If the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy was the biggest issue for early 20th century Christianity, philosophical anthropology looks to be the defining question of the 21st. In recent months, major questions that center around human nature have made headlines: a transgender activist funeral held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City; Alabama declaring that embryos are fully human and merit legal protections; a fifty year old male swimmer identifying as a teenage girl on a high school swim team. We’ve lost consensus on what we are as human beings, and chaos follows.

Why, then, should we have students memorize prayers? There are many reasons, but at a foundational level we have students memorize prayers for the same reason that we have them memorize Scripture (after all, the best prayers are those that weave together various pieces of Scripture), not to mention classical hymnody, poetry, or anything else worth committing to memory.

Having students define their terms and defend assertions is critically important to their education. Students need to learn to make critical distinctions, how to inquire into the nature of a thing, and how to define terms in accordance with reality.

If you have never read Narnia, never been brought into its world and characters, you really should start with the conversional experience of entering the wardrobe with the Pevensies.

Jesus himself told us that discipline will be unpleasant at the time, even painful. He also told us he comes after our souls with sharp shears. When we choose classical education for our children, it will require change from us as parents and as a family. There will be discipline that yields a harvest.

Teaching teenagers is not for the faint-hearted. These students are becoming adults, and they need to understand how adult relationships work, how to submit to authority, and how to treat those in authority with respect. They need to know how to do hard things even when they don’t want to or be prepared to face the consequences. These are the life lessons we are able to offer in a classical school because here we are unashamedly about creating virtue.

Gregory envisioned the Christian leader as a spiritual father who helped guide the spiritual growth of his subordinates or disciples—that is, what we might in the present day call spiritual direction. Just as Gregory’s description of the art of spiritual direction helped priests and bishops of his day see themselves as more than just administrators or supervisors, I believe it can likewise fire our imagination for a more transcendent understanding of our vocation as Christian educators.

As human beings made in the image of God but marred by the nature of sin, we need a proper ordering of our loves. We need to be taught about, steeped in, and reminded of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness.

A man informed of his past is a man best prepared to act right in the now and to shape the future well. We are receivers of an ongoing story and the stewardship of its current chapter has been passed to us.

Every year that I teach Latin, I begin the class with the question, “Why Latin?”