What Is Classical Education?
Age-specific learning (the Trivium)
A classical Christian education maximizes the God-given strengths of students at each stage of growth to help them learn. For young children memory comes easily and is enhanced by the natural tendency to sing, chant and rhyme. Through memory, a strong foundation is laid in each subject. Middle school students tend to be inquisitive, and so they learn to ask the right questions, reason and discern truth. High school students desire to know and be known through communication, so they learn to speak and write their ideas persuasively while applying all three parts of the trivium - grammar, dialectic and rhetoric - as they pursue each academic discipline.
Time-tested approach
For more than 2,000 years, classical education was the nursery of Western Civilization. Classical education emphasized the liberal arts as a means to develop political and cultural leaders who could think for themselves and govern themselves. Students were taught that every subject is comprised of certain defining facts with orderly organization of the information, and a concise, persuasive way in which to present the acquired material. From this great intellectual heritage came many of our early church fathers, the Reformers, the founders of our country, and many of the world's most influential people. This rich tradition continued until the late nineteenth century when progressive educators took modern education into a new era of utilitarianism and pragmatism. A return to the "old way" of educating produces students who are knowledgeable and thoughtful and equipped to live a life of learning, who will be most useful to God in the church and in the world.
Rigorous, Integrated and Christ-Centered
A classical education is systematic and rigorous, but the goal is to lead students to love learning as they discover truth, beauty and goodness in all they study. Subjects are not self-contained and isolated, rather knowledge is viewed as a web with subject areas intertwined. In classical Christian education, all subjects are taught based on the principle that God is the Creator of all that exists, and therefore all knowledge is interrelated and points back to Him. The culture in which students are taught helps to mold and shape their loves and affections and leads them to Christ who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. A true classical Christian education marries the rigor with a peaceful delight in learning.
A classical Christian education maximizes the God-given strengths of students at each stage of growth to help them learn. For young children memory comes easily and is enhanced by the natural tendency to sing, chant and rhyme. Through memory, a strong foundation is laid in each subject. Middle school students tend to be inquisitive, and so they learn to ask the right questions, reason and discern truth. High school students desire to know and be known through communication, so they learn to speak and write their ideas persuasively while applying all three parts of the trivium - grammar, dialectic and rhetoric - as they pursue each academic discipline.
Time-tested approach
For more than 2,000 years, classical education was the nursery of Western Civilization. Classical education emphasized the liberal arts as a means to develop political and cultural leaders who could think for themselves and govern themselves. Students were taught that every subject is comprised of certain defining facts with orderly organization of the information, and a concise, persuasive way in which to present the acquired material. From this great intellectual heritage came many of our early church fathers, the Reformers, the founders of our country, and many of the world's most influential people. This rich tradition continued until the late nineteenth century when progressive educators took modern education into a new era of utilitarianism and pragmatism. A return to the "old way" of educating produces students who are knowledgeable and thoughtful and equipped to live a life of learning, who will be most useful to God in the church and in the world.
Rigorous, Integrated and Christ-Centered
A classical education is systematic and rigorous, but the goal is to lead students to love learning as they discover truth, beauty and goodness in all they study. Subjects are not self-contained and isolated, rather knowledge is viewed as a web with subject areas intertwined. In classical Christian education, all subjects are taught based on the principle that God is the Creator of all that exists, and therefore all knowledge is interrelated and points back to Him. The culture in which students are taught helps to mold and shape their loves and affections and leads them to Christ who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. A true classical Christian education marries the rigor with a peaceful delight in learning.
Recommended Reading for Parents
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The Lost Tools of Learning by Dorothy Sayers
An Introduction to Classical Education by Christopher Perrin The Case for Classical and Christian Education by Douglas Wilson Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning by Douglas Wilson Wisdom and Eloquence by Robert Littlejohn & Charles T. Evans The Seven Laws of Teaching by John M. Gregory |
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Family Forms
These forms are included in the registration packet for new students; they are posted here separately for referral and as reminders.
True Christian education is . . . giving a student the framework for total truth, rooted in the Creator’s existence and in the Bible’s teaching, so that in each step of the formal learning process the student will understand what is true and what is false and why it is true or false. It is not isolating students from human knowledge. It is giving the tools in the opening the doors to all human knowledge, in the Christian framework so they will know what is truth and what is untruth, so they can keep learning as long as they live, and they can enjoy, they can really enjoy, the whole wrestling through field after field of knowledge. That is what an educated person is.
-Francis A. Schaeffer
