Two Things I Hated (But Grew to Love) About Classical Education
As a leader in a classical Christian school, you simply cannot avoid answering the question “What is classical Christian education (CCE)?” You could start by explaining how the classical project differs from the decolonization pedagogy of Paulo Freire (1921-1997, devotee of Marx), or how CCE contrasts with the industrialization, specialization, and standardization promoted by German educator Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). Most people, however, have little interest in such explanations. Still, parents know in their bones that they want better schools than what the world has to offer. In this essay, I am going to show you the top two things I hated about classical Christian education initially, but later grew to love.
“10 Things I Hate About You” is a modern high school adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. The 1999 movie reaches its climactic moment with this poem:
I hate the way you talk to me and the way you cut your hair,
I hate the way you drive my car, I hate it when you stare.
I hate your big dumb combat boots and the way you read my mind,
I hate you so much it makes me sick—it even makes me rhyme.
I hate the way you're always right,
I hate it when you lie,
I hate it when you make me laugh, even worse when you make me cry.
I hate it when you're not around and the fact that you didn't call,
But mostly I hate the way I don't hate, not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all.
Just as the poem’s author shifts from hate to love, I experienced a similar shift with classical Christian education. I have also watched many teachers, students, and parents undergo a shift from hating to loving classical education. Honestly, I cannot believe that I now love reading The Aeneid and taking my kids to see our students make Little Women come to life. I have fallen in love with the countercultural classical things that used to embarrass me when business leaders would visit our school.
What follows is my story. I won’t be sharing ten things I hated about classical education, but rather just two. As a qualification, I tend to discourage the word ‘hate’ for little kids. But, if you’re reading this, I’ll assume you are an adult who can appreciate verses like Luke 14:26 and John 12:25 where Jesus uses the word ‘hate’ redemptively.
#1 - The Trivium ‘Pilgrimage Trail’
The Trivium (Latin for ‘the place where three roads meet’) is the lower division of the seven liberal arts comprising the language arts disciplines of Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric. In classical Christian schools modeled after the Dorothy Sayers Trivium, Grammar describes the primary emphasis of grades K-6. Logic (or Dialectic) is dominant in grades 7-8, and Rhetoric is the priority in grades 9-12. This time-tested methodology has long been abandoned by American teacher’s colleges. Yet the Trivium describes both the method and material which formed the greatest minds in history such as Augustine, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Martin Luther, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Isaac Newton, and C.S. Lewis. The Trivium is like a trail (e.g., Camino de Santiago in Spain or Pilgrim’s Progress) with waypoints guiding pilgrims through various terrains and challenges akin to the Grammar (K-6), Logic (7-8), and Rhetoric stages (9-12). The Trivium could also be viewed as a narrow, winding path where students first learn the lay of the land (Grammar), find their ways through denser growth (Logic), and ultimately emerge into a broad clearing with a full view (Rhetoric). By viewing the Trivium as a pilgrimage trail, parents can make better sense of why their kids want to leave the school in 8th grade, right as they are in the middle of a dense and dark forest.
In the Trivium pilgrimage trail, the pilgrim (student) begins the journey with a focus on foundational knowledge (e.g., memorizing the Pharaohs of Egypt or the kings of Israel) but is steadily led up the curricular trail to higher wisdom (e.g., analyzing the religious nature of the American revolution, or examining the divine cosmology that guided Newton’s discovery of the laws of motion). If one verse were to describe this educational journey on the Trivium trail, it would be Proverbs 13:20, “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.” This verse is similar to Paul saying that bad company corrupts good morals (1 Corinthians 15:33) or Abraham Lincoln’s quip that “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” While this Trivium path is challenging, it is the surest way home for the next generation. It is not necessarily a longer path (after all, kids started Harvard at age 16 in the 1600s, some even younger); the Trivium simply majors in the majors and cuts the fat (think driver’s ed, keyboarding, sex ed, home economics, swimming, etc.).
So, why would I ever hate a pilgrimage that is so true, good, beautiful, and transformative?
My favorite class in middle school was recess. My favorite class in high school was weightlifting. My favorite aspect of college was baseball. As a young student, I did not have the intellectual endurance built up for a focused Trivium approach to learning. When I taught Spanish in public high schools, my approach was immersive and conversational. I had little patience for anything that did not seem immediately practical (e.g., learning grammar, studying culture, and reading Spanish literature). My focus was on stimulating my students, with the aim of maximizing engagement. Back then, my greatest fear was that somebody might leave my class bored. Now, my greatest fear is that of somebody leaving our schools unprepared for life. There’s nothing worse than a school that sends people out ill-equipped for the job of living.
When I first entered classical Christian education, we were reading longer books and memorizing longer passages. We were going deeper in math and science. It tested my patience, and I hated it because I was not mentally up for the task. I did not fit in to the CCE world initially because all my prior teacher training was focused on stimulating engagement, not provoking critical thinking through exposure to greatness. Even though I was finishing my second master’s degree, I felt that the Grammar students had longer attention spans than I did.
Early in my marriage, I did not understand why I should purchase roses for my bride on Valentine’s Day. In my depraved mind, such a gesture was economically wasteful, given that the flowers would soon wither. In the same way that marriage is not merely for procreation and tax benefits, education is not merely for getting into college for a job. Many schools implicitly teach children to go to school in order to go to college to get a job they don’t enjoy in order to get a mortgage they cannot afford and buy things that they don’t need to impress people they don’t like. Classical Christian education utilizes the Trivium pilgrimage to form virtuous Christians (ultimate goal) who experience the side effects of strong college and career prospects (intermediate goals).
The Trivium is both a method and material, a technique and a tradition of truth. In general, you could say that the Trivium method is Grammar (K-6, the What), Logic (7-8, the Why), and Rhetoric (9-12 and the How), and the Trivium material is the truth, goodness and beauty of Western Civilization. With regard to method, each of the three learning phases utilizes teaching techniques that match the student’s stage of development. Younger students enjoy play, so songs, stories, chants, and recitations work well in the Grammar stage (K-6). With regard to material, they will not be on computers or tablets but reading Anne of Green Gables, memorizing multiplication tables, or reciting “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost. The materials and the method work together at each stage of the pilgrimage trail. Pre-teens want to know why so they begin to learn logic, speech and debate, and are given a bit more independence in grades 7-8 (e.g., a locker, increased homework loads, and science labs). They’ll walk with the great minds of the past by reading Plutarch’s Lives, The Odyssey, and The Aeneid and learn about logical fallacies like red herring, false dilemma, the bandwagon fallacy, and post hoc ergo propter hoc. At the time of this writing, I am seven years into my pilgrimage. I am just beginning to truly love these things that I formerly hated!
Lastly, in the Rhetoric stage (9-12), students are taught to synthesize knowledge into an organic whole in order to persuade others. Students begin systematic theology and/or apologetics. They study calculus and read Darwin, Marx, Kant, and Rousseau in order to better engage with unbelieving neighbors. Although we would not let Marx or Rousseau work at our schools, they are great conversation partners whose influence is unavoidable in our society. The modern educational movements of CRT, DEI, and SEL can be traced back from Paulo Freire to the likes of Marx and Rousseau. Students do not learn to trace ideas over time by reading textbook summaries but rather by going back to the original sources (ad fontes) and thinking for themselves. At each stage of the Trivium, the method and the material go hand in hand.
But the Trivium is also a useful way to make sense of how well you have mastered a subject. For example, I’d say that I only have a Grammar level knowledge of calculus but am probably at the Logic stage in history and the Rhetoric level in theology. I recently heard a board member say that his knowledge of governance recently went from Grammar to Logic level after attending a governance seminar. The Grammar stage is primarily knowledge intake, the Logic stage is processing and digesting, and the Rhetoric stage is the productive output. After watching students walk this pilgrimage trail, I am fully convinced that the Trivium is the most effective and systematic way of teaching critical thinking. Yes, I hated it at first—but now I cannot imagine doing school any other way.
#2 - The Countercultural Christian ‘Walk’
After becoming a Christian as a college upperclassman, I hated the idea of teaching at a Christian school. Before following Christ, I wanted to fit in. After coming to Christ, I wanted to stand out for His glory. Teaching at a Christian school seemed like an easy way to hide His glory. I wanted to go into the darkness of public schools armed with the light of Christ! Coming to Christ at age 21 turned my world upside down in dramatic fashion. That said, I have since realized that I do not want my own children to come to Christ in the same circuitous path that I did. Today, the most radical thing a parent can do is to train their kids to walk by faith and obey Colossians 2:6: “as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him.” For some reason, I hated the idea of living out my faith in a Christian school setting. I wanted to challenge the status quo, not become a scribe or pharisee!
During my secular college experience, I saw many Christian school graduates behaving badly. After attending K-12 public school, I attended one of the only all-male liberal arts colleges in the country, Wabash College. It was in that ‘secular’ academic setting that I joined a fraternity, read Don Quixote, Genesis, and The Odyssey. I examined fruit flies under a microscope, compared Keynesian and Classical economics (e.g., Smith, Mill), played baseball, and ultimately came to know Christ as Lord. Even though I had mostly non-Christian professors, I was exposed to a variety of viewpoints via a Socratic seminar and a St. John’s-like tutorial system based upon Mortimer Adler’s Three Columns method. Looking back on my early college days, I think I would have resonated with Nietzsche—“I might believe in the Redeemer if his followers looked more redeemed.” The poor behavior I observed in peers coming from of K-12 Christian-schools gave me doubts about Christian schools, as well as Christianity in general. I thought, “If Christianity is so good, why are Christians so bad?” This all began to change when my best friend submitted his life to Christ, and the rest is history. Still, when I decided to become a teacher during my senior year of college, I hated the idea of teaching in a private Christian school. At that point, I had never met someone that I admired from a Christian school, nor had I ever heard of the Trivium or classical education.
When I began teaching Spanish at a public school after graduation, I held to the exposure view of education: Christians can gain an immunity to the world’s corruption by attending public schools. My experience, however, proved just the opposite. I grew exasperated seeing many kids from Christian homes who were checked out on Christ. Proverbs 13:20 states that those who are a companion of fools will suffer spiritual harm. I observed many ‘Christian kids’ who quietly checked out on their faith in high school and then publicly abandoned their faith in college.
A solid classical Christian academy is a greenhouse that allows students to grow and cultivate the spiritual roots they will need before being planted in the world. You only lay a foundation one time, and we must remember that the concrete is still wet during childhood and adolescence. When I was working in public schools, I thought Christian schools were withdrawing from the world into spiritual castles with a moat around them to insulate students from the sinful world, and this could only lead to hypocrisy and pride. I foolishly thought that Christian schools were Pharisees (the separated ones) who quarantined themselves from the lost world who needed Christ. The classical Christian schooling movement encourages students to walk with Christ (Colossians 2:6) and equips them to think critically about the various influences around them. Our schools send out graduates who are well-armed with the tools of thinking at a time when such an armor is vital.
In the Trivium, students start in Grammar with a crawl, progress to a toddle in Logic, and begin to walk in Rhetoric. Not only does the student experience the method and material of the pilgrimage trail, they also mature in predictable stages of development. The crawl-toddle-walk maturation progression aligns with the discipleship progression of knowledge-understanding-wisdom that emerges in Scripture. It can take a long time for students to grow into obeying Colossians 2:6 from the heart, “As you received Christ, so walk in Him.” Randy Booth writes, “These three areas of learning (Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric) interact, each one with the other. Without knowledge there can be no understanding or wisdom. Knowledge and understanding are likewise necessary if there is to be wisdom. The wise man is able to acquire even more knowledge and understanding, thus becoming more wise—he has learned how to learn.”
While it may sound dubious to connect Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric with knowledge, understanding, and wisdom, Proverbs 2:6 does use each of these words: “For the LORD gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.” We can see how our Dialectic and Rhetoric students might be hindered if they were not prepared well in the Grammar stage through memorizing the books of the Bible, reading the key stories, and reciting essential passages of Scripture. All of these foundational truths are further developed and digested in Logic/Dialectic and then bear fruit through disciplines of meaningful character in Rhetoric. I am no Hebrew scholar, so it is possible that this knowledge-understanding-wisdom model in English may not map perfectly with the original Hebrew as a rigid, sequential ladder for Grammar-Logic-Rhetoric. Nevertheless, it serves as a useful model. The student’s goal is not absolute precision according to the analogy, but it serves, rather, as a way to illuminate the natural stages of classical learning and Christian discipleship. Even giant redwoods follow the root-shoot-fruit (in cone form for redwoods) progression of maturation over thousands of hours.
I once believed exposure to the world was good for Christian kids. I now prioritize exposing them to true greatness and equipping them with the proper tools to analyze and synthesize knowledge. Looking back, any hatred that I had towards classical Christian education was due to my ignorance and unstable mind, which twisted things that I did not understand (2 Peter 3:16). We are not called to raise up undercover Christians but to guide them to walk in a manner worthy of their Christian calling. A fundamental summary of this ‘walk’ emphasis occurs in Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go (walk); even when he is old he will not depart from it.” Many students can discern the difference between that which is pleasant or unpleasant via their animal-like instincts, but they never quite cultivate the conscience-level ability to discern between true/false and right/wrong. Hebrews 5:14 describes what we want for our students, “But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.” Such discernment is the goal of the Trivium. The Trivium pilgrimage trail leads us all the way from knowledge, through understanding, and ultimately to wisdom.
An Application: The Logic to Rhetoric Transition
When I was a college student in Indiana, we trained for baseball in the fieldhouse at the same time that the track team trained. I always envied them because they worked harder, trained longer, and were ultimately more successful on and off the field than the baseball team. Looking back, the difference was that they had developed a culture that valued greatness. It was a culture of merit, but was also a fellowship of men seeking to reach their full potential. I see a trend in classical Christian Rhetoric schools (grades 9-12) which seeks to retain students by providing senior lounges, special parking spaces, and flexible schedules. Instead of focusing on perks, schools should seek to apply the wisdom of the Trivium by continuing to call students upward and raise the bar for what is possible. It is the graduates of our schools that get me really excited about the future. What I really hate now is low standards for kids who were made for greatness.
