What is Classical Education?

We need to define classical education. It's in a bit of a resurgence; you could even call it a comeback. We'll settle for a high level intro here. Dr. Chris Perrin gives us a few frames of reference for how to understand classical as a modifier for education. 

The first is that it came from the classical period of Greece; this is where ancient philosophers were trying to figure out life and asking big questions. So, it's classical because the basis of the method came from the classical era. Classical can also refer to the classics, which are the most impactful pieces of output over the course of human history: art, music, philosophy, literature, etc. For example: it's said that all of Western science is a footnote on Aristotle until the Enlightenment; and all of medieval and Reformational theology is a footnote on Augustine. These historical works and others have shaped centuries of Western thought. This helps explain why modern classical education emphasizes going back to the original sources, a distinctive also referred to as ad fontes. 

Classical education is a liberal arts education: that means we teach grammar, logic, and rhetoric—the language arts—and we teach the quadrivium, which are arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. These are the mathematical arts. It's classical because this method is about 1,000 years old; the pieces were present in the classical era and in early church history, but the medieval scholars formalized and gave structure to the liberal arts to create the free thinker, the Renaissance man. 

The liberal arts in modern classical education are engaged in unique ways as students develop. These emphases are why we call our schools grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The opposite of classical education would be progressive education. Much could be said here, but I don't think we need to go farther than to say the biggest difference is authority. Classical education sees the received tradition as authoritative. We need to conform to the wisdom of our predecessors, to learn from them, before we have the understanding needed to disagree with or to improve on their ideas. Progressive education does not value the ad fontes principle in a way that sufficiently exposes students to the Great Conversation that has progressed through the ages to us today. 

Perrin gives this statement as a condensed definition of classical education: Classical education is the authoritative, traditional, and enduring form of education, begun by the Greeks and Romans, developed through history, and now being renewed and recovered in the twenty-first century.

Here are three ways Rose City is adopting classical methodology: The first implication is that your student's education will spiral and web. This means grades 1, 5, and 9 focus on ancient history. Grades 2, 6, and 10 focus on medieval history. Grades 3, 7, and 11 focus on the Reformation and the growth of nations. Lastly, grades 4, 8, and 12 look to the modern era. This is designed so that students are exposed to the events, the ideas that led up to and came from those events, and the literature of those specific time periods. They are then challenged to understand the relationships between the facts of history. Lastly, they are prepared to communicate their own understandings about it. They're able to do this because they've done the reading. 

The second implication is that your child will do a lot of reading and of primary sources as much as possible. For example, the first grader may have a condensed version of The Iliad or The Odyssey read to him; then he'll read The Children's Homer in fifth grade; and the same student in ninth grade will read Homer's original works. By spiraling the information this way, our goal is to make sure they understand history as a timeline but also see literature and ideas from the particular eras as familiar acquaintances—and from the horse's mouth. 

The last implication is that your child will write papers often. We prepare students through years of Latin, sentence diagramming, and logic courses to make them clear thinkers and effective communicators. The final stage of a classical student's education requires them to produce and defend a thesis. This is a 15-20 page paper that reflects the student's ability to synthesize new ideas and applications based on ancient wisdom. I hope this has been helpful to clarify the ideas and outworking of classical education.