Tools, Frameworks, and Affections

One of the Triads of Classical Christian Education

I’m often asked by people, “What is a classical Christian education?” People, rightfully, want to know what is unique about Classical Christian Education’s approach to education and how it differs from the norm of what is taught in public schools (or even non-classical Christian schools). The question is easy to ask, resonable to ask, and important to ask, but the answer is not always as easily captured in just a few words. Though why that which is best or most true mustneedsbe also easy to define in brief I am not sure, but it is nevertheless oft desired.

I wrote elsewhere an answer to this question already, and I’ll set that here for your consideration as well:

However there is more that can and ought to be said than what I covered in that quick article. It is my desire to touch on some different aspects of classical Christian education here. There will, necessarily, be some overlap between what I am about to say and what I have already said because, as I argued in the above article, all things are really connected and not as separate as we often like to think.

Here, however, I wish to focus on three goals which classical Christian educators should be attempting to accomplish in the lives of their students. These goals, or aspects, of classical Christian education can respectively fit under the headings of Tools, Frameworks, and Affections. Once again, I beg that you’ll allow even these not to be watertight bulkheads, but general distinctions only.

Dorothy L. Sayers’ famous essay, The Lost Tools of Learning, is all about this aspect of classical education. The tools we give students in a classical education are those which enable them to learn new things for themselves. Though various schools and thinkers within the broader tent of Classical Christian Education (henceforth CCE) may articulate and approach this in slightly different ways, all of us agree that it is critically important that students not only learn information or fact, but actually learn how to learn. The Trivium (a Latin term for “three roads”) make up the first three of the seven Liberal Arts, namely, Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric.

What is key to understanding about these three arts is that they are both subjects (or disciplines) in themselves and also the means by which we get at or learn every other subject (or discipline) that exists. In other words Grammar, as a subject, is all about learning how language works, how sentences are formed, the way word order (or word endings in inflected languages) affect the meaning of a sentence, etc., but Grammar is also the base information of any discipline or subject. This means that Math, History, Logic, Literature, Science, Sports, Business, Automechanics, etc., and with all of their sub-disciplines, all have a grammar of their own. Each of these has a language it speaks with its own specialized terminology which is critical to grasp at the outset in order to make progress in that discipline.

Likewise, Logic is its own subject and discipline that teaches students to form good arguments and debunk faulty (invalid) arguments. It shows the relationship of statements and ideas and how to produce valid conclusions and inferences. Even so, every discipline you will learn has its own logic, the things which need to be reasoned through in order to understand how it functions and how parts of it relate to other parts and to the world outside of it. Guiding rules and inferences are just as needed in business, mechanics, and sports as they are in abstract syllogisms, but the one who knows how to write syllogisms in the abstract will better apply the rules of reason in the real world.

Again, Rhetoric is its own thing which can, and ought, to be learned as its own discipline, but everything has a Rhetoric. Rhetoric, as a distinct discipline, studies the means of persuasion through the written and spoken word. One learns how to connect and build rapport with an audience, how to tug at the heart strings, how to trade on one’s own good character and reputation, and how to apply pinpoint reasoning to get to the heart of things. And what, I ask you, what discipline in the world does not require us to know how to talk about it? What do we learn about that doesn’t need someone to show people why it is important, why it should be done, and why it should be loved? Indeed, whatever you love doing, are you not always trying to tell others about it and why they should care for it as you do?

In Grammar we understand the foundations and lingo of a subject, in Logic we reason about its implications and correlations with other things, in Rhetoric we learn to articulate its principles and value. Everything you learn, without exception, is mastered by the arts of Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric…no exceptions.

And yet, modern education has largely forsaken these tools of learning. At best they teach each subject as a self-contained thing which does not have any connection to other branches of learning. Some English grammar may still be taught (though it is to be wondered how much given what one sees online today), but it is rudimentary at best and it is altogether dropped too soon. Further, the best way to understand language is not to study your own, but another. Once one steps outside one’s own language you begin to realize what you have taken for granted and how little you know about the things you say everyday. There are no better languages than Latin and Greek for teaching us the power of language, but even a second modern language will help us immensely.

Logic has been almost entirely dropped in modern education. Sometimes lip-service is given to an ambiguous class or part of classes which gets called “critical thinking,” but, again, I ask how much critical thinking seems to be getting taught under this scheme? If one wants to learn to think critically in sincerity, let him learn formal logic. Let him learn the difference between truth and validity. Let him learn argument forms that always are valid and into which true statements may be poured. Let him learn common ways men misstep in their thinking (fallacies) so that they don’t do the same. Let him learn to ask penetrating questions which get to the heart of the matter. Learning critical thinking apart from logic is akin to learning to paint without brushes.

As for Rhetoric, the term itself has been abused and tortured into having a negative connotation. The only kind of “rhetoric” which is taught in modern education is sophism, how to manipulate people into getting your way through fear, name calling, and the overplaying of mere pathos (emotion) devoid of logos (reason) and ethos (character). The discipline of Rhetoric must be resurrected and refitted to the service of what is true and good and beautiful. It’s a powerful tool that is to be given into the hands of virtuous people so they might know how to defeat the wicked and their agendas in wordcraft.

Our young people need tools to pursue real learning and the Trivium gives them the goods to gain The Good and defend The Good. CCE is committed to giving children the tools of learning so that they are never left unarmed or incapable of personal growth. A person once equipped with the Trivium will never find himself impotent to gain new knowledge and skills if and when the world (or at least his world) changes on him.

There is too much that is worthy of knowing than can be learnt in a lifetime, let alone in the first eighteen years of a human life. It’s a daunting proposition to suggest that we must give students all that they need to know (or worse, ought to know) before they graduate. It is, in fact, a fool’s errand. It’s simply not possible and ought not to be attempted. However, lest you think I just said we should give up on the educational endeavor, something else should be attempted in place of the fools errand.

We must help our students build frameworks which, though necessarily incomplete, give them a structure upon which to continually hang all new knowledge in a way that makes sense. One of the best ways to do this is by memorizing and constantly engaging timelines and catechisms. A basic timeline which spans recorded history, a timeline which covers the Kings of England, a timeline which covers the three phases of Rome’s history (Monarchy, Republic, Empire), etc., these kinds of things give a sense of depth to history or parts of history. We can keep them relatively simple and short and memorable, and then everything else they ever learn in this life can simply relate to them and fit in amongst them. When we learn timelines we make places for new historical knowledge to simply find its place and make sense.

Catechisms work very similarly, only they are not temporal. A theological catechism, a virtue catechism, a logic catechism, etc., can set down by question and answer the basics (the Grammar) of the discipline, show some of the relations of its parts (Logic), and give students a way to begin expressing the ideas of a subject (Rhetoric).

I can’t teach, nor can you, everything worth knowing about history, but I can give students various frameworks for thinking about history, its depth, the relation of events throughout, etc. I cannot begin to teach everything there is to know, or worth knowing, about theology, logic, mathematics, science, etc., but I can give students some catechisms on these and their sub-disciplines (e.g. Science: Biology, Chemistry, Geology, etc.) which help them engage in the disciplines and understand their grammar, purposes, relations, and how to begin talking about them. Knowledge is inexhaustible and teaching it all is impossible, but frameworks which can allow limitless information to find their places within are possible to teach and exceptionally useful. A student with good frameworks is never completely lost when they encounter something new, they just need to find where the new thing goes and file it in its place next to what they know already.

Tools and Frameworks are critical to CCE, but it is perhaps the intentional shaping of affections which most sets our approach apart from the typical modern education. “Truth, goodness, and beauty,” which are sometimes referred to as the “transcendentals” are notions closely associated with our form of education. We, in fact, use these terms so much that some people mock us for it and think we are just being trite, but I don’t know a single committed classical educator who merely rattles these off as though they were something trivial¹ and unimportant. We talk about these all of the time because they are among the things closest to the heart of what we are up to.

Interestingly, there are classical schools which are not Christian and they will sometimes use this lingo as well. I don’t mind telling you that these terms do not belong to them, but to us. Christians believe that God, the one true and living God whom you may encounter in the pages of the Scriptures and most directly in the person of Jesus Christ, it is he who alone is the source of truth, goodness, and beauty. He is not merely the source as in the architect of these things, but, rather, he is synonymous with these things. God is true, good, and beautiful in his eternal and unchanging nature and everything in this world that is true, good, or beautiful is so by means of participation in him, the source.

As such, we in CCE are always working to cultivate our students’ affection to love Christ and all that is in this world which reflects him. He is the source of all unity in all learning and he is the origin of all that is worth knowing. We believe, further, that the whole world cannot get away from the witness of this and that is why even non-Christians, by God’s common grace to all men in his creation, often discover and create (in a derivative sense) true, good, and beautiful things. Or, at least, they discover and mimic them in part or imperfectly. It is for this reason that CCE joyfully studies the Great Books of history and literature which includes many believer and non-believers alike. We take time to study them and locate the good in them and take it captive for Christ.

We want our students to get lost in love and wonder and beauty and truth and goodness. We seek to model this for them in our own lives, in the books we place before them, and by pointing them to Christ in all things. Christus in corde omnium. “Christ at the heart of everything.”

CCE is hard work and we read hard books and talk about big ideas. Sometimes we fight against claims that it is boring, so we show students that it is actually they are who are boring. Sometimes they push back against beautiful descriptions in books and so we expose the faulty philosophy underlying their complaint. Sometimes we have to show students that utility (how a thing is to be used) isn’t the thing that matters most. We are constantly working to show them that they are part of something bigger than they know. We show them that nothing that is worth having comes easy and the mastery of things comes after hard labor. Sometimes we just have to die to ourselves to see what’s really good in this life.

Classical Christian Educators are always at work upon our own selves and our students to see that Christ is everything and in everything that is true and good and beautiful. The love of Christ, and the love of things which are rightfully his, lies behind everything we do in CCE. The end goal is that we all might be made into better ambassadors for Christ and his kingdom until the whole world hears and becomes full of his glory.

1. Feel free to be amused at the inverse connection between trivial an trivium in this article.