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SOME INTERESTING FACTS RELATED
TO CLASSICAL CHRISTIAN EDUCATION
Which of America’s founding
fathers were educated in the classical Christian
tradition?
At the time of the
founding fathers, all schools used the method
which inspired the rebirth of classical &
Christian education. John Adams (and his
wife Abigail), John Quincy Adams, John Hancock,
Samuel Adams
and Patrick Henry are just a few examples of
those who were formally classically educated in
a Christian worldview. Most of the other
founding fathers, including Thomas Jefferson, were also
classically educated.
In which of CS Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia does
Lewis allude to the benefits of classical education
and the dangers of modern education?
In The Lion, the
Witch, and the Wardrobe, the professor from
whom Peter and Susan seek guidance regarding the
magic wardrobe exclaims:
"'Logic!' ...
'Why don't they teach Logic at these schools?.'"
The professor again refers to classical
education in The Last Battle, "It's all
in Plato, all in Plato: bless me, what do
they teach them at these schools!" Since formal Logic,
philosophy, and the great books are central in
classical schools and are all but absent in
modern schools, the
criticisms are something less than veiled.
In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and
The Silver Chair, Lewis refers negatively to the modern school which Eustace attends as "Experiment House".
Modern education is characterized by
experimentation with curricula and learning
methods, rather than holding to the classical
model of education. Taken in
concert with "The Abolition of Man" and "Screwtape
Proposes a Toast", Lewis takes the
opportunity to critique the direction that
modern education is progressing.
Which
scholar and
Chief Editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica
began a return to classical education?
While Mortimer Adler
is the immediate answer, Robert Hutchings also
played a role, as did dozens of scholars from
across the country and in Europe. In the
1950's, they began one of the most academically
ambitious initiatives of the 20th century.
They convinced the Encyclopedia Britannica
company to fund and publish a 54 volume set of
the Great Books of the Western World. As
if agreeing on the list of books was not enough,
they developed a 2 volume index to the Great
Ideas-- 103 ideas that shaped Western culture.
From Angels to Love, from Sin to Man, the ideas
we take for granted were thoroughly documented
in their development. Each idea was
followed through the course of those thinkers
who developed them-- Aristotle, Plutarch,
Virgil, Augustine, Aquinas, Locke, and dozens of
others. The masterwork was then completed
with a "Great Conversation" reading course that
takes the student through them at varying levels
of complexity. We use this as a roadmap
for our upper school reading program.
Adler went on to use it in the
Paideia Schools which he founded. Many
of these schools remain some of the country's
finest, following the classical model.
In which Idaho city
was the restoration of Classical Christian
education begun in recent times?
Logos School in
Moscow, Idaho is probably the first new
classical Christian school founded in recent
times. It was founded in 1981 by a group
of Christians, one of whom was Douglas Wilson.
He later wrote extensively on the success of
this school in "The Lost Tools of
Learning." Oddly, Classical education's
cultural history is in the northeast and the
south. In both of those regions, many
schools still practice some form of classical
education left from colonial times. These
schools tend to be highly academic and expensive
preparatory schools. (Examples include
Phillips Exeter,
Phillips Andover, and
Boston Latin School. Today these are
liberal and non-Christian, but a vestige of
their original classical Christian tradition can
still be seen.) Classical Christian
circles remain dominated by southern and
northeast schools. It certainly does seem
providential that the first of these schools was in
Idaho.
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