February 17, 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 PM
