Dakota Beacon

Every few years a new education fad places the nation's children once again in the laboratory of experimentation. Ever since John Dewey offered his philosophy of education the education establishment routinely imposes the latest inspirations in education. There was values clarification; then outcome based learning; then School-to-Work; then Goals 2000. Currently in vogue is the federal government's determination of top-down Core Curriculum.
The word "education" comes from the Latin "to lead forth." There is a right way and a wrong way "to lead forth" as distinct from indoctrination or training. The question becomes 'Which way is forth?" True education, the activity of determining what is the right way or the wrong way, is the task of "leading forth."
With all the money and emphasis placed on contemporary education in the United States, where do we stand compared to other industrialized nations? The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development places the US at 18 out of 36. South Korea tops the list with a stellar education performance. The Economist Intelligence Unit associated with the International Business Times places the US at 17 out of 50 nations considered.
For a variety of reasons many parents have suffered decades of disappointment and dissatisfaction with the product of public education. A growing number of parents have withdrawn their children from public schools in favor of home schooling, private or parochial schooling, or charter schooling. This, in turn, has spawned a return to basics with the Classical education movement.
Classical learning is more than a pattern of learning. It focuses on language emphasizing the classics. Learning is accomplished through words both written and spoken as opposed to images such as pictures, videos and TV. Language learning is very different from image learning. The young mind develops by being challenged to translate word symbols into concepts. Image learning allows the mind to relax and remain passive. Language-based learning requires mental exercise. Image-based learning requires little effort.
Beyond being language-focused, classical education trains the young person's mind in three parts. The mind is supplied with facts. It then proceeds to organizing those facts with logic. The mind is then prepared to express conclusions derived from logic. This classic pattern is called the "trivium."
In classical education, all knowledge is seen as interrelated. Science and math are not learned in isolation. They are learned in the context of history, literature and other subjects. Twelve years of education are broken down into three repetitions of the same four year pattern. Each four year pattern consist of studying the Ancients, Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation, and the Modern period. Each repetition of the four year pattern becomes more challenging as the student progresses through higher grades.
Classical education is, therefore, a very systematic progression as opposed to an unorganized smattering characteristic of so much of primary and secondary education today. Classical education requires the student to work against the baser instinct of laziness.
Here are a few of several primary and secondary schools using the classical approach:
Nova Classical Academy, Saint Paul, MN
The Classical Academy, Colorado Springs, CO
Founders Classical Academy, Lewisville, TX
Aristoi Classical Academy, Katy, TX
Loveland Classical Schools, Loveland, CO.
Here are some colleges and universities that follow a classical approach to education:
St. John's College (campuses in Maryland and New Mexico)
Patrick Henry College, Purcellville, VA
Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, MI
Wyoming Catholic College, Lander, WY
The Kings College, NY, NY.
As Dorothy L. Sayers expresses so poignantly in "The Lost Tools of Learning," "Less and less do the children who come to be educated bring any of that tradition with them. We have lost the tools of learning--the axe and the wedge, the hammer and the saw, the chisel and the plane--that were adaptable to all tasks. Instead of them, we have merely a set of complicated jigs, each of which will do but one task and no more...so that no man ever sees the work as a whole or 'looks to the end of the work.'...For the sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain."

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at P. O. Box 337, Stanley, ND 58784 or (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).