Dakota Beacon

On Saturday, June 1, our family attended the high school graduation of our granddaughter from Wilson Hill Academy. As an on-line primary and secondary school, Wilson Hill caters to students worldwide. Additionally, as a Christian academy pursuing the classical approach to education, the instructors are also located worldwide. This year’s graduation celebration was held on the YMCA grounds in Estes Park, Colorado.

With all the money and emphasis placed on contemporary K-12 education in the United States, where do we stand compared to other nations of the world? Over the past decade multiple research organizations place the United States variously below the top fifteen nations in reading, science, and mathematics. These organizations include the Pew Foundation, The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and The Economist Intelligence Unit associated with the International Business Times.

For a variety of reasons parents have suffered decades of disappointment and dissatisfaction with public education. A growing number of parents have withdrawn their children from traditional schools in favor of home schooling, private or parochial schooling, or charter schooling. This, in turn, has spawned the Classical education movement.

Classical learning focuses on language emphasizing the classics. Language-based learning is accomplished through words both written and spoken as opposed to images such as videos and TV. Language learning differs immensely from image learning. In language-based learning, the young mind develops by being challenged to translate word symbols into concepts. Image-based learning permits the mind to relax and remain passive. Language-based learning requires mental exercise. Image-based learning requires little effort.

In addition to being language-focused, classical education trains the young person’s mind in three parts. Simply put, the mind is supplied with facts. Facts are then organized using logic. A young person’s mind then prepares to express the logical conclusions through rhetoric. This classic pattern is generally known as the “trivium.”

In classical education, all knowledge is viewed as interrelated. Science and math are not learned in isolation but rather 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 with each repetition becoming progressively more advanced. 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 progressively more challenging as the student advances through higher grades.

Classical education is, therefore, a very systematic progression as opposed to an unorganized assortment characteristic of so much of primary and secondary public education today. Classical education requires the student to work against the baser instinct of laziness.

In addition to Wilson Hill Academy, here are a few other examples of primary and secondary schools using the classical approach:

                        Nova Classical Academy, Saint Paul, MN

                        The Classical Academy, Colorado Springs, CO

                        Founders Classical Academy (public charter school) (22 campuses)

                        Aristoi Classical Academy, Katy, TX

                        Loveland Classical Schools, (public charter school) Loveland, CO.

Here are some colleges and universities that follow a classical approach to education:

                        Providence Christian College (Reformed), Pasadena, CA

                        St. John’s College (campuses in Maryland and New Mexico)

                        Patrick Henry College, Purcellville, VA

                        Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, MI

                        Wyoming Catholic College, Lander, WY

As Dorothy L. Sayers expressed so poignantly in The Lost Tools of Learning, “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… [W]e have merely a set of complicated jigs, each of which will do but one task and no more...[But] the sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men [and women] how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain.”

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).