What is Christian classical education?

Christian Classical education is
the cultivation of wisdom and virtue
by nourishing the soul on truth, goodness, and beauty,
so that in Christ the student is better able to know, glorify, and enjoy God.

Two principles spoken by the fathers of the church express the philosophy of Christian classical education:

The glory of God is the man fully alive
St. Irenaeus

Grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it
Quoted by Thomas Aquinas

Materials, methods, and governing structures are developed to realize this ideal in the practice of the school or home.

Materials must be characterized by truthfulness, moral integrity, quality labor, and beauty of expression. They must guide the particular student on the path to wisdom, inculcating virtue in his habits and tastes. Philippians 4:8 is the finest expression of these standards.

Methods must be consistently respectful of the nature and ends of the child, nourishing the child’s soul on a foundation of living ideas, building scientific and analytical knowledge on that foundation, and permeating all instruction with wonder, discipline, and reverence.

The “trivium” of grammar, logic, and rhetoric has been applied by way of analogy to the developmental stages of a child, providing a convenient outline for curriculum development and instruction.

Governing structures must embody the principles of Christian classical education and students must see in school leadership the wisdom and virtue that is demanded of them as students.

Five ideas that distingiuish Classical education from conventional:

1. A unifying principle that orders all learning, thus an integrated, proportioned course of learning. In Christian classical education this unifying principle or “logos” is Christ
    
2. Recognition of the transforming power of ideas, thus an emphasis on training students to contemplate ideas rather than merely retain content or master processes
3. Virtue as the end of education, rather than mere application, thus a concerted and rigorous effort to cultivate every human faculty in every student. In particular, the faculties of sensory perception, attentiveness, intellectual apprehension, and concrete re-presentation are cultivated in all the arts and sciences.
4. Humans learn by imitation, thus classical educators have always recognized the need for mentors, models, examples, etc. who are masters of their area of knowledge and who are the kinds of people we hope the students will grow up to become. In a word: honor and recognition to genuine authority. Imitate proceeds through the stages outlined above: perception, attention, absorption, apprehension, re-presentation. This is the essence of all learning and therefore must be applied in every learning context.
5. Endless emphasis on reality over mere appearance, thus the recognition that perception is powerful, but it is not necessarily reality. When one is taught that perception is reality, accountability and the need to grow are either relativized, trivialized, or removed altogether.

If we can help you realize this dream in your setting, please contact us at info@circeinstitute.org.