeches, many of which are still valued today. By contrast, our leaders of today employ teams of speechwriters, yet they produce eminently forgettable speeches and writings. Why is that? Why do we seem to have no more Thomas Jeffersons or John Adamses – not only statesmen but men of genius and deep learning?
Perhaps there are many reasons, but there is one shockingly simple answer: we no longer have the kind of education that formed the founders. The founding fathers, like many generations before them, were classically educated. Thomas Jefferson was a great writer because of natural talent, surely; but he also spent many years studying the progymnasmata, a defined course of study in how to write that had been perfected over centuries. This was a part of the course of study that virtually all well-educated people in the West undertook until relatively recently.
Beginning around the turn of the 20th century, education was radically altered. We can be forgiven for not knowing this, given that modern schooling, such as it is, is all any of us ever knew. This change in education was spearheaded by the Progressives, as they called themselves, and gave us progressive education and progressive schools – what we simply know as schools. But they called themselves “progressive” because they were reacting against what they saw as the old and outdated model of education – the Classical Christian model of education.
The Progressive model of education had two main goals: to remove religion from the classroom, and to “modernize” education. In removing religion from schooling, the new progressive model claimed to be “neutral.” This was, however, sleight of hand. For centuries, Christianity operated as the unifying principle of education. God created the world, and he made it intelligible to human beings, making possible domains like science and mathematics. Human beings are understood in Christian teaching to be moral agents, responsible for acting responsibly in the world, and worthy of dignity and respect. Thus, the main aim of education was to produce students trained not only in knowledge, but in virtue, or right moral thought and action.
Removing Christianity from education was like trying to remove the foundation from a house. Without it, the whole affair eventually crumbles. Progressives strove to replace the Christian moral compass and unifying ideal with the best it could come up with: a secular ideal. What this meant in practice was that the purpose of education was no longer to produce virtuous individuals, but to produce useful citizens. Usefulness is good, of course, but it is a far lower bar to reach than virtue.
In classical schools, students were taught to reason, to argue, and to think for themselves. They spent years reading the greatest writers and thinkers of all time, in order that they might engage deeply with their ideas and join the “Great Conversation” that began with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and continued all the way down to Jefferson and Adams. Great writers are direct sources of ideas and models for how to think, so that students can eventually learn to think for themselves.
Being able to think for oneself is an important part of becoming virtuous, but it is not necessary for being a useful citizen. Thus began not only the removal of Christian teaching from schools, but also the “dumbing down” of the curriculum. Modern schools no longer teach even basic logic, and one does not need to think deeply or darkly to understand why: they do not teach it because they do not want students to know it.
The decline in the quality of American education has been long and well-publicized. Despite continual efforts to make curriculum easier, test scores continue to drop, mystifying experts. No matter how low the bar, we keep tripping over it. Perhaps the answer is the unthinkable: a return to education that works. A return to classical education.
The Classical Difference
So then, what makes classical education different?
As we’ve said, classical education is a return to the model of education that had been developed for centuries in Western Christian society. But what does that look like? How is it different from what we have come to expect in modern, progressive schools? Classical education differs from progressive models of education in terms of both content and form, or methodology.
Methodology:
A Liberal Arts Education
Classical education is built on the liberal arts. They are called “liberal” not as a political label, but because they are “liberating.” They are liberal arts because they are the arts, or the kinds of learning that make us free. They make us free in the sense that they enable us (or free us) to understand the world and ourselves. They are the foundation of learning and of living. You might think of the way learning how to read is important not only for itself, but because it unlocks all other learning – reading is a foundational skill that allows us to learn many things beyond reading itself, like history, science, or even math.
There are seven liberal arts in the classical curriculum, and the first three are the most important. These are grammar, logic, and rhetoric. These are important not only as subjects unto themselves, but as a framework for how learning works, and it is this framework that defines classical education. Dorothy L. Sayers outlined how this works in a famous essay called The Lost Tools of Learning.
Grammar, in the classical framework, did not refer simply to the rules of punctuation and all that. Rather, every subject has a grammar, a set of basic facts or rules that must be learned as a starting point. In this sense, the basic facts of history, like names, dates, and major events, are the grammar of history. If one knows all the major events of American history, such as the dates of the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, the names of the major figures involved, and so forth, it cannot be said that one fully understands or knows American history. Because of course, there is much more to the story of America than just names and dates. Why was the Revolutionary war fought? Why was the Civil war fought? Why did the Union triumph? All of these are important questions, but the point is that to answer them, or even to ask them, we must first have a basic understanding of the basic facts – or the grammar of American history.
When we move to understanding the motives of the people involved in the events, the forces at work; the hows and whys, in other words, we have moved into the logic stage of learning. At this point, we seek to understand the internal logic of a subject - not only what happened in the Civil War, for example, but why it happened, and how it turned out that way.
The next natural step in the progression of learning is to come to a reasoned position based on the grammar and logic we have learned, and to express that position. In this, we reach the rhetoric stage of learning. When we discuss the Civil War, we are not merely discussing history, for it brings up many moral issues about which we naturally form opinions. The rhetoric stage of learning is thus about expression – how to express our positions, opinions, and beliefs carefully and effectively.
The genius of classical education is not just that it teaches grammar, logic, and rhetoric, but that it recognizes that these also represent stages of human development. When children are young, they enjoy and excel at learning and accumulating facts – at learning the grammar of how the world works and everything in it. Therefore, classical education builds education to suit this, focusing on finding fun and engaging ways of filling young minds with truth. When they reach the middle school years, children naturally progress from this grammar stage to the logic stage. They become curious about how things work, and they may even become argumentative, as they seek to engage with the world for themselves. Classical education meets them where they are, guiding them through this process of discovery by instructing them in how to think accurately and carefully, equipping them to see through falsehood and identify poor arguments and manipulation. By the time students reach their high school years, they begin to seek self-expression. Classical education thus focuses on cultivating the ability to express oneself effectively, in written and oral formats.
The total effect of this framework is that it cultivates healthy, well-rounded individuals who not only know the facts, but are able to use them to form solid beliefs and arguments and express them effectively. It also renders them equipped to engage with a world in which truth and truth-seeking are becoming all too rare, and to see through the many falsehoods that prevail in our culture.
Additionally, and perhaps no less important, because classical education is tailored to the natural growth and development of children, it renders education more enjoyable, though it is also more challenging. Progressive schooling, in abandoning the classical model of education, has become untethered from both its objectives and from human development, so that schooling is often an ill fit for where children are developmentally.
Content:
Less Is More
As mentioned above, the content is also different in a classical Christian school. The basic principle is that classical education is deep, rather than wide. The education of the school years should be a foundation for a lifetime of learning, and foundations are best when they are deep and rock-solid. Thus, the curriculum is surprisingly simple, focusing on Language Arts, History, Math, Science, and Bible. In all of these subjects, students learn more and are held to higher standards. History is a special focus, and students study Western history from ancient times to modern in three cycles, at the elementary, middle, and high school levels, corresponding to the grammar, logic, and rhetoric stages, respectively. This grounding in history provides an unparalleled foundation in understanding the ideas found in literature, philosophy, science, and religion, as they encounter them in historical context. Understanding the history of ideas is crucial to understanding the ideas themselves. One must, for example, understand that both the “unalienable rights” of the Declaration of Independence and the movement to abolish slavery that culminated in the Civil War grew directly out of Christian theological commitments. Removing historical context always distorts truth.
In every subject, we aim for mastery. Thus, from a young age, students are taught how to memorize information, a skill that is crucial to success in academics and beyond, but which has become sadly forgotten in most modern schools. Mere memorization is never the goal though, this forms only part of the grammar of a subject. Nor are students held to unrealistic standards; we seek to meet students where they are, and small class sizes ensure that students get the personal attention and aid that is so lacking in many schools.
Classically trained students emerge from school with a strong foundation in literature, history, writing and rhetoric, math and science, and theology. They are exceptionally well-prepared for success at the university, as many studies have shown, and tend to perform better on tests like the SAT. We also recognize and value, however, that university education is not the only measure or means to success in life. Classically trained students are, above all, equipped to be thoughtful, well-rounded, virtuous individuals, who succeed and enjoy God’s gifts no matter their path in life. Education is, in the final analysis, not about economics, or careers, but about people, made in the image of God, fulfilling their potential and mandate to live well in the time He has given them.