Classical education movement
The classical education movement or renewal advocates for a return to a traditional education based on the liberal arts (including the natural sciences), the canons of classical literature, the fine arts, and the history of civilization.[1] It focuses on human formation and paideia with an early emphasis on music, gymnastics, recitation, imitation, and grammar.[2] Multiple organizations support classical education in charter schools, in independent faith-based schools, and in home education. This movement has inspired several graduate programs[3][4][5][6] and colleges as well as a new peer-reviewed journal, Principia: A Journal of Classical Education.[7]
Recent history
The term classical education has been used in Western cultures for several centuries, with each era modifying the definition and adding its own selection of topics. By the end of the 18th century, in addition to the
Several new organizations and publishers have emerged in support of the growing classical education movement, including Veritas Press, Classical Academic Press (cofounded by Christopher Perrin), Memoria Press, Canon Press, the Circe Institute, Association of Classical Christian Schools, Society for Classical Learning, the Institute for Classical Education, the Classic Learning Test, and the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education.[15]
A number of informal groups and professional organizations have led the classical education movement in the past century. Within the secular classical movement,
Theory of classical education
The classical education movement has borrowed terms used in educational history to name three phases of education.
- "Primary education" teaches students how to learn.
- "Secondary education" then teaches a conceptual framework that can hold all human knowledge (history), fills in basic facts and practices of major fields of knowledge, and develops the fundamental skills of every major human activity.
- "Tertiary education" then prepares a person to pursue an educated profession such as law, theology, military strategy, medicine, or science.
Primary education – the trivium
Primary education is divided into three stages using terms introduced by Dorothy Sayers in her essay The Lost Tools of Learning: "poll-parrot", "pert", and "poetic". According to Sayers, these phases are roughly coordinated with human development and would ideally be coordinated with each individual student's development.[16]
Sayers connects her three stages with the three liberal language arts (
Logic and rhetoric were often taught in part by the Socratic method, in which the teacher raises questions and the class discusses them. By controlling the pace, the teacher can keep the class very lively, yet disciplined.
Grammar
Grammar consists of language skills such as reading and the mechanics of writing. An important goal of grammar is to acquire as many words and manage as many concepts as possible so as to be able to express and understand clearly concepts of varying degrees of complexity. Classical education traditionally included study of Latin and Greek to reinforce understanding of the workings of languages and allow students to read the classics of western civilization untranslated.
Logic
Rhetoric
Rhetorical debate and composition are taught to somewhat older (often high-school-aged) students, who by this point in their education have the concepts and logic to criticize their own work and persuade others. According to Aristotle, "Rhetoric is the counterpart of dialectic", concerned with finding "all the available means of persuasion". Students learn to articulate answers to important questions in their own words, to try to persuade others with these facts, and to defend ideas against rebuttal. The student learns to reason correctly in the Logic stage so that they can now apply those skills to Rhetoric. Traditionally, students would read and emulate classical poets in learning how to present their arguments well.
Secondary education – the quadrivium
Secondary education, classically the quadrivium or "four ways", consists of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Sometimes architecture is taught alongside these, often from the works of Vitruvius. History is taught to provide a context and show political and military development. The classic texts were from ancient authors such as Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, Cicero, and Tacitus. Biographies were often assigned as well, with the classic example being Plutarch's Lives. Biographies help show how persons behave in their context, and the wide ranges of professions and options that exist. As more modern texts became available, these were often added to the curriculum.
In modern terms, these fields might be called history, natural science, accounting and business, fine arts (at least two, one to amuse companions, and another to decorate one's domicile), military strategy and tactics, engineering, agronomy, and architecture.
These are taught in a matrix of history, reviewing the natural development of each field for each phase of the trivium. That is, in a perfect classical education, the historical study is reviewed three times: first to learn the grammar (the concepts, terms and skills in the order developed), next time the logic (how these elements could be assembled), and finally the rhetoric, how to produce good, humanly useful and beautiful objects that satisfy the grammar and logic of the field. History is the unifying conceptual framework, because history is the study of everything that has occurred before the present.
Classical educators consider the Socratic method to be the best technique for teaching critical thinking. In-class discussion and critiques are essential in order for students to recognize and internalize critical thinking techniques. This method is widely used to teach both philosophy and law. It is currently rare in other contexts. Essentially, the teacher referees the students' discussions, asks leading questions, and may refer to facts, but never gives a conclusion until at least one student reaches that conclusion. The learning is most effective when the students compete strongly, even viciously in the argument, but always according to well-accepted rules of correct reasoning. That is, fallacies should not be allowed by the teacher.
By completing a project in each major field of human effort, the student can develop a personal preference for further education and professional training.
Tertiary education – the apprenticeship
Historically, tertiary education was usually an
The early biographies of nobles show what is possibly the ultimate form of classical education: a
Criticism
Lisa VanDamme alleges that the artificial division of children's learning stages into grammar, logic and rhetoric actively retards children's development of critical thinking skills.[17] Additionally, the haphazard way children are introduced to the sciences fails to build conceptual understanding of them.[17]
Prevalence
Around 300 classical Christian schools are members of the
Interpretations of classical education
Classical education in schools
A number of classical schools have been established within the public/secular sector.[citation needed] These schools, primarily founded as charter schools, also structure their curricula and pedagogy around the trivium and integrate the teaching of values (sometimes called "character education") into the mainstream classroom with or without involving any particular religious perspectives.[citation needed] The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had, by Susan Wise Bauer,[24] is a modern reference on classical education. It provides a history of classical education, an overview of the methodology and philosophy of classical education, and annotated lists of books divided by grade and topic that list the best books for classical education in each category.
Another important book summarizing the history and philosophy of classical education is the Liberal Arts Tradition: A Philosophy of Christian Classical Education by Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain.[25] Written by two veteran teachers from a classical school in Orlando, Florida, the book describes the ways in which the classical curriculum of the liberal arts developed and was deployed throughout the centuries. The authors present an overview of the classical liberals using the paradigm of piety, gymnastic, music, the seven liberal arts, philosophy, and theology using the acrostic PGMAPT.
Classical Christian education
These schools tend to rely upon one or more of the visions of classical education represented by Dorothy Sayers' essay "The Lost Tools of Learning",[16] Mortimer Adler's Paideia Proposal, Alfred North Whitehead's The Aims of Education, or Susan Wise Bauer's The Well Trained Mind.[24] Classical Christian schools vary in their approach to the sectarian integration of Christian thinking. Some schools ask parents to sign a statement of faith before attending, some do not require this of parents but are clear in their sectarian teaching, others are consciously ecumenical.
Classical languages
A more traditional view of classical education arises from the ideology of the Renaissance, advocating an education grounded in the languages and literatures of Greece and Rome. The lengthy, rigorous training period required to learn Greek and Latin has been abandoned by most American schools in favor of more contemporary subjects.
The revival of "classical education" has resulted in Latin (and less often Greek) being taught at classical schools. The
See also
- Trivium
- Liberal arts
- Western canon
- Education reform
- New Math
- Grammar school
- Sister Miriam Joseph
- Ramism
- Category:Classical Christian schools
References
- ^ OCLC 470617943
- ^ ISBN 978-1-60051-225-4.
- ^ a b "The Templeton Honors College Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT)". Eastern University. Retrieved 23 December 2022.
- ^ a b "CLASSICAL EDUCATION GRADUATE PROGRAM". University of Dallas Classical Education Graduate Program. Retrieved 23 December 2022.
- ^ a b "Graduate School of Classical Education". Hillsdale College. Retrieved 23 December 2022.
- ^ a b "GRADUATE LEADERSHIP: Classical Cohort". Gordon College. Retrieved 23 December 2022.
- ^ "Principia: A Journal of Classical Education". Principia: A Journal of Classical Education. Retrieved 23 December 2022.
- ^ "DeSantis's Revolutionary Defense of the Classics". WSJ. The Wall Street Journal.
- ^ "Why Conservatives Can't Stop Talking About Aristotle". The New York Times.
- ^ "The Christian Liberal-Arts School at the Heart of the Culture Wars". The New Yorker. 3 April 2023. Archived from the original on 4 April 2023. Retrieved 4 April 2023.
When DeSantis and other Republican politicians try to articulate what they're for—what exactly they want education to look like—one name comes up repeatedly: Hillsdale College. ...In the past decade, Hillsdale has exported its educational philosophy to K-12 schools across the United States, as part of a larger movement to restore "classical education"—a liberal-arts curriculum designed to cultivate wisdom and teach children to pursue the ancient ideals of truth, beauty, and goodness.
- ^ "As Black educators, we endorse classical studies". The Washington Post. 5 April 2023. Archived from the original on 5 April 2023. Retrieved 5 April 2023.
- ^ "The Rise of the Bible-Teaching, Plato-Loving, Homeschool Elitists". Christianity Today. 19 August 2019. Retrieved 23 December 2022.
- ^ "A Classical Education: Back to the Future". The New York Times. 8 June 2010. Retrieved 23 December 2022.
- ^ "The enduring value of classical education". Carolina Journal. 14 November 2022. Retrieved 23 December 2022.
- ^ "Timeline of the Renewal in Classical Education". ClassicalU.com. Retrieved 23 December 2022.
- ^ a b c Sayers, Dorothy (1947). The Lost Tools of Learning (PDF).
- ^ a b VanDamme, Lisa (20 May 2007). "The False Promise of Classical Education". The Objective Standard. Retrieved 16 April 2023.
- ^ "Barney Charter School Initiative". Hillsdale College. Retrieved 23 December 2022.
- ^ "Community". Nyansa Classical Community. 16 June 2020. Retrieved 23 December 2022.
- ^ "Our Story". The Institute for Catholic Liberal Education. Retrieved 23 December 2022.
- ^ "About Classical Conversations". Classical Conversations. Retrieved 23 December 2022.
- ^ "Find a Scholé Community". ClassicalU.com. Retrieved 23 December 2022.
- ^ "Scholé Communities started in 2014 to renew classical and restful education in homeschooling communities". Scholé Communities. Retrieved 23 December 2022.
- ^ )
- ISBN 978-1-60051-225-4.
- OCLC 680284007.
Main articles | |
---|---|
History | |
Organizations | |
Colleges | |
Schools |