Memory, Argument, & Persuasion

We've recently been taking quick looks at a few principles that distinguish classical Christian education from other methodologies -- its hows and whys, its respect for the past, and its balance between nature and technology.

Classical Christian education champions the use of memory, argument, and persuasion to undergird all subjects. Comprising the Trivium, you may know them as grammar, logic, and rhetoric.

Yet memory, argument, and persuasion have fallen by the wayside in the 21st century. Other educational methodologies, not to mention real-world practice, replace them with Google, popular opinion, and various self-identities. Where once ideas and cultural practice were moored by a large body of personal knowledge, a moral paradigm for interpreting that knowledge, and a standards-based worldview for making that interpretation pleasing, now reality is defined only by the preferences of the individual, verified only by his feelings.

Memory (Grammar)
The book of Deuteronomy might carry a single theme: remember. Do not forget. Moses wrote the entire book, just before his death, as a means of reminding the Israelites of the knowledge of God, and of his gifts: "Take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes" (Deut. 8:11). Classical Christian education encourages students in a similar way: learn the ways of God, of the way he made the world, and of the things he has given you. Remember, and do not forget. In a real way, this is why classical education emphasizes memorization, not simply as a utilitarian means of calling up facts when we don't have a smartphone, but as a way of writing the knowledge of God and his world on students' hearts. This kind of memorization creates thankfulness.

Argument (Logic)
"'Come, let us reason together,' says the Lord" (Is. 1:18), the Word from the beginning, the "Logic" made flesh (John 1:1) The nature of God is rational, his creation is orderly, and therefore classical Christian education seeks to mold students' minds to the mind of God. What are the rules of the world that we have been given? What are the rules of thought? What is God like? The answers becomes the standard for all truth, and for all discourse. Without it, the only coherent question becomes, "Who's to say?" Reality is ultimately rendered meaningless.

Persuasion (Rhetoric)
At the end of creation, "God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good" (Gen. 1:31). Within the first week of the created order, God made things, communicated them into existence, and persuaded himself that they were "very good." He did not simply form beings with mere functional capacity; he gave them beauty. In turn as created beings, we have a longing for everything lovely, and for the ultimate Loveliness of Christ. Therefore, classical Christian education trains students to take joy in their creations, to imbue their projects, essays, labs, and speeches with loveliness, reflecting the beauty of their creator.

Classically Educated Cyborgs

At ACA, we're behind the times.

We make students memorize things.  We require them to recite, chant, and argue.  We make them use their brains.

What could we be thinking?  Haven't we heard of Google?  Of Siri, the cheerful, all-knowing informational guru, who can tell us in an instant how to get from our house to Mt. Everest base camp (useful), and who knows how to differentiate among definitions of free masonry, Rosicrucianism, and theosophy?  Haven't we heard of smartphones, those delightful boxes-of-ten-thousand-servants that fit in your back pocket?  And of the informational age, in which nearly every human being on the planet has access to near omniscience?

A friend recently shared with me how her children had been told that classical education, and specifically memorization, were "a waste of time."  Our fast-paced, technological society is beyond all that stuff now.

If the purpose of education is to transform our children into machines, then ACA has got it all wrong.  If "the mannishness of man" (as Francis Schaeffer put it) is an outmoded concept, or if the arts, culture, imagination, and morality are the antiquated projections of God-biased thinkers, then our students are just spinning their wheels every day in class.  Poor things.

Of course, we hold robustly to the happy truth that this isn't the case.  Our students aren't wasting their time.  We affirm that there is a profound distinction between knowledge and wisdom, between information and understanding, and between facts and beauty.  While we gladly affirm that knowledge, information, and facts are necessary and good, we also understand what they are not.  Running a Google search doesn't mean you know something (though it's a handy tool), processing a peer-reviewed statistical set does not mean you understand the moral question at hand, and plotting the species distribution of organisms in an ecosystem does not mean you appreciate natural beauty or understand its greater significance.

Does this mean that numbers are bad and imagination is good?  That we should discourage statistics majors in preference for budding artists?  Not a bit of it.

What we should do is understand the right place for information and technology on the one hand, and the right place for wisdom and beauty on the other.  Both categories are important, but they are vastly different.  And we must understand that one of the fundamental purposes of true education is to develop an appreciation for, and an ability to reproduce, great ideas, great works of art, and great arguments.  An educated human being thinks for himself, communicates with his own thoughts, and creates his own works.  He is not a slave.  He has made the world's knowledge his own; he has developed what is called copiousness. He feeds his brain just like he feeds his body, and then he digests it.  He meditates on the knowledge he has gained.  He turns it over, considers it, and makes it his own.  He is a man, with plenty of "mannishness," and so he takes his knowledge-turned-wisdom and creates.  Made in the image of creator-God, this is only natural.

But this overflow of rich, composted knowledge -- this copiousness -- is never achieved by smartphone thumb-tapping.  Your pocket-sized ten thousand servants have their time and place, but they are your occasional dessert, never your entree.  Homer, Sophocles, King David, Pericles, Caesar, King Alfred, da Vinci, Galen, Faraday, Washington, Curie, Einstein, Churchill, Chesterton, Schaeffer -- these were all great humans exercising their own minds.

To create -- or to be able to influence our culture for Christ -- our students must have something to say, and they must be able to say it winsomely themselves.  Heartfelt apologies, Siri.

Grace and Peace, Nate Ahern