Raising Life-long Learners and Leaders

In his book Beauty for Truth’s Sake, Stratford Caldecott states that it is,

“no wonder students come to a college education expecting nothing more than a set of paper qualifications that will enable them to earn a decent salary.  The idea that they might be there to grow as human beings, to be inducted into an ancient culture, to become somehow more than they are already, is alien to them.  They expect instant answers, but they have no deep questions.  The great questions have not yet been woken in them.  The process of education requires us to become open, receptive, curious, and humble in the face of what we do not know.  The world is a fabric woven of mysteries, and a mystery is a provocation to our humanity that cannot be dissolved by googling a few more bits of information.”

Mr. Caldecott has aptly described a generation who has been taught that they are nothing more than highly-developed mammals, and how highly-developed is still up for grabs. We have 90% less fur and 99% less purpose than our monkey’s uncle. As long as a young man makes enough to pay for his Playstation and Netflix, he’s good to go. This postmodern generation is enslaved to their evolutionary apathy. This apathy reminded Francis Schaeffer of Ancient Rome. In his book How Should We Then Live he said,

“As the Roman economy slumped lower and lower, burdened with aggravated inflation and a costly government, authoritarianism increased to counter the apathy… …because of the general apathy and its results, and because of oppressive control, few thought the civilization worth saving.  Rome did not fall because of external forces such as the invasion of the barbarians.  Rome had no sufficient inward base; the barbarians only completed the breakdown—and Rome gradually became a ruin.”

America is reaping what Jean Jacques Rousseau, John Dewey and Horace Mann have sown. America is reaping what America has sown. We cannot turn back the clock; so we must decide how we are going to respond, and where we can go from here. The opposite of apathy is passion. The opposite of slavery is freedom, and the opposite of modern, socialist education is classical, Christian education.

With the classical tools of learning, constructed upon the solid foundation of God’s Word, students will not only excel at whatever their hand finds to do, but they will be able to become leaders in their particular field of interest. So, we are not just raising life-long learners, but we are also raising life-long leaders. Are we training our children to be the next generation of leaders in Christendom, or are we assuming that someone else will take care of that?  If Christians aren’t doing it, then who is? Is the apathy in our culture limited to the twenty-somethings in their Star Wars pajamas, living with their moms, playing Wii all day, or does it extend further than that?

Are we passionate for the Kingdom? Are we avoiding government schools because we have a vision for our children’s future in Christ’s Kingdom or merely to avoid drug use, school violence, and free condoms?  Our vision for child-rearing must extend beyond the things we’re trying to avoid and manifest itself in all the things that we are working to accomplish, namely the coming of Christ’s Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. The classical model is not the only way to raise up your little olive shoots in the fear and admonition of the Lord, but it is a premiere tool to accomplish the rearing of passionate, Christian, life-long learners and leaders.

(This was short, I know. Here are some resources to flesh out the bald assertions I’ve just made.)

Click here or on the book cover to link to this title on Amazon.

Click here to link to an outstanding lecture by George Grant on Classical Christian Education. It’s available free of charge at wordmp3.com

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Classical Education, Francis Schaeffer, Stratford Caldecott