Race to Nowhere

“Children are souls to be nurtured, not products to be measured” Leigh Bortins. Reminds us of how education used to be viewed. Today industrialized education system treats students as a product moving down a conveyor line. Ok someone add in the “math”, oh no that was missed, move that person to the “can’t do math” assembly line and throw in some extra reading. The Federal governments own studies show that out of a 1hr class only 15 minutes is actual “educating” time. Some easy math shows that if you educate the entire time, you can be done with school in 1.5 hours + the time to do homework. No wonder we are on a “race to nowhere”

New Movie talk about our public education as a “Race to nowhere.”
Abeles admits that she was initially the kind of mom who fretted when her daughter brought home a "B" on a test and who busily whisked her children from school to violin lessons to sporting events to provide them with extras she didn't have as a child. But that changed after she found one of her daughters doubled over with stomach pains while trying to pull an all-nighter doing homework.
Doctors said Shelby's stomach aches were stress-related. In the film, Abeles shows how her children and others across the United States are growing up trying to be great at everything so they can get into the best colleges.

Classical Education and Wealth

The advantage of a classical education is that it enables you to despise the wealth that it prevents you from achieving - Russell Green.

This quote has been spread around the internet with some popularity. Have you stopped to consider what is means and is it true? The premise of the quote is a utilitarian education will enable you to get wealth, while a classical liberal education will keep you from gaining that wealth.

Does a classical education teach you to despise thing? This would be his first major flaw, or lack of understanding. A classical education does not teach you to despise anything. That may be a personal quality flaw of a person, but one that is rejected by classical education. A classical education, when done properly, teaches you a love for learning and gives you a mind to explore the world around you, even a world you may not participate in. That is the beauty of it, a classically educated person is not tied down to one industry. Consider that today’s college graduates will average 3 jobs in the first 5 years out of school, and a very high percentage of those will no longer be working in the field they specialize in.

This fact shows that a utilitarian education does not work for the majority of students, and they will likely have to teach themselves a new trade, after preparing for a certain trade for 18-22 years. A classically educated person knows how to learn and will be able to adapt to the changing job market.

The Utilitarian idea of work hard in school, go to college and get a good job that may have worked for a temporary time in history, is no longer the case. Look at unemployment, job turn over numbers and the masses clamoring for someone else to help them. The plea of those who cannot due for themselves is have the government or some big company due for them.

If you are indebted to someone than you are their slave. That credit card bill, house payment and car payment make it so you have to be a good citizen and comply to whatever hoops they want you to jump through. I’m not advocating being a bad citizen or not being a great worker, but if you have bigger concerns such as gaining wealth, paying your next bill that you won’t really have the time or energy to be a good citizen. The benefit of a utilitarian education is not wealth, but slavery to your government and those who you want to think for you.

The benefits of a classical education is that you do not make Gold you god. Wealth is not something you despise; it is something that you do not have to strive for, because you know real wealth isn’t measured in dollars and sense, but friendships and freedom. This drives people whose only goal in life is to beat the Jones nuts. The only logical conclusion you can come to is that this quote does not ring true.

SOTU and Education

I just finished reading the SOTU speech and got to sit in on a whitehouse.com/live interview with Arne Duncan on Facebook, which it appeared to be mostly viewed by pro pot people and the unemployed – at least according to the comments. Secretary Duncan answered questions from a panel of concerned groups from Mother’s to MTV. While I do not agree with having a US department of education, if Secretary Duncan does “narrow its focus” I will admit to being content under our current political landscape.
For the SOTU I thought President Obama was on top of what needs done in education “It’s the family that first instills the love of learning in a child” and “Let’s remember AFTER (my emphasis) parents, the biggest impact on a child’s success comes from the man or woman at the front of the classroom.” He also talked about the need for success to come from “the work of local teachers and principals; school boards and communities.” This emphasis will get us on the right track. Unfortunately states are looking at using these comments to mandate parent involvement.
When the public modern school system started taking place the only group that really broke out of this mold was the Catholic school system. So unless you are Catholic and raised Catholic until recently you likely went to public school. Using this assumption, these parents that are currently not involved, must have learned sometime in their 12-16 years of public education that they aren’t needed. They had to learn that assumption somewhere. It took a few generations for our education system to degrade to the point where it is today, it will likely take generations to fix. So how do we speed up this reversal, how do we step back?
The obvious answer is to encourage home centered education. “Only parents can make sure the TV is turned off and homework gets done,” the President eloquently put it. Many parents don’t feel adequate helping their child. This is because the system they went through failed them. These same adults feel the need to put their child into the same system that failed them. Many of these Adults were raised in the time our public schools ranked #1 in the world (now #9 according to PISA). That would indicate even when we were #1 our population wasn’t getting the education they needed.
Our system is designed for job training. When in our fast paced technology changing world jobs change our adult population hasn’t been trained to switch careers with easy. The problem is they were educated with a certain job in mind, instead of educated to love learning and how to learn. The people who know how to learn will not be unemployed long because they can pick up a new skill quickly. If we can teach our children today how to learn instead of learning certain subjects we can turn our education system around faster.
The only education system that teaches you how to learn is the Classical model. It is the only method that is used now to train our elite athletes; it is the method that our most learned uses, even if they don’t know that is the method they are employing. First you must know the grammar of what you are doing, swinging a bat, manufacturing tires, and developing green technologies cannot begin until you can discuss it with others and that is having a common language. The next step is practice and applying that knowledge to the unknown. The final step is explaining what you now know to someone else. A good tip in college was studying in groups and if you could explain a question and answer to the group then you likely knew it. Can you think of anything you do well that did not follow these steps? If not, then why don’t we use them to teach?

The Role of Technology

Technology is the answer to our education problems, at least that is what those who spend money on Capitol Hill would have you believe. We need more computers, electronic white boards and Ipads or our students won’t be able to meet minimum requirements for jobs. Here lies the issue, minimum requirements. Our education system is based around minimum requirements, what do you have to know to get by. Literacy used to mean being able to read and understand classical books such as Moby Dick and Plato, now Literacy is if you can read the McDonalds menu. In math calculators have replace the human mind. What happens if the person accidently hits the wrong button, they don’t have their mind to reference that 20X21 does not equal 2100 and they must have pushed a wrong button
That is not to say the computers and technology shouldn’t be taught, but they should not be used as a crux to learning. Eventually you have to walk on your own, you can either be taught how to do that when you are young and it is easy for you to do that and you have plenty of time, or you can wait till that crutches have been pulled out from under you and your pushed into the real world, when it will be a struggle, because you are still starting from the beginning and now you have to fend for yourself.
Our nation has become one of minimum requirements, and that is what we receive. Technology may have a place in modern education, the one that keeps failing us, but to a classical education it is only a tool to be used after the mind perceives, not in place of the mind.

Leigh Bortins announces new book

Check out: 1 Smart Mama for Leigh Bortins announcement of a new book in the works for 2011 on the second stage of Classical Education, the Dialectic stage.

PISA scores show Memorization is important

PISA scores came in last week while I was on vacation, read more about it here. No surprise to those in the USA who follow education, we have failed our students. Not only have we financially burden future generations with deficit spending – the next generation is not receiving the education needed to be able to right this ship and pay off this bill. The snowball is still small, but be warned it is getting bigger fast. We are on an educational course which will doom our future if not fixed quickly.

If you look at China, who leads in virtually every category, you will see that they have emphasis on memorization of facts. They place a high level of focus on the first and foundation of the Trivium. Clearly China has other issues to correct that will hold them back in the future, but education will not be one of them.
The great thing about a classical education is it doesn’t require as much funding as current programs. So it is a great way to have a better education, for less money.

Having young children memorize facts detrimental to their educational growth?

Having young children memorize facts detrimental to their educational growth?

You would think the answer would be an obvious “yes”, but tragically that in not the case.
From: the-scholars.com
One of my professors got indignant. "That's just so sad!" she said, "I would never make my kids memorize facts. That is so useless -- especially since now you can look the facts up somewhere, in a book, online, or something. Memorization of knowledge is a worthless education tool."

This is a common misconception.

From: poets.org
In Plato's Phaedrus, Socrates tells a story about the invention of writing, in which the Egyptian god Thoth shows his written characters to another god, Ammon, who rebukes him: "This discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember themselves."

Before the invention of radio, television, video games and the internet philosophers and educators were worried about the mind losing its ability. Obviously the written word would eventually allow everyone to be educated and educators listened to the concern of Socrates and Plato and memorization was an important part of that education. That is until modern history and education methods found it boring and tedious and it is no longer an important part of being human. How much more do we need to focus on memorization today!

Have you ever been paying a bill and the cashier cannot figure out your change? They never memorized the grammar of adding and subtracting. Can an education system be considered successful if a 15-16 year old (minimum age of most state for working) cannot do math they should have learned in elementary school? Yet this memorization is consider not helpful for the student when they get to the real world.

If you ever have played a sport or read about an exceptional athlete you have heard the term muscle memory. Did the coach show you how to do a motion properly (swinging a tennis racket, golf club, bat) and you absorbed that into your muscle and did it correct the first time and every time after that? Of course that did not happen. You practiced, practiced, practiced until it was engrained in your body and you still occasionally fail. Yet we expect our student to learn how to do reading, writing and arithmetic without memorizing the rules and motions of the subject.
Clearly modern education methods of “how do you feel” and “what are you experiencing” questions and methods are not working. Our students are falling behind other countries, other countries who still require memorization. Sure our students feel good about themselves and have a high confidence, unfortunately that confidence and self esteem has not translated into actual learning.

Classical Education requires memorization of grammar as the foundation of learning. A house built without a foundation blows away in the lightest of wind and our students are being blown away by global competition. More and longer education as Arne Duncan is purposing may be helpful, but without anchoring knowledge into our student it will be useless and expensive.

“1st come Augie dog, then the Flintstone Kids, inspector Gadget and Popeye too owe doo daw day” I still know the morning cartoon lineup from when I was a little kid, because I heard it every Saturday morning. Too bad I did not put memorization of important things to the forefront of my education. Why did I memorize it, because I heard it over and over again and it was to a catchy song. Memorization does not have to be boring as many think, we just need to know how to make it fun.

Election Results for Classical Education Supporters

Congrats for your successful campaigns in 2010. Serve your state and country well! 8 of 12 candidates on my blog won - that is better then Sarah Palin's numbers.

Anthony Cannella running for State Senate in California.
Kevin Lundberg is running for Senate in Colorado's 15th district.

Kevin Priola is running for Colorado state legislator house in district 30.

Dennis Richardson Oregon house of representative district 4.

Warren Daniel running for North Carolina senate for Burke and Caldwell counties.
John Ekberg Winnebago County Board Commissioner.
Bryan Simonaire running for Maryland
State Senator in district 31.
David Casas Georgia State Representative.

Crossfit and Classical Education

I am part of a group called Crossfit that promotes a full body workout and healthy living with trainers. Yesterday there was an interesting conversation about education and crossfit. If you took 120 hours of 100 and 200 level course would know a whole lot, but not really be employable. Crossfit helps you be a good/great overall athlete, but it doesn’t help you excel at necessarily a particular field. I didn’t interject my own opinion into the discussion, but I will here. The only comment I did make was “I’m trying to be good at sports, not exercise” which is clearly a utilitarian perspective of the work we do at the gym.

In Classical Education methods we teach the grammar first, at crossfit they do the same. You can’t do a power snatch until you know what it is and then practice with a plastic light weight tube until you get the motion correct. Then you can get a bar and add some weight. You will start light and slowly add more weight as you master each step. Each time you do a workout, even if you have done it before you still grab the plastic bar and practice the movement. In a Classical school the children will first memorize the facts, and they will practice until it is embedded in their minds. Then slowly they will add more facts (weight) or ideas to those facts (weight) and move on to more when they are ready. Each day they will then review those facts and add more.

Contrast this to the Modern Education and Globo Gym. Modern Education seeks to make you look good to employees, with little to no guidance. Globo Gym’s seeks to make you look good for the opposite sex, with little to no guidance. Let’s teach the children about being green; let’s do some curls. Let everyone graduate, no child left behind; Let’s go do some bench press, grunt it out. There is no actual substance in either. Sure if you work hard you will look real good, do fine finding a job and the ladies, but you will be at the mercy of others, because you don’t have a good core.

As you grow in crossfit you start adding meat to your workout, you learn to put knowledge from one work out to another. You learn how to apply methods of rowing to sumo deadlift high pull. In the same manner in Classical Education after the child has mastered the basics and has moved into what is now called “middle school” they start logically putting subject matter together and using the basics they know and applying it “logically” to what they are learning. Meanwhile Modern Education is still doing bicep curls.

Finally as you get good at Crossfit in one area you start helping the new people out. You may not be the best at each workout, but you have been there before and you can “model” the workout for others and show them the basics and correct movements. Guess what the Rhetoric stage (high school) is of Classical Education? It is explaining to others what you learned in the Knowledge and Logic stages and Modeling that to younger children. Meanwhile Modern Education is still doing bicep curls.

Another important similarity is that you work at your own pace. If you excel at box jumps, but need help with over head squats there are systems in place for you to move at your own pace and over practice what you need help with. Just because 25 16 year olds are in the same class they aren’t going to be at the same place and trying to treat them like they are is only going to give us the education system we have, which no one is defending according to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

So like a Classical Education will teach you how to excel at anything, I can only come to the conclusion that Crossfit will help you excel at any sport or activity. We learn to glorify God, all truth is from God and to learn it is to glorify him even if you don’t use it for some utilitarian purpose. Doing Crossfit for the sake of being in shape and living a better life is just as acceptable – utility shouldn’t be the end. Our goal should be everything pure, wise and beautiful for the sake of being pure, wise and beautiful.

The Arts - the last classical education

Advocates of the arts will always point out how students who are active in them do better in school. It is really no surprise when you break down the science of learning. Other school subjects no longer teach the skills needed to succeed at anything, instead they are focused on that subject and having enough of the students get by. The issue with the normal subjects is the way they are taught is not conducive to create students who think, but students who will be good workers. This isn’t because of teachers, but because of special interest and the federal government. So we will examine the process of learning the arts and why these programs are possibly the last to teach students to be more.

The first step of learning any arts is learning the grammar, be it the notes, how to hold a pencil (a declining talent), paintbrush techniques or how to hold your hands when using an instrument. The next step is to practice the basics until they are second nature. This takes practice, practice and practice until the basics our engrained into the mind, soul and body. Rules must be memorized and followed. The next step is to use the master’s work and copy it. If that is playing music that a great composer has played, or redrawing a great work or learning a Shakespeare play. After they master the basic skills, copy the masters they are then able to write their own plays, make their own music and draw originals.

This is the same process that classical education methods employ, first you must learn the grammar of the subject, then you must practice it by going to original documents and copying those, finally you use those experiences to express yourself. In math students are no longer required to memorize multiplication tables, you don’t need grammar to be a writer, and the sciences aren’t memorized until the mind has matured and is no longer in the memorization stage of development. No wonder we have fallen behind the world in the math and sciences.

The muse for this article can be found at educationnext.org

“Of what use us money in the hand of a fool, since he has no desire to get wisdom?” Proverbs 17:16

“One who is slack in his work is brother to one who destroys.” Proverbs 18:9

If you pay attention to the news or start to you will begin to hear we need “more money for education.” The US already spends over 5% more based on budget % alone then the average 1st world country. So we already are giving a lot of money into the system and not getting anything out of it. Obviously we are being slack with those funds. No wonder our education system has been all but destroyed by our peers. We need educational reform, but if a politician tells you this year that it will require more money – that reform is not going to be the type that will work. Only going back to tried and true methods of learning that cost almost nothing and worked for 2000 years causing the rapid rise of society can we regain our nation back, we must use classical methods of learning.

Fight Teacher Burnout

I misspoke when I said tomorrow on Thursday, but I will make it up to you today!

A couple of other interesting points from the Arne Duncan interview that I would like to discuss today and offer viable solutions. If a student has 3 good teachers in a row they will be a year to a year and half ahead of their peers, 3 bad teachers in a row they will be a year behind. 33% of teachers will be out the profession within 3 years of becoming a teacher and 1 million children a year are dropping out of school. Teacher burnout is one of the leading causes.

I believe that a classical education system would eliminate a number of the problems. Teachers have a new set of students 4-6 times a day and those groups change every year. So that means a teacher is going to see somewhere between a 100-150 students a day and only for 1 hour each of which according to government studies only 20-30 minutes of that time is actually being used to teach. That is going to be a lot of different personalities and issue to deal with for that teacher. No wonder they get burnt out. Instead a teacher, especially in elementary (formerly grammar) school should teach all subjects to the students. This would allow them to deal with 20-30 students through the day. They would be better prepared to deal with certain children’s issues because they would have a chance to form the teacher-student bond more effectively. It would also allow the child to spend significant time with an adult that would increase the chances that they would take their school work seriously. A true classical education setting would mix ages and grades to allow proper demonstration of skills from the older children to younger children. This is the ideal setting for gaining social skills as well, since people will eventually work with people from a variety of ages and not just people there exact same age. This leap is probably too much to ask the school system to do at this time, so I will refrain from that if they will go to the 1 teacher model that worked for so long.

This system would reduce the number of teachers burning out and decrease the number of drop outs of our school system. The issue with this system would be the “bad” teachers. If a child had one of those they would drop behind in every subject instead of maybe being good at one with a “good” teacher and being bad at ones with a “bad” teacher. While this may be a temporary issue the proposed system would reduce the number of good teachers leaving and would reduce the number of “bad” teachers because there wouldn’t be so many burned out. I don’t believe anyone in the teaching profession goes into it without good intentions of helping the children learn, so “bad” teachers are a product of our education system.

Practice, practice, practice is the motto of classical education. You cannot become good at something until you gain experience at it. A typical job takes 8mo-1year to learn how to do. So if we are turning our teachers over 33% a year due to drop out how can they ever get good at it? They have no one modeling how to be a good teacher. This turnover allows the “bad” teachers to stay in the system because the administration is just happy to have a warm body.

Rearranging of class setting and schedule to a classical model is an easy first step for the public school system to take in order to save itself and our country.

The Gap - Between Rich and Poor

I hear this term all the time the gap between the Rich and the Poor is growing. Therefore we need to tax the rich to help the poor out more. This Logic is false. The rich got there by providing a service better, cheaper and more effectively than anyone else and people were willing to pay for that service or product. Therefore all the people that bought that product were better off because of this person. This also gave the person more time/energy/money to spend on a different activity/economic stimulation that they wanted to do. This activity/purchase was provided by someone who was able to perform the desired task at a less expensive, more efficient, better way than his competition. This is how a free market and free choices work.
Thomas Edison was very intelligent, would taxing his intelligence and giving it to someone with less means made the world better off? Would the light bulb been invented? Sure this is a stretch, but not as much as you would imagine. You can’t legislate intelligence any more than you can whose rich and poor.
Democrats sight Warren Buffet as a rich person who says he needs to be taxed more. If Warren Buffet wants to be a free person (which I tend to doubt) he could either : 1.) Not pay accounts tons of money to do his taxes and just send in what he think he should pay above and beyond his current tax amount. This could save him money and he would pay the taxes he thinks are fair. 2.) The government has set up a separate tax account that you can pay into if you feel like you don’t pay enough. 3.) He could set aside that extra money he feels he should be taxed every year and give it to an organization that currently is getting government money.
Warren Buffet know much more at making money than most people in the US, especially me. If he really wanted to make a difference in the nation he could use his money in one of the 3 ways I mentioned above. He could even devote his time to a charity and make it so valuable that it didn’t need tax dollars to operate – wouldn’t that be wonderful. His statement on his taxes therefore is not based on his actual feeling on his wealth, but on political motivation to see people’s choices controlled by the government. He knows how the government operates and how to make money off government controlled programs better than anyone(then Al Gore), of course he wants us taxed more!
The best way to close the gap on the rich and poor is to better the education in the USA. You can’t do this by pouring money into the system, you can only do this by teaching people how to think. When you teach people how to think you don’t need big government, you don’t need unions, you don’t need others to do for you, because you can do for yourself. Maybe this is why it is going to be impossible to turn education around in the US, without a fundamental change to the way we view it.

Education week has started on NBC

Dictionary.com
“Education – The act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life”

NBC Education week has started. I am encouraged that we are addressing Education as a national concern. I am a firm believer that if we had a good education system we would not be in the economic turmoil we are today. We would require less government control, which would mean a smaller government, we wouldn’t be in to debt to China who knows how much and we would be experiencing more individual freedom than ever, as opposed to being restricted more than any time in the history of the United States.

Currently we rank “25th in math and 21st in Science out of 30 developed countries” according to data obtained by NBC and their polls show 58% of the public believe we need a complete overhaul and 77% give our public schools a C grade or less. So the public is finally starting to understand how poorly our public schools are doing. My theory is because of the high unemployment and the realizations that they were never educated.

According to Arne Duncan we have “A lot of money in the reform movement” and we are not giving it to the “status quo.” I think by now we would have figured out the spending money on education was not the answer. We spend more money than anyone on education, and receive significantly less bang for our buck. Our education system is the equivalent to a brand new fully stocked BMW, but without an engine. We have the bells and whistles; the children are entertained, when not sleeping on their desk.

The issue will not be solved by increasing our dependence on Chinese yen (see debt). We must go back to the same teaching methods as the 1 room school house. Where an untrained 16 year old could teach 4-15 year olds how to conquer a country, read and comprehend Greek and Latin. We must teach our children how to be free by giving them the tools to think for themselves. There is a simple solution and it is real inexpensive. 1.) Teach young children to memorize, and how to make it fun. 2.) Teach children in middle school how to think, logic, about the information they are learning and how to relate it to the world around them. 3.) Teach children in high school how to logically think and express their opinions in their unique way.

From Arianna Huffington , Editor-In-Chief, Huffington Post new Book “If America’s Public Education System were a product, it would have been recalled. If it were a politician, it would have been impeached.” In the 1960’s the greatest generation had over 90% prose literacy rate and very little federal government involvement. Schools were run by local school districts and designed to educate, not build up false self esteem. Now when schools are designed to build up self esteem and not to educate prose literacy has dropped to 14%. Our children may feel real good about themselves when there 16, but being unemployed, not having the ability to think, pay bills, vote intelligently is not fun and they will not feel good about themselves when they turn 24 and reality hits them in the face. It’s time to get back to the HARD WORK of learning and teaching the students to teach themselves. It is time to go back to the future: classical education.

President Bill Clinton I have an answer for you!

Perhaps this morning I finally found my muse for writing on my blog title. Today it is President Bill Clinton. There was a very interesting interview today on MSNBC on the economy and on his Global Initiative. His initiative since it is not a corporation or government is able to cut through red tape and do things “faster, better and more quickly.” So he just admitted that a free market is the best market for turning our economy around. Now he was quick to say that he won’t comment on if the “government or corporations” are the best means of doing that. Kind of funny since he will fully admit that his free market Initiative is doing awesome, but this will not be the focus today.

The quotes that really got me were if we could fill the open jobs that people are not trained for “we would be in a different world we’d be looking at 6.9% (unemployment) not 9.6%” and “How can we get people trained for those jobs quickly.”
The second quote is where I will focus. The issue with education today is it is focused on jobs. Our public school system is designed to educate the masses to be obedient and good workers. However those who are innovators are changing the world so quickly that by the time a person is a College Graduate over 50% of what he learned as a Freshman no longer applies. That is if they graduate in 4 years, not 5.5 like me. How can a school system work when its focus is on making people job ready, when we don’t even know what jobs are going to be there for them in 5, 10 or 15 years from now. It is rather presumptive by our school boards and federal government to say they know what is best job path is for our children.

So what is the answer? Children must be taught to think, love to learn and know how to learn; a classical education. There is a basic cycle to learning and you cannot deny it and be true to yourself. Take something you love to do and are good at it. The first thing you did was learn the grammar behind it. What words describe what you are doing… you may have learned those words early in life and it is second nature, such as for a golf shot “bend your knees” or it could be new words you have to learn like in rugby “the prop shall not bore into the opposing prop and cause the scrum to collapse.” The second step is to learn how to do that action well. After years of practice I finally hit all my drives straight because I have my knees bent in the proper position every time. The third step is teaching it to someone else. Johnny when you hit the gold ball you need to keep your knees like this, and you’ll have to practice a lot to hit your shots straight every time. These steps are call the Trivum: Knowledge, Understanding, Wisdom.

If we understand for a person to be good at something, they will take these three steps if they want to or not. So for someone to be good at a job it would be wise he has these steps ingrained in them and the skills to master these steps. It doesn’t matter if they are making photo cells for solar panels or building a house. If they have these skills they can adapt to any job that is presented to them. Imagine if you had a job opening as someone came in for an interview; “I know I’m not qualified based on my resume, but I know how to learn. I will learn the terminology of my new job, I’ll work on doing it perfectly by coming to work every day and doing my best in every task you give me and since I’m new to this industry I’ll do it for less money than the ad says because I know there will be some extra training cost to you. By the time I’m done training I’ll be able to explain how to do it to the next person you hire.” That person would be hired in an instant. If he did what he said he would do then he would move up the company very quickly.

Instead our education system is designed to create mindless drones who are told what to do, just graduate and there will be a job for you. Thankfully a good number of you, 60% now a days, strive for something more then what the government gives you in education and do quite well. The rest are getting left behind. The masses are beginning to notice. The only way to have sustained unemployment numbers below 5% without future destructive government policies, like we saw in the 90s, is through education, a Classical Education.

Classical Education and Freedom

Classical Education and Freedom - Jennifer Courtney
For centuries, the classical model of education prepared generations of young adults for the challenges of leadership and government. The goal was to produce virtuous leaders and citizens, not to produce skilled workers. This focus on free thinking and self-government is especially crucial to the life of a democracy. A classical education focuses on critical thinking skills, logic, debate, and rhetoric, i.e., the art of expressing the best ideas in the best way. In the true sense of the liberal arts, the lessons in a classical education are designed to make men and women more free. As Americans search for solutions to current issues, we should address past educational models that worked.

With its focus on critical thinking skills and practice in eloquent oral and written communication, a classical education prepares students in a democracy to be informed, self-governing citizens. In his book, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes our Future, Mark Bauerlein notes Thomas Jefferson’s understanding of the link between freedom and an educated populace: “Education would preserve the sovereignty of the people, and without it, the very system designed to represent them would descend into yet another tyranny in the dismayingly predictable course of nations” (2008, 212). Modern schools aim to produce good workers, a form of utilitarianism, while turning their back on the important task of raising adults who understand human nature and the complexities of human institutions.

Classical education is steadily gaining momentum as more and more classical schools open around the country. Likewise, many home-educating families have turned to this model, and they seek to educate their children with excellence. Leigh A. Bortins has founded a company to address these needs. Her corporation, Classical Conversations, has established classical communities across the country to support families who wish to give their students a classical education. Students meet once a week to discuss great literature, debate current events, conduct science experiments, present philosophy lectures, and generally sharpen one another’s thinking and communication skills. In her book, The Core: Teaching Your Child the Foundations of Classical Education, Ms. Bortins outlines the goals of a classical education: “Both factory and computer education rob a child of the need to think and replace loving, caring mentors with a machine or a system. The classical model emphasizes that learning feeds the soul and edifies the person rather than producing employees to work an assembly line” (2010, 5).

Now that the goals of a classical education are established, the method itself can be examined. To summarize briefly, the classical model occurs in three phases of learning known as the Trivium, which is Latin for “three roads.” Grammar, the first stage, roughly corresponds to our elementary schools, lasting until the student is 11 or 12. This stage involves memorization of the rudimentary facts of any subject. Memorization comes easily to these young students and is critical preparation for the higher orders of thinking. The goal of this stage is not rote memorization or cramming of meaningless facts that will soon be forgotten; in contrast, parents and educators train students to acquire a base of facts that they will use in later studies and to develop a mental system for organizing and retaining those facts.

Logic (or dialectic) comprises the next stage, corresponding to the junior high school grades. Students naturally become interested in asking why, debating issues, and reconciling ideas. The classical model complements their natural tendencies by teaching them formal logic and debate. In preparation for their own debates, they must be equipped to recognize and avoid errors in logic. Classical educators work with a student’s natural developmental tendencies at this stage by facilitating Socratic discussions of history, literature, philosophy, and science while helping them hone mental discipline through studies of Latin, formal logic, debate, and higher math.

Grammar and logic, the first stages of a classical education, have prepared the student for the final phase of the Trivium―rhetoric. By the end of the rhetoric stage, students should be able to speak and write persuasively and eloquently about any topic they have studied. One of the fundamental premises of a classical education is that words are important. During the logic stage, instructors teach students not to fall prey to the words of others. During the rhetoric stage, classical educators teach students to captivate others with their words. Like logic students, rhetoric students continue to discuss big ideas through history, literature, philosophy, and science. In addition, they now cultivate the best means of communicating these ideas through writing and speaking. They are not working to create clever or catchy sound bites (this is our modern conception of rhetoric); rather, they are honing their skills of recognizing what is true, good, and beautiful, and persuasively and eloquently communicating their knowledge to others.
A concrete example will help to illustrate the Trivium. A grammar stage student will learn that George Washington was the first president of the United States, that he was inaugurated in Philadelphia in 1793, and that the Constitution gave him certain powers as the leader of the executive branch. A logic stage student may delve more deeply into the reasons the Founding Fathers felt so strongly about separation of powers and checks and balances and may discover why Washington voluntarily stepped down after two terms. A rhetoric student will apply Washington’s leadership lessons to a position in a student legislature, deliver speeches about presidential precedents, or debate current events and legislation in light of Washington’s presidency.

In addition to employing a methodology that works with the mental and spiritual developmental stages of students, a classical education embraces material that prepares students to understand the philosophers, political leaders, authors, and artists who have influenced our culture. Perhaps it is time for American educators to re-examine the classical methodology in order to produce leaders who are prepared to preserve and re-energize our democratic society. Perhaps we could aspire to John Milton’s vision in Of Education by stirring our students to have “high hopes of living to be brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God, and famous to all ages.”

Jennifer Courtney, with her husband Tim, has been classically home educating her four precious children for six years. She currently serves as the Oklahoma State Manager for Classical Conversations, Inc. In this role, she recruits and trains directors in the establishment of classical home education communities. She also writes classical education articles and speaks to parents and other educators who want to understand and implement a classical education. Jennifer graduated summa cum laude from Oklahoma State University with an Honors degree in English. Her background in the liberal arts inspired her to encourage others who desire to mentor young people as they explore the great ideas of the past in preparation for the future.