Rusty Benson

AFA Journal associate editor

September 2001 – Shelley Crampton, 1986 graduate of University of Texas School of Law, and mother of six, is going back to school, but not to advance her career or to earn another degree.

Crampton, like many Christian parents, has discovered Classical Christian Education (CCE). For the opportunity of giving her children what has been called "a timeless introduction to knowledge based on the Scripture," Shelley has become both enthusiastic student and homeschool teacher. Her demanding curriculum includes Latin, logic, literature, theology, the great books, people and events and ideas of western civilization.

"Parents must be willing to say, 'I want a classical education myself,'" says Peter Vaughn of parents considering home-schooling using the CCE methodology. "If a parent is enthusiastic about learning, the child will be." Vaughn is the headmaster of a CCE school in Lyon, France. 

Like most CCE evangelists, he says classical Christian education works in a homeschool or in a conventional school environment like the three CCE schools he has served.

Back to the future
Classical education is not new. Some say its roots are in the Middle Ages. Others contend that Hebrew schools in Old Testament times used this methodology. Regardless of its origin, it is important that American parents know it was the dominant educational scheme before the rise of the modern public school system.

In recent years its popularity has surged, especially among Christian parents. Patch Blakey, executive director of the Association of Classical and Christian Schools (ACCS) says the book Rediscovering the Lost Tools of Learning by Douglas Wilson has been a primary reason.

Wilson founded Logos School in Moscow, Idaho, in 1981. It has been the flagship school for the CCE movement. ACCS - now with 125 member schools in 38 states and two overseas - was formed when the overwhelming response to Wilson's book made it apparent that an organization was needed to handle all the requests for help and information.

"Classical education seeks to be rooted in a biblical view on the way God made mankind, so it very naturally cooperates with children, developmentally and spiritually," says Vaughn. "The results are amazing because each child is treated as an individual and there are no arbitrary standards."

The heart of classical education is the "trivium," a three-part syllabus intended to teach students the fundamental tools of learning - grammar, logic, and rhetoric.

In the grammar stage - approximately pre-kindergarten through sixth grade - students learn language skills and basic facts through recitation, memorization, and repetition. CCE experts and parents agree that during these years a child's memory is like a sponge, absorbing large amounts of facts whose significance may not be understood until later.

Early teens progress into the logic stage when their thinking, reasoning and questioning skills begin to develop. Curriculum focuses on developing students' abilities to think abstractly. For example, in the logic stage, students might wrestle with understanding the actions of early American patriots in light of a Christian's duty to obey the governing authorities.

During the logic stage students also begin to see more and more that all knowledge is connected - an undergirding philosophy of classical education. Literature overlaps history, which overlaps theology and so forth. ".You find that you cannot truly understand anything without knowing a little about everything," writes Fritz Hinrichs, a private tutor in Escondido, California, who promotes classical education in the homeschool community.

Blakey says for homeschooling parents, the challenge to teach becomes greater in this stage. Forming educational co-ops with other homeschool families allows parents to specialize their teaching skills, then share them with other families.

The third period is the rhetoric stage, roughly ninth through twelfth grades. Dorothy Sayers, whose 1947 essay The Lost Tools of Learning is a founding document for the modern classical education movement, called this period the "Poetic Age." The student moves from grasping the logical sequence of arguments to learning how to express and communicate them persuasively.

The rhetoric level includes a heavy diet of an integrated history/English curriculum. This is the leg of the trivium in which students read many of the great works of western civilization, from the ancient world through the Middle Ages, the Reformation, and modern age.

Before beginning CCE homeschooling two years ago, Crampton's children were in public schools. "One of the most dramatic differences I saw was in what the public school called 'higher order thinking skills,' a pseudo-logic class emphasizing emotions and feelings over facts, with the ultimate goal of self-actualization or relativism. CCE, by contrast, builds from hard facts in the grammar stage, analyzes and debates these facts in the logic and rhetoric states, with the ultimate goal of equipping the child to discover 'veritas' or absolute truth. It is more demanding, but the fruits are everlasting."

Classical Christian Education
Wilson writes that historically, classical education has come in three forms. Pagan classicalism emphasizes the golden eras of ancient Greece and Rome. Mixed classicalism attempts to combine the philosophy of Aristotle, for example, with the theology of Christianity.

In Christian classicalism, students are "trained to evaluate human insights by the yardstick of the Bible's training, not vice versa," Wilson writes. He calls the Apostle Paul the "first biblical classicist." Wilson says that while Paul was "thoroughly trained in classical languages, literature, and philosophy, his intention was to bring every thought captive to the risen Christ."

Wilson also argues that America has lost its heritage because parents have failed to educate their children properly and in the same manner as did the nation's founding fathers.

"Government schools are doing something fundamentally different from what a classical Christian school is doing," Vaughn says. Furthermore, classical Christian education is vastly different than the approach of most Christian schools, he contends. "[Most Christian schools] accept the education philosophy taught in American colleges - eliminate the most obnoxious aspects of government curricula and add Bible and morality. That is neither classical education, nor consistent biblical education."

Another distinctive of the classical Christian schools where Vaughn has served as headmaster is the emphasis on teaching the biblical concept of self-discipline. "God has standards, but He is not heavy-handed in saying everybody has to do things the same way," he says. "We try to take into account the fall of man. While there are tight discipline and consistent consequences when the rules are broken, the kids have the option of breaking the rules. That is much different from much of Christian education where the emphasis is put on not even coming close to breaking the rules."

When all has been heard
"My goal is that my children get wisdom," Crampton says. "By giving them the tools to get wisdom they will be able to converse with anyone and fulfill the mandate of Christ's church. My hope is that they will be godly leaders in all areas of their lives - home, church and hopefully society at large."

Blakey says CCE seeks to produce young men and women with "Godly humility and a deep and abiding love for their creator and His creation. They are not only eager to learn all they can, but they will be able to evaluate all the input from their culture in the light of Scripture."

These young people are not separatists, but ready to engage the world with God's truth and "do it enthusiastically, humbly, graciously and persuasively," he says.

The rewards of classical Christian education are both spiritual and academic, according to Vaughn. He says as the movement continues to mature, classically trained students will be increasingly different from their public school student counterparts: "Our ninth graders will read and write better than most college freshmen, our seventh graders will have a love of learning and respect for authority that is disappearing from state schools, and our fifth graders will have a confidence in God that gives them confidence that they can learn anything and be all God meant them to be - something most college graduates never achieve."  

CCE Resources
Association of Classical and Christian Schools
P.O. Box 9741
Moscow, ID 83843
Phone: 208-882-6101
Internet: classicalchristian.org

Covenant Classical School Association
P.O. Box 1601
Franklin, TN 37605
Phone: 615-595-4386
Internet: www.covenantclassical.org

The Lost Tools of Learning – An essay by Dorothy Sayers. Available at www.gbt.org

Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning
by Douglas Wilson
Available online bookstores.