February 16, 2006
Boomershine’s Summary and Justification of Classical Education, Part II
PART II of a paper by Ryan Boomershine
Years after Sayers’ lecture, in the 1960s, Douglas Wilson, a seaman aboard a Navy ship, came across a reprint of Sayers’ lecture. He read it and was inspired. Later as a pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, ID, he started the Logos School—the first modern classical school.
Douglas Wilson should be considered the Father of Modern Classical Education. Logos went through many stages in those early, infant years. Sayers’ lecture was rich in theory but not in practice. Thousands upon thousands of decisions needed to be made in those early years about books and methods as if there had not been school before. The teachers—and the parents—needed to be trained to understand the classical model of education, and beyond Sayers’ lecture there was nothing to guide them except their own understanding and initiative. Nonetheless, Logos grew and grew and maintained a basic structure that did and still does closely resembles Sayers’ ideal.
Many other schools have spun off from Logos. Today there are nearly 200 classical Christian schools in the United States and thousands of home-schools seeking to implement the same model. Each of these units, though different, share the same basic structure. They each generally adhere to the trivium and its three parts: Grammar (including Latin), Logic (Dialectic) and Rhetoric (with formal training in the art of rhetoric). Certainly each part looks different, primarily because a “best way” has yet to be advanced. Sayers’ lecture was a first thought and did not offer the meat of methods.
Also, the advancements suggested in the Lost Tools of Learning are weighty, making them difficult to understand, promote and advance. The notion of the use of Latin in the curriculum (usually for seven full years or more) is a stumbling block to many parents and educators, especially when the student begins learning Latin in 2nd or 3rd grade; however, the advantages put forth by Wilson and Sayers are fairly gigantic and should surely be considered a long time before dismissing the notions as archaic (or abusive).
Interestingly, there is practically no presence of the classical model within the realms of fundamental Christianity that this author can find, though great effort has been made. A long-established school in Michigan has made some moves in recent years to put on some of the classically-minded garb, but the author knows of no single other actual effort taking place. Many key education leaders inside fundamentalism are unaware of any such schools and know little about the process themselves. Several reasons exist for this lack of knowledge and interest. The primary reasons are that the model itself is still fairly new and small, the ideas purported are outside the comfort zones of most traditionally trained educators, and finally, it is really hard. The classical curriculum is not rooted in the here and now, as most modern curriculums and methods are, and delving into hard things is even more difficult when you haven’t been educated under the classical model yourself.
After a dozen years, Wilson wrote a summary of the advancements of the classical movement in Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning: An Approach to Distinctively Christian Education. In it, Wilson laments the failure of all public education and suggests an approach to a distinctively Christian and classical education. Mr. Wilson wrote one sentence that sounds much like the last line of Sayers. He says, “We cannot say that our jo—as educators is done until the children have been taught how to learn for themselves and how to express what they learn” (1991, p. 97). Sayers and Wilson both regard learning how to learn as a preeminent notion inside the Christian concepts of education—that is, learning how to learn for the express purpose of continuing to learn for God’s glory is an express concern for the classical educator. Mr. Wilson’s other notable books on the topic of education include Repairing the Ruins, The Case for Classical Christian Education, and the Paidea of God.
Whereas many curriculums are focused on content, classical education is focused on processes. The student graduating from the normal, traditional school is walking away on graduation night with buckets of knowledge—cumbersome cartfuls of buckets of knowledge. His thirteen years have been spent in memorizing and knowing. His teachers consider him well-learned when he can remember all of the capitals in all of the countries, or when he is able to remember the whole poem by himself without helps or when he can reproduce his table of scientific elements without flaw.
As Wilson and Sayers would portray, the classical student walks away on graduation night with a handbag full of the most useful tools for learning. He has learned how to memorize and retain and regurgitate information like the traditional school boy, perhaps he has even learned the value of cramming. But he also learned to reason and proclaim convincingly, debate unwaveringly, defend winsomely, write beautifully, consider thoroughly, win and lose graciously, stand confidently, and die magnanimously. As opposed to a constrictive vocational study, the classical method will allow its graduates to go take on any subject in nearly any school in any field and learn any subject. His classical education has given him freedom, especially the freedom to serve God in whatever capacity He has willed. He is strong and able to stand toe-to-toe with Christianity’s fiercest detractors and speak to their flawed logic and God-denying, lying hearts. His education will teach him how to form an informed and biblical opinion.
Some would argue that this style of education makes a student haughty and over-learned, independent of God and self-sufficient. But classical, Christian education does not make the student independent of God, but rather shows him reasons to be dependent on God. True learning results in humility from seeing our smallness. It drives us before our Creator and onto our faces. The advantage of true education is that it makes us better Christians, not glibly flitting behind every wind of doctrine or mindlessly accepting every exhortation as “sound” or even not knowing what to think about anything. But rather, the truly educated will be like the Bereans who knew how to study; they “received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so” (Acts 17:11).
Classical education is not a panacea, and it does not make people perfect. But it is a logical, ordered approach that some consider to be biblically-based—especially considering how similar the stages are to the biblical key words from Proverbs. The grammar stage corresponds well with knowledge, the logic stage with understanding and the rhetoric stage with wisdom.
Classical Christian education should be investigated thoroughly before it is even partially repudiated. Its tenets have been tested and are proven—not over generations—but over centuries. The classical model of education has been a precursor to history’s greatest advancements, and the decline of classical principles has led to the bleakest and lowest ages of our history.
God bless and help the Christian who continues to study these things.
Part I of Ryan Boomershine’s paper was published on Pensees on February 15th. If you would like to download a printable version of Part I, please do:
A SUMMARY AND JUSTIFICATION OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION — Part I
(click to download and print)
If you would like to download a printable version of Part II, here is the link:
A SUMMARY AND JUSTIFICATION OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION — Part II
(click to download and print)
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“Classical Christian education should be investigated thoroughly before it is even partially repudiated.”
Has this been done, to your knowledge, from an unbiased source? To defend the model solely on the basis of its success through the ages misses the possibility that what created intellectual giants in the past was not the “classical education” as we interpret it, but some other cause. The current model must be proved. My concern is that schools attempting the classical model neither teach their children to reason and articulate, nor fill their buckets with knowledge. If being unable to learn is frightening, this scenario is terrifying.
Teach my child Latin? Fine. Logic? Great. But the apparent lack of curriculum/ structure leaves me wondering about accountability of individual schools to the parents. That the method behind the model seems to fit key words from Proverbs is unconvincing that it is the best approach.
I have read The Lost Tools of Learning. I have not seen Veith’s book. Can you describe his viewpoint and purpose of writing?
Michelle
Posted by: Michelle Brock at February 16, 2006 10:10 AMI am in the process of doing a comparative case study of classical and fundamentalist Christian schools. I should be done with the study by the end of the summer. It will not prove anything, but it should describe fully the teaching and learning environment of each type of school.
While there is no “standard curriculum” for classical educators, that doesn’t mean that students do not learn anything. It was a long time after “Christian” schools started that there was an “official” curriculum such as BJU Press or A Beka. Logos school has developed curricular materials as well as Veritas Press and there are many other publishers of texts and educational materials to be used in this context. Some other authors on the topic include Mortimer Adler, David Hicks and Jessie Wise.
In my experience, if a school has the courage to take this route, you will be hard pressed to say they do not have structure.
Some of the authors mentioned above are listed in a list of books I have devoloped here.
Michelle,
An unbiased source? I don’t know if I know any. I know of proponents, and I know those who don’t know enough to speak for more than a minute on the topic. Those are the two groups of people I’ve found. Perhaps this forum will introduce me to some true detractors.
There is a gentleman with whom I just started correspondence. He is writing his doctoral dissertation (from BJU) with some sort of take on classical ed. I would assume that he is taking a quantitative approach…in which case he would use numbers to clarify what he has found to be some results of the use of classical education.
I don’t know his results at this point, but I would be leery of blindly accepting numbers from classical schools, primarily because there is a wide discrepancy, in some cases, in the content of what is being taught in traditional and classical schools. For instance, all that time spent studying (needfully I think) ancient Rome and Greece is time that traditional schools are spending preparing for the achievement tests prepared for/from their curriculum. Having said that, it is my understanding that ACCS schools score higher than than traditional schools across the board. I can’t document that in 10 minutes, but I’ll add it to my To Do list.
I do not consider classical ed. to be a panacea. There are significant spiritual issues involved in education, and if a school is not bent toward godliness then it little matters what books are on the desks. Classical education does not tend us toward righteousness on its own.
Historically, we point to the Founding Fathers, Puritans, Reformers, Englightenment thinkers and Roman philosophers as examples of learning well. Certainly there were men and women who excelled above all others, but I’m not only pointing at them. I’m pointing at all the people who were able to listen to them and understand them and help these men mold history. Plato would not have been Plato - nor could Washington have been Washington - if their followers and constituents hearf garbled noises when these men spoke. I refer broadly to the effect that education has on an era.
I freely admit that my corresponding the method to keywords from Proverbs was simply an aside— attempting to draw in those who will only act when prompted to by Bible words. I do not find the distinctions enunciated to any large degree (though I do indeed see them there).
Regarding Veith, I don’t generally recommend it. I own it. I’ve read it. But it a wide summary overview of lots of different forms of classical education - including Catholic and secular forms. An equal portion is given to Wilson’s strain.
I agree with you that there is a slight lack of congruity amongst the schools using this model, but I disagree with the notion that there isn’t enough curriculum availble. I have a hard time choosing sometimes.
The two books I would most recommend, though there are several very good ones, are The Case for Classical Christian Education and Repairing the Ruins, both by Douglas Wilson.
Posted by: Ryan at February 16, 2006 01:54 PMMy previous comment was referring to Jeff, who answered while I was responding.
Posted by: Ryan at February 16, 2006 02:01 PMMichelle,
You said
That the method behind the model seems to fit key words from Proverbs is unconvincing that it is the best approach.
I agree. Frankly, I think that is an unconvincing argument.
However, I often hear people request a “biblical defense” when an exegetically infallible proof-texting is really unnecessary. Doing our best, pursuing excellence for the glory of God, and so forth may appropriately be used to encourage further investigation into the way we are educating our children, but even though I am persuaded that the classical approach is the best way, I must admit that even these arguments are not water-tight.
I think another exegesis is necessary. Study the argumentation and logic (or lack thereof)of most high-school graduates. Exegete our culture and the Christian sub-culture and you will find that in spite of the plethora of doctorates and degrees there is an abysmal lack of education, real education.
Posted by: Bob at February 18, 2006 09:04 AMBob Said: However, I often hear people request a “biblical defense” when an exegetically infallible proof-texting is really unnecessary. Doing our best, pursuing excellence for the glory of God, and so forth may appropriately be used to encourage further investigation into the way we are educating our children,”
Ryan and Bob,
I’ve been mulling the inclusion of the Proverbs comment, and it has continued to bother me. Isn’t your goal to teach us churchmembers sound exegesis among other good principles of Bible study? Doesn’t using admitedly poor exegesis perpetuate the bad exegesis that we see in churches today? That’s a huge cost to the benefit of drawing in a few readers who are convinced by weak evidence.
The evidence is indeed compelling against the status quo, considering the disarray of the public and Christian school academically and morally. It would have to be a very unusual school to convince my husband and I to send our children there when they are older.
At the same time, I am not convinced that it is wise to examine the classical method of hundreds of years ago to validate the proposed method. I am not comfortable merely looking at the past and rubber stamping what is being done today. They are not the same.
I find classical education fascinating. I firmly support teaching the history and logic that is obviously needed in our schools. I wouldn’t soundly object to an education in Latin, but I believe another language would do just as well (you just have to look at the history of our English language to understand why)and perhaps be of greater benefit.
Other than examining the curriculum, it is hard to adequately evaluate an individual school for one’s child. Having a bad teacher with the ABeka curriculum (highly prescripted) is not a good thing. Having a bad teacher with the classical model seems to be catastrophic. As well, as has been stated, examining standardized achievement scores may be misleading in some subjects(although I would expect math and reading to be unaffected)
One of my biggest concerns, frankly, is the methodological changes recommended. I am not comfortable waiting for the “pert” age to teach understanding. I realize memorization and work is a part of learning, I’m not objecting to that. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding the model, but as my son (age two) is learning number concepts right now, for example, I want him to learn the concept before simply memorizing the ordinal numbers. And so on. Memorizing word families may be an unnecessary encumbrance for some children (although clearly helpful for some). Perhaps because I have always learned best when understanding the why first, I’m just not convinced that memory without understanding is the best way for all children.
Should a critical examination of the results of the current classical model prove positive (to my knowledge none exists yet), I’d like to then see an analysis of what exactly is causing the success. There are a number of factors that can and should be accounted for. Without this kind of analysis, there’s no way of knowing whether the curriculum, method, teachers, discipline, parents, or children are wholly successful.
It sounds like Jeff’s research is a good beginning. I’ll be interested in seeing the results.
Michelle
I don’t think that the classical model calls for memorization without understanding. It tolerates it. Or, I should say, it assumes it and takes advantage of it. It acknowledges what is obvious to most people that children can retain in their memory much more than they can comprehend. But, then, that is only a small feature of the classical model.
Posted by: Bob at February 18, 2006 01:01 PMMichelle,
Don’t be too harsh on Ryan for the Proverbs allusion. NOTE: He said,
Classical education is not a panacea, and it does not make people perfect. But it is a logical, ordered approach that some consider to be biblically-based—especially considering how similar the stages are to the biblical key words from Proverbs. The grammar stage corresponds well with knowledge, the logic stage with understanding and the rhetoric stage with wisdom.(emphasis mine)
Clearly, Ryan is not making an exegetical argument. He is simply pointing out that some see it that way. And though he did not discredit it, the fact that some see it in that light seems to add weight to Ryan’s over-arching purpose which is to stimulate interest in the model — even if it is only to investigate it a bit further.
Posted by: Bob at February 18, 2006 01:09 PMMichelle,
I appreciate your consternation and happy that you are considering the model. This comment doesn’t specifically address your comments but just generally gives you a broader idea of what we’re doing here with classical education.
As a principal, the term classical education means little to me. Beyond the spiritual advantages of a Christian education, my big idea is that I want to teach students how to learn something and to know how they learned it. Now it happens that this classical model is what I’ve found that best fits, so I am pursuing it until shown otherwise.
My school started as an ACE school. That’s what we needed then in 1976. It then transitioned to an A Beka school, which is just what we needed to grow. Now it’s making this other long transition. We do not advertise as a classical school at this point, and I am not currently recommending that we ever do. We are putting in print that we are classically-minded. We like the concept of the Trivium. We don’t treat it as Gospel, but we here like the concept and try to cater to it.
Our current curriculum is almost exactly 1/3 A Beka (I want this lower), 1/3 BJU Press and 1/3 other. My staff and I have discussed one of the questions you raise about the distinctions between the parts. I’ve exhorted the Grammar stage teachers hard not to quench a students desire to understand. Bob’s comment above was perfect. We in no way seek to hinder or handicap students. We WANT them in that next level.
For the two years before we started implementing parts of this model, my biggest detractor was one of my most seasoned teachers (she was a student favorite). She ended up resigning as we started the change. After three years, she really wanted to come back. She realized her negative perceptions were unfounded and the advantage this style of education was having on the students. If her family hadn’t moved out of state, I would have welcomed her back.
While an accurate summation of the full consequences and results of CCE would be handy. There are so few doing it, under so many varying circumstances, that I would not expect them until your kids start considering where to send their kids to school.
I have a multigenerational approach to classical education. While I believe I have the gist of learning how to learn down, I’ve missed a lot. CCE is not for me. Really, and unfortunately, I think it will be too late for my kids to get the full benefit also (I have three sons age 4 and under). I want to be doing what I am doing for the sake of my grandkids and their kids.
While this could cause me to despair, it also reminds me to get going, because I don’t know anyone else doing anything about it.
I would say to the seeker parent, do something. If you can’t do anything else, add Latin to your A Beka curriculum. Hire someone to teach formal logic if you can’t. There are all sorts of levels of action to this recommendation.
There are always ways of doing something different. I have lots of complaints about my school and classical education. So I make my adjustments slowly and patiently…and in much hope. Hoping in God and my staff and my students and my parents…
I would advise you, Michelle, and others, not to wait and see about the results. I’m not too impressed with the results of the traditional education.
Study and learn and pray and act.
Posted by: Ryan at February 18, 2006 03:19 PM“Classical Christian education should be investigated thoroughly before it is even partially repudiated”
“I would advise you, Michelle, and others, not to wait and see about the results. I’m not too impressed with the results of the traditional education.”
Ryan, you appear to contradict yourself somewhat here. I do believe that CCE should be thoroughly investigated. Should I then deem it wise to discard any concern about the results of the model? Telling me not to worry about results is not comforting.
I like the goals of CCE. But goals alone don’t convince me that the model is sound. Telling me how bad several alternative are doesn’t help. Neither does pointing to the apparent succes of the classical education in years gone by. What evidence is there that Latin is a better language than any other language to learn? Perhaps the benefits touted would be met with another language that has more benefits than Latin? How do you know? How does the stages of learning actually change what you were doing before? How do you know it’s better? How do you know what is making the difference? Surely the components of CCE have been studied in some form or another, even if the CCE model is relatively new.
I grew up with non-traditional Fundamentalist parents. They, more than any method of schooling, were instrumental in helping me learn to enjoy the thrill of the discipline of learning, to experience a desire to know something and have the ability to find out the answer by myself.
I’ve enjoyed reading about what you are doing. I will indeed be watching this model in the next few years. But I’ll have to see more evidence before I subscribe to it. I look forward to seeing it.
Michelle
