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Classical Christian Education: A Growing Trend

  • Debra Bell Columnist, author and conference speaker
  • Published Jun 18, 2002
Classical Christian Education: A Growing Trend

Over the next few months, I want to use this column to introduce you to some of the growing trends in the home-school community. My first topic is the classical Christian movement. These schools are springing up around the country at an astonishing rate, but what about home schoolers? Can we apply this educational model in our homes? No one knows better than Susan Wise Bauer, home-school graduate, college professor and author of The Well-Trained Mind.

This week, I've asked Susan to define this model for us.

Could you please define classical Christian education for our readers?

Classical doesn't mean a return to the content taught in Greek and Roman schools. If it did, a classical education would mean Latin and Greek language instruction, the reading of Latin and Greek literature, and the study of mathematics. I think this would strike most parents as a partial education!

Rather, classical refers to a pattern of training the mind first used in medieval education, and followed in European and even in American schools until relatively recently. Classical education proposes that learning take place in three stages. The early years of school are spent in absorbing facts, systematically laying the foundations for advanced study. In the middle grades, students learn to think through arguments. In the high school years, they learn to express themselves. This classical pattern is called the trivium.

An Overview of the Trivium

The first years of schooling are called the "grammar stage" -- not because you spend four years doing English, but because these are the years in which the building blocks for all other learning are laid. In the elementary school years (what we commonly think of as grades one through four) the mind is ready to absorb information, but not necessarily to criticize or analyze it. Children at this age actually find memorization fun, but many will be frustrated by curricula that force them to draw conclusions from evidence. So during this period, education focuses on the learning of facts: rules of phonics and spelling, rules of grammar, poems, the vocabulary of foreign languages, the stories of history and literature, descriptions of plants and animals and the human body, the facts of mathematics. Classical education submerges the child in fascinating information.

By fifth grade, a child's mind begins to think more analytically. Middle-school students are less interested in finding out facts than in asking "Why?" The second phase of the classical education, the "Logic Stage," is a time when the child begins to pay attention to cause and effect. A student is ready for the Logic Stage when the capacity for abstract thought begins to mature. During these years, the student begins algebra and the study of logic, and begins to apply logic to all academic subjects. The logic of writing, for example, includes paragraph construction and learning to support a thesis; the logic of reading involves the criticism and analysis of texts, not simple absorption of information; the logic of history demands that the student find out why the War of 1812 was fought, rather than simply reading its story; the logic of science requires that the child learn the scientific method.

The final phase of a classical education, the "Rhetoric Stage," builds on the first two. At this point, the high school student learns to write and speak with force and originality. The student of rhetoric applies the rules of logic learned in middle school to the foundational information learned in the early grades and expresses his conclusions in clear, forceful, elegant language. Students also begin to specialize in whatever branch of knowledge attracts them; these are the years for art camps, college courses, foreign travel, apprenticeships, and other forms of specialized training.

But a classical education is more than simply a pattern of learning. Classical education is language-focused; learning is accomplished through words, written and spoken, rather than through images (pictures, videos, and television). Language-learning and image-learning require very different habits of thought. Language requires the mind to work harder; in reading, the brain is forced to translate a symbol (words on the page) into a concept. Images, such as those on videos and television, allow the mind to be passive. In front of a video screen, the brain can "sit back" and relax; faced with the written page, the mind is required to roll its sleeves up and get back to work.

The Focus Is History

Classical education also focuses around history. To the classical mind, all knowledge is interrelated. Astronomy (for example) isn't studied in isolation; it's learned along with the history of scientific discovery, which leads into the church's relationship to science and from there to the intricacies of medieval church history. The reading of the Odyssey leads the student into the consideration of Greek history, the nature of heroism, the development of the epic, and man's understanding of the divine.

This is easier said than done. The world is full of knowledge, and finding the links between fields of study can be a mind-twisting task. A classical education meets this challenge by taking history as its organizing outline -- beginning with the ancients and progressing forward to the moderns in history, science, literature, art and music.

We suggest that the twelve years of education consist of three repetitions of the same four-year pattern: Ancients, Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation, and Modern Times. The child studies these four time periods at varying levels -- simple for grades 1-4, more difficult in grades 5-8 (when the student begins to read original sources), and taking an even more complex approach in grades 9-12, when the student works through these time periods using original sources (from Homer to Hitler) and also has the opportunity to pursue a particular interest (music, dance, technology, medicine, biology, creative writing) in depth. The other subject areas of the curriculum are linked to history studies. The student who is working on ancient history will read Greek and Roman mythology, the tales of the Iliad and Odyssey, early medieval writings, Chinese and Japanese fairy tales, and (for the older student) the classical texts of Plato, Herodutus, Virgil, Aristotle. She'll read Beowulf, Dante, Chaucer, and Shakespeare the following year, when she's studying medieval and early Renaissance history. When the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are studied, she starts with Swift (Gulliver's Travels) and ends with Dickens; finally, she reads modern literature as she is studying modern history.

The sciences are studied in a four-year pattern that roughly corresponds to the periods of scientific discovery: biology, classification and the human body (subjects known to the ancients); earth science and basic astronomy (which flowered during the early Renaissance); chemistry (which came into its own during the early modern period); and then basic physics and computer science (very modern subjects).

This pattern lends coherence to the study of history, science, and literature -- subjects that are too often fragmented and confusing. The pattern widens and deepens as the student progresses in maturity and learning. For example, a first grader listens to you read the story of the Iliad from one of the picture book versions available at any public library. Four years later, the fifth grader reads one of the popular middle-grade adaptations -- Olivia Coolidge's The Trojan War, or Roger Lancelyn Greene's Tales of Troy. Four more years go by, and the ninth grader faced with the Iliad itself -- plunges right in, undaunted.

Sounds fascinating and rigorous, but what about the Christian part?

Why haven't I said anything about Christian? Because I strongly believe that parents who are Christians will give their children a Christian education while following this pattern. We say in our book, The Well-Trained Mind, that it is impossible to be neutral in education. And this is particularly true for classical education, which centers around the discussion of ideas. These questions cannot be answered without taking a stand on issues of truth. I don't believe that a Christian education consists of using math or grammar programs that continually cite Bible verses; rather, a Christian education is one that grapples with the ideas of history, science, and literature in the light of God's truth, revealed in Scripture and through the faithful obedience of Christ's church. If you want to give your children a classical Christian education, you'll have to work at it; there are plenty of resources to help you, of course, but you'll have to commit yourself to faithful membership in a local church, and to continual self-education in the foundations of your own beliefs, so that you can provide your children with the wise discipleship they need as they encounter the ideas good and bad, true and false of men and women throughout history.

Next time, Susan gives us a peek into her home-schooling day, discusses her favorite resources, and tells us what's up next on her creative agenda.

In His Sovereign Grace,

Debra