Schools have turn out to be a political battleground on either side of the Atlantic in recent times and are sometimes perceived to be hostile to faith. Increasingly, Christians are responding by selecting a really different type of education for his or her children.
Parents are motivated by research that means graduates of what is referred to as ‘classical education’ usually tend to grow as much as be practising Christians, show tolerance and kindness, and achieve necessary areas of life comparable to family and profession.
“Our students are a part of nothing lower than a civilizational renaissance, the revitalized mental tradition of a particular and vibrant Christian culture,” says one classical teacher and theologian, Steve Turley, writing within the Imaginative Conservative.
The goal is to return to a variety of education that was utilized in the West for hundreds of years. Typically, students learn Latin, ancient Greek philosophy, memorise facts, recite poetry, read literary giants like Shakespeare, in addition to studying what’s called the “trivium:” logic, rhetoric, and grammar. There is a deliberate try to nurture Christian values, too.
“The ancient world has much to supply us today in enthusiastic about how we would best teach and encourage young people toward virtue, wisdom, and truth,” says the Society for Classical Learning website, a Christian organisation that supports and encourages classical education.
The number of colleges and residential educators using the classical approach has surged in America over the past 15 years, especially for the reason that pandemic.
This radical type of education is gaining popularity within the UK, too. This weekend classical educators are gathering for a conference in London. A gaggle of British state school teachers plan to open several classical schools in the following few years, comparable to St Anselm’s in Cardiff.
“Our mission is to partner with families to form students who think with depth, imagine with courage and serve with compassion,” headteacher Jamie Burns told Christian Today. “We have been really encouraged by the reception from the church community in Cardiff.
“God is sort of clearly moving people in His church to push against the ways the education system has let our kids down, and it’s a joy to be a component of that.”
The classical style is already popular with British home educators. An increasing variety of Christians are making the selection to homeschool their children on account of concerns about political ideologies being passed to high school children, including radical gender theories. There can be concern a couple of failure of colleges to pass on the Christian faith.
Classical schools will be secular, too. However the classical Western tradition is infused with the Christian faith, and its teachers argue that it has a deeper impact on how a student views the world.
“To restore a Christian paideia [worldview], we would like to revive the patterns of thought and life which have enriched lives in all times and places,” says the web site of the Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS).
“We study all things, using scripture as an interpretive lens. Music, art, entertainment, culture, history, science, and far more is inside our scope.
“We ‘pillage the Egyptians’, within the words of Augustine, by reclaiming all earthly treasures in subjection to Christ. You might see students debating environmental law, or considering excellence in pop music, or studying the insights of Steven Hawking. We promote learning that’s Christ centred, but not isolated from the world and the culture around us.”
Research conducted by Dr David Sikkink on the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, USA, showed that ACCS graduates had higher outcomes in educational attainment, church attendance and involvement, spiritual life and academic success. This effect was demonstrated even in comparison to other forms of different education, including homeschooling and personal Christian schools. Even when adjusting for other aspects linked with higher outcomes, comparable to family income, classical education showed advantages.
Although state education within the UK may be very different to public education within the US, Burns believes that there are particular benefits when comparing classical education to a normal British school.
“A classical Christian education begins with the top in mind: the formation of a complete human being,” he said. “It seeks to teach to form someone who will mature, flourish, and bear fruit, not merely achieve qualifications and go onto the following stage of education.
“This is, in fact, in contrast to a lot of what we see in modern schools. All too often school has turn out to be about collecting as many GCSEs as possible and all the pieces is oriented in that direction.
“Whereas modern education seeks to keep up curricular relevance, classical education pushes against that and as a substitute says that the content our kids learn must be the very best that has been thought and said – what’s referred to as the ‘Great Conversation’.
“Classical Christian education teaches things because they’re true, good or beautiful, and never because they’re culturally relevant or fashionable.”
Despite its popularity, the movement has been related to some controversial characters comparable to conservative Reformed pastors Voddie Baucham and Doug Wilson. However there are quite a lot of proponents who’re centrist or progressive, too, comparable to Jessica Hooten Wilson and Anika Prather.
Professor James Hankins, a historian at Harvard University, rebutted claims that classical education is a “right wing” project.
“Almost everyone I actually have met within the movement avoids making political statements and needs to maintain contemporary politics out of the classroom; that, in a way, is the purpose,” he wrote within the Christian publication First Things.
“They want their students to have the opportunity to receive the deep humanity of Shakespeare and the wonderful music of Milton without having to barter political minefields.”
The London conference is being hosted by Memoria Press, a publisher that specialises in classical education. Its website says it goals to “promote and impart the classical heritage of the Christian West” with a curriculum that “encourages the event of wisdom and virtue through a pursuit of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.
“Our motto is ‘Saving Western Civilization One Student at a Time’ and expresses our passion for defending and transferring the culture of the Christian West through classical education.”
