Trinitas Blog

How classical are you? Take this quick quiz and find out!

Spoiler... there is no quiz; though, our recent forays into remote learning might tempt us to think that the work of classical education is as easy as an online quiz. And anyway, if we were to post an online quiz on remote learning, we would be far more interested in responses to the following question:

Has our experiment in remote learning been a success?

And the follow up question:

In what sense has it been successful?

One can imagine our returning to school, thoroughly thanking everyone for participating in this grand experiment, and calling remote learning a smashing success. But will it really have been a success if all we do is complete math lessons and history worksheets? If that is all it takes to constitute a successful classical Christian education, why do we even spend all day at school? Why not just keep the kids home next year and let them work through a history textbook on their own time?

Two chief goals of classical education are to help students become lifelong learners and to give them the tools they need be successful at learning for the rest of their lives. While a person may catch the bug for learning any time in life, there is no better season for inspiring that love of learning right down into a person’s bones than in the early years before he or she becomes a teenager.

Even though we are barely halfway through the school year, this is enrollment season, and classes are already filling up for next year. Families are touring the school, meeting with our admissions counselor, and drawing comparisons between classical Christian and other models. At Trinitas our kindergarten classes are nearing full and we have accepted a few students for other open seats in the grammar school. The grammar school is where most of our effort to bring in new students is focused. There are two other natural entry points for schools: seventh and ninth grades. While we do accept students in those grades occasionally, it can be difficult to enter a classical school that late in one’s academic career, especially as late as ninth grade.

One of the mantras of classical Christian education is “repair the ruins.” The line comes from John Milton, that seventeenth century English poet and intellectual who wrote the classic, Paradise Lost. Milton wrote on a host of other topics, including education, and once wrote,

“The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him.”

The classical educator sees himself as a servant in this labor, a guide to his students. But repairing the ruins and redeeming truth, goodness, and beauty which has been lost by our culture is not confined to the classroom.  

We continue our classical parents series this week, discussing how parents who choose a classical Christian education for their children are dedicated. The first week we established that classical parents have to be dedicated to going against the status quo in education because cCe is so different from the education most of us are most familiar with. Last week parent participation was the topic. Classical parents are dedicated to participating in their children’s education, and they are invited and encouraged to do just that in cCe schools. This week we will close out the series for now by discussing the most important of three ways classical parents are dedicated: they are dedicated to the role of the Scriptures in the education of their children.

Last week we started a series about classical parents. The word we used to describe parents who choose classical Christian education for their children is dedicated. In the first installment we said classical parents are dedicated in at least three distinct ways, and we explored the first way: classical parents are dedicated in the way they buck the system, or go against the grain of modern, progressive education. This week we really begin to get to the heart of classical parents as we discuss how they are dedicated to participating in their children’s education.

Classical Christian schools can come across as pretty odd to most folks. While Latin can still be found in other private and public schools, not many schools teach six years of it. (I know of one classical Christian school that teaches eleven years of Latin.) And good books can certainly be found in other private and public schools, but not very many will read Homer, Virgil, Plato, Augustine, Rousseau, and Nietzsche. Memory is part of learning no matter what kind of school one attends, but not many schools will memorize hundreds of lines of prose, poetry, and Scripture every year. So yes, classical Christian schools can come across as odd even if only because of differences like these.

Parents who send their children to classical schools often have to defend that decision to their siblings, their friends, and even their own parents. The conversations can be tense, and especially so if everyone involved received a free public education. It isn’t as though your friends and relations know a lot about education; it is more likely their opinions have been informed by public debate, federal initiatives, and the latest trends. If the parents defending classical are sacrificing financially to afford the education, they often find themselves doubly on the defense. Points of debate include uniforms, classroom rigor, Latin, and always, always classical education’s lack of emphasis on STEM.