Let us make use of Socratic teaching as part of the process of classical education so that we might produce fully formed and educated thinkers who can engage in dialectic and thereby continue to refine themselves and their neighbors in the truth.

Granted that the world is relentless in catechizing our children towards its vision of the good life, are we as classical Christian educators equally intentional in the formation of our students?

As time goes by you will continue to see the chasm growing ever wider between those who insist on doing school in Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory and those who sit around tables with books, pens, and paper. The kids coming out of the former kind of education will have conformed to the image of the things we keep making, having the appearance of free thought but no real soul.

Logic is one of the great tools of learning that makes discernment possible. Unfortunately logic has become a lost art in the realm of American education and is becoming increasingly rare. 

Finding and treading in the old paths is not practical–or, we don’t do it because it is practical. We do it because it is true wisdom. God’s wisdom. Rest assured, lest you fret, “But what if the old path is bad?” Why is it bad? If it is bad according to the standard of God’s good law, then you have your answer.

The way that Classical Christian Education moves through the stages of Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric to maturity, is a replica of the three offices given to us in the history of Israel.

A classical education uses constraint to form lovers of truth, goodness, and beauty. Conforming to reality and submitting to the truths God built into creation is not slavery, it is freedom.

We need our fathers. Our earthly fathers by blood, our spiritual by faith, and our cultural fathers by inheritance. We need to carry them on our backs if our city is sacked. They are not dead weight, they are the treasure to retrieve from the flames.

Rhetoric is the crown of the verbal arts.

There are seven liberal arts and these are divided between the language arts of the Trivium (Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric) and the mathematical arts of the Quadrivium (Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy). In the medieval system of education a complete Liberal Arts education was considered preliminary to the highest areas of study, namely, Philosophy and Theology.