Episode 8: America’s Education Past and Future
Over the last seven episodes, we have gone through the history of education in America and found some fascinating connections and facts. Today, we are going to look at a possible future for education.
Throughout this mini-series, I have referenced the book Battle for the American Mind by Pete Hegseth and David Goodwin. Today I will be returning this book as they laid out a plan for America’s future educational path. One that centers around the original pedagogy for our nation, the Classical Christian Education model. Don’t let the name scare you before we dig in.
The Classical Christian Education model produced world class leaders such as Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, and Hamilton. I like how Pete and David put some numbers to this. During that time, there were around 3 million people in this nation, and this model produced six wise leaders. So, with a population around 245 million today, we should expect to see at least 480 leaders like these men. Yet, we struggle to find just one.
So, what is this Classical Christian Education model? Why did we veer away from it? How do we get back to it?
The previous episodes went over the why we veered away from it. The progressive agenda began to steer the education ship in another direction and, generations later, it was completely forgotten.
I like the description Pete and David give at the start of chapter 10. They compare our current educational dilemma to a capsized ship. When things first started moving away from the Classical Christian Education model, it felt weird and off kilter to everyone. Now that we have been living in this “capsized” state for so long, righting the ship feels unnatural. However, if we do not right the ship, it will eventually sink.
There are CCE (Classical Christian Education) schools around the nation. In fact, you can visit the Association of Classical Christian School’s website to find these schools and learn more about this model. Today I am going to give you a quick overview from the book Battle for the American Mind.
Here is their description of what you will see and hear when walking into a classical Christian school.
You’ll inevitably see uniforms, hear children greet you politely, and possibly see them stand when you enter the room. The rooms are orderly, and the décor reflects classical art. . .The children will be joyful and engaged, if you spend time you’ll notice that Latin seems to be sprinkled throughout. From down the hallway, recitations in unison may be about anything, from Bible verses to great men of the Middle Ages. If you stop around the second or third-grade classrooms, students with singsong voices will be reciting jingles as they diagram sentences to gain a precise understanding of grammar. (Battle for the American Mind, page 195)
That is a far cry from what you will see and hear when walking into any public school, and even some private schools. It amazes me that this used to be the norm in our public classrooms for centuries.
Within these schools, you find that history is everywhere from Ancient, Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Byzantine, early Anglo-Saxon, medieval, French, German, Asian, right down to American history. This is always taught right alongside biblical and church history. Their schedule and coursework are oriented around a historical context.
CCE studies the world as a single, connected system; a single story unfolding from beginning to end. Heroes and villains are both flawed and to be admired because all people are. In this environment, the timeline of history connects the parts of human knowledge into a wider system of knowledge that can be understood, as students, in an imperfect yet rewarding way, trace God’s hand through time. . .No other faith can claim integration with recorded history like Christianity. No other form of education integrates everything so naturally—history, literature, language, philosophy, theology, science, art, mathematics, and music—into a single system of understanding. And from this integrated study, classical Christian students gain perspective and wisdom as they evaluate story after story through the lens of a Christian viewpoint—not as indoctrination, but rather as they investigate the historical narrative. Could it be that the progressive schools study so little history because they cannot avoid the historicity of Christianity? (Battle for the American Mind, pages 195-196)
We talked in an earlier episode about the Gary project. This was where the progressive school model was put into practice. They took each subject and pulled them apart, making them silos where students gained information to spit back out. A lack of synthesizable connections to other subjects prevented a comprehensive education. Classical Christian Education integrates all subjects, avoiding the tunnel vision our current public-school model creates for students.
I once heard a friend of mine tell a story about her son. He was reading his social studies textbook and came across a word he didn’t know. He stopped and looked at her. She told him, you have the skills to decode that word. He replied with, we only use those skills in reading, not social studies. She was floored especially when she realized he wasn’t saying it to be snarky, he truly believed it.
Classical Christian schools use the Socratic approach. Here is an example from Pete and David’s book.
In secondary classrooms at CCE schools, teachers are widely read in the classics and great ideas. The economics of Adam Smith, Marx, or Keynes relate to the politics of Jefferson, Lenin, or Roosevelt. And these ideas descend from the ideas of Hesiod, Xenophon, and Aristotle, among others. Of course, Matthew 20, 2 Thessalonians 3, and Mark 10:23 shed the light of Truth on the economic discussion. The conversation in the classroom is about all of these people and ideas and scriptures at once, without false partitions. It’s not about information. The real objective is to train minds to think through the ideas carefully. . .A liberated mind is one that can entertain thoughts without accepting them (real tolerance). (Battle for the American Mind, Page 199)
CCE relies less on textbooks and more on great classics. We’ve talked about how easily curriculum is rewritten along with our history in textbooks created to push the progressive agenda. By relying on great classics, CCE schools avoid false information. These books also help teach virtue. CCE uses more storybooks and less fact books.
So, what is a great book? It is a book that has stood the test of time, usually by contributing an original idea to the conversations about Truth, Goodness, and Beauty that descends from at least three millennia of the Western Christian tradition. In general, these works have entered a “canon” by wide recognition. (Battle for the American Mind, page 202)
I have put a link in the blog post where you can view the list of Great Books of the Western World created by Mortimer Adler, the editor of the encyclopedia. Looking through the list, I want to buy them and start reading.
The heart of classical Christian education is the trivium and quadrivium.
Dorothy Sayers brought the seven liberal arts into focus with her 1948 essay, which in 1981 inspired the rebirth of classical Christian education. She prescribed a return to the trivium, which trains students in reasoning and persuasion, and the quadrivium. . . which trains students in a philosophical form of science.
In the first art of trivium—the grammar phase—students in grades K-6 hone their use of language and knowledge as a foundational skill, sharpened in preparation for the next art. . . Students in middle school advance their linguistic skill to the intersection of language and mathematics—“logic” phase. The study of logic takes apart, analyzes, and applies the human capacity of reason so that students can recognize good arguments. Once this is well practiced, students move on to the final phase—rhetoric—to integrate these specialized logic skills with language.
The last four liberal arts—the quadrivium—provide a domain of real-world study upon which the trivium can be applied. . . The quadrivium seeks to encounter God’s wisdom by looking at nature, thereby drawing closer to Wisdom Himself. The four arts of quadrivium are arithmetic (the study of numbers), geometry (the study of space), music (the study of ratios and proportions), and astronomy (the study of motion). (Battle for the American Mind, pages 206-211)
CCE schools require students to study Latin, beginning in elementary school. They may also teach ancient Greek as well. Latin has proven to improve academic success. Many of the words in our English language are Latin origin.
Dorothy Sayers explains that “[a] rudimentary knowledge of Latin cuts down the labor and pains of learning almost any other subject by at least fifty percent. It is the key to the vocabulary and structure of all the Teutonic languages, as well as to the technical vocabulary of all the sciences.” (Battle for the American Mind, page 212)
Douglas Wilson states it well: “Their Latin might revert to zero, but their English will never be the same.” (Battle for the American Mind, page 212)
Christianity is essential to the CCE model. This is not a classical model with Christianity added, instead Christianity is at the center of it. If you recall our earlier episodes where we looked at the history of education in America, the fact that this model was the standard for our country does not surprise you. Our founding fathers and the generations that followed knew that if our public education system became so secular that it did not instill religion, morality, and knowledge based on the principles of Christianity, the government and society would become corrupt and chaotic. I think we can all step back and agree with their assessment.
Please note I gave you the short and skinny on the CCE model. Pete and David’s book Battle for the American Mind will give you the entire picture, so if you have questions, start there. I also recommend a visit the Classical Christian Schools website.
We now stand at a precipice where the direction of our public education system will either drive us over the edge into oblivion or pull us back to not only safe ground, but fertile ground where our children and their children can build a future filled with hope and goodness.
As we head into our final episode, take time to reflect on all that you have heard throughout this series. Then ask yourself, what future do you want for your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and this nation?
Resources and Links
Book- 4 Centuries of American Education by David Barton: https://shop.wallbuilders.com/index.php/four-centuries-of-american-education.html
Book – Separation of Church and State, What the Founders Meant by David Barton: https://shop.wallbuilders.com/index.php/separation-of-church-state-what-the-founders-meant-book.html
Book – Battle for the American Mind by Pete Hegseth and David Goodwin: https://battlefortheamericanmind.com/
