With the recent growth of the classical school movement in the United States – and beyond – it seems those of us who work in such schools are now officially part of a “movement”.
With that comes the desire to understand what the movement is about, is it unified, what does it stand for, and what is, for families, the return on their investment?
To be upfront, writing about the benefits of a classical and specifically classical and Christian education has been something I have thought about and started on several different occasions, along with speaking about it to the parents, donors, and prospective families at Oakdale Academy for the past five years. The immediate design in writing this series, however, comes from an article from Arcadia Education titled "Market Analysis of the U.S. Classical Education in Grades PK-12”.
In this article, Arcadia notes nine primary benefits of a classical education; I will write about several of these during this series of articles.
To begin, we look at the first benefit the article mentioned – Morality – Respect for Right and Wrong. The Arcadia article notes that,
“through the early reading of Aesop’s fables, recitations of famous works, the study of the Great Books, and Socratic seminars, students learn time-tested values and grapple with human morality – what it meant to ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, and how that understanding has evolved to contemporary times with an elevated view of the dignity of the human person.”
As the classical and Christian school movement grows, this is something that is told to parents during the admissions process as a major (and easily identifiable) difference with government-run schools. One need only look to a news feed about public education today to see the morals have changed dramatically away from the bedrock of both Christianity and Western Civilization.
That growth has come in various areas, as the Arcadia article points out, including a host of Christian schools, charter schools, and a tremendous growth in homeschooling over the past few years. Many of those who have sought alternatives to their local public school have done so, one surmises, from dissatisfaction with enough of what is done or taught (or not done or not taught) to cause a fundamental shift in view of what education is truly geared toward.
As those parents come to classical Christian schools, we have the joy of telling them we stand firm on morality not only of the prevailing cultural changes, but firm on a morality fixed in the questions asked by the ancient philosophers, explained in the teachings of Jesus, and spread by the early Church through the persecutions and further when Christianity became the accepted faith and the intellectual heirs of the Roman Empire upon its collapse in the 5th Century.
Parents appreciate in my experience that strong stance, but the goals of a classical Christian education in terms of morality go much deeper than a quick history lesson that balances these uncertain times. What we do in classical Christian schools is to guide our students to the realization that there truly is a ‘right’ and a ‘wrong’ and that those are not transient things that alter over time, feelings, or polls.
We cultivate not simply knowledge and blind obedience, but wisdom and virtuous living. We seek to demonstrate for our students in our own lives and in the lives of the heroes (and villains) we read about what it looks like to live a life of virtue and good morality in this world.
At the same time, we seek for our students to see a greater experience in their Christian faith by living contra mundum – against the world. We discuss with them bedrock principles grounded in our faith and then – as they grow older – why living against the world is the way we shine Christ’s light and love to the world.
In the article, Arcadia mentioned that the cultivation of virtuous character was
“The core of classical education is the development of strong personal character that recognizes and appreciates the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. As Thomas Aquinas and other luminaries taught, the virtues are “skills” that can be learned and that represent a worthy lifelong pursuit for every human being.”
All this points to the great questions and great conversation that has existed since ancient Greece (and likely beforehand).
We use the great stories to guide our students to the answers of “why am I here?”, “what should I do with my life?”, or “how should I respond to (enter situation or person)?” These are far from the extent of questions students ask, but simply representative of those we see and hear each year in schools.
With a grounding in reading about how others dealt with those questions – both well and not well – we are able to show an even greater backdrop for the accounts of the Bible and the teachings of Jesus.
We use the liberal arts to truly ‘free’ our students to an understanding that goes beyond the ‘old things’ we study to an opportunity to a greater and deeper relationship with their Savior.
While this article from Acadia does a fine job of showing the return on the investment for parents and the ensuing growth of the classical movement, our work is very personal in nature and is measured much more in a qualitative sense where we pour into our students, cultivate their loves, and help shape their affections – Augustine’s concept of the ordo amoris in order to point them always to God and encourage their service to Him as a disciple that knows their moral foundation and will therefore be able to impact their family and community for Him.