As classical educators, we are giving our students opportunities to soak in the greatest works of history and literature, to contemplate the Great Ideas of life, and to enter into the Great Conversation and to debate about the most important issues in the world. We should expect students to form their own thoughts about these things and we should demand that they share them with us!

If we are to repair the ruins of our fallen children, then loving discipline is a needed tool in our toolbelt. Discipline and discipleship are inseparable if we are committed to shepherding the sheep in our care. Many children are like sheep without a shepherd, because their parents have not embraced the authority God has given them.

Our culture is fragmenting exponentially, as we draw out the last reserves from our Christian cultural heritage. When people are filled with pride and when they turn away from the only source of existence, life, joy, and purpose, they increasingly lose their humanity. 

To put it bluntly, classical education, as it seeks to hold forth God’s truth in a dark world, is not a safe or comfortable project. The failure and corruption of our public education in America is the reason we must revive and spread classical, Christian education; yet that cultural decadence and decay is also guaranteed to make our project suspect and opposed by many, especially the gatekeepers of the current secular religion. Our vocation is more necessary than ever, yet it is justifiably viewed as hostile and threatening by the authorities who dominate our nation’s government structures, universities, media, corporations, and many so-called ‘churches’ and seminaries. And Charlie Kirk’s murder proved that this spirit of opposition even extends to silencing the truth by murder and violence.

The Federalist should hold a cherished place in the curriculum of any such school not only for its insight into American civics, politics, and human nature, but for a portrait of how a Reformed classical student ought to apply the wealth of learning entrusted to him for the good of the commonwealth.

Whether one draws upon Plato, Aristotle, the Scriptures, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, or the Protestant Reformers, they all present a similar view – namely, that developing virtue leads to true freedom because doing so requires that we act in accord with our nature and fulfill our natural telos. Doing what we are designed to do is a form of natural excellence.

If one apprehends true beauty as beauty, one must love and therefore one must forget himself in that moment. This is what Longinus (and much later, C. S. Lewis) called “sublime.” Calling something which is truly beautiful merely “pretty” is treasonous to truth.

Having swum deeply in the waters of theological studies, and having dipped my toes into CCE, I noticed some similarities between the study of theology and the pedagogy of the Trivium. This article sets forth an analogy between these two realms, aiming to explain the basics of classical pedagogy for theologians who desire future involvement in CCE.

Many people who are technically able to read are basically illiterate because to do anything more than read a sentence or two is extremely mentally taxing to them. The overuse of visual and auditory media has rendered reading unpalatable to far too many.

You may not have recognized it when you read those stories in class, but your teachers were doing more than accompanying you through a story; they were laying a foundation for a virtuous child of God at age 25, 35, or 45 to harken back to when things become harder than anticipated.