Classical Education Archives - Kuyperian Commentary

On November 15, 2017 By Jesse Sumpter In Books, Culture Like

The Not So Clean Sea Breeze of the Centuries

There is a glorious reformation happening right now in education called Classical and Christian Education. As a teacher in a Classical and Christian school, I am thankful to be a part of this important work. But at the same time, I see temptations that the movement is prone to. One of those dangers is what I would call reverse chronological snobbery. C.S. Lewis (whom I will talk about in a moment) coined the term chronological snobbery and he used it to talk about the fallacious argument which claims that something from an earlier time (e.g. philosophy, literature, etc) is inherently worse than that of the present, simply because it is from the past. There is also an inverse version of this fallacy (some would call it by the same name) which would claim that something from the past (e.g. philosophy, literature, etc) is inherently better than that of the present, simple because it is from the past. Both claims are incredibly dangerous but it is this second error that is particularly tempting to Classical and Christian schools. This error is tempting because the movement has purposefully shifted its gaze back to the past and is trying to bring the best of the past forward. The difficulty lies then in recovering the best of the past without bringing the worst along with it.

In a wonderful essay by C.S. Lewis “On Reading Old Books,” he argues that we need to read old books because they can help us correct mistakes in the thinking of the modern era. We can see things more clearly in older thinkers because they are further away from us. One of the difficulties of our age is that we live in it. It is like we are standing in a forest and trying to see which parts of the forest are good and which parts are dead and dying. Inside the forest, we can see individual trees but it is almost impossible to see large sections of the forest. But if we were out of the forest and looking at it from a distance, it becomes much easier. Distance gives us perspective.

At one point in the essay, Lewis offers a poetic argument for reading these old works: “The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.”[1] This is a wonderful and persuasive image that he employs but it is incredibly easy to overemphasize the palliative nature of these old works. The sea breeze of the centuries is not always so clean.

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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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Triple 1070 Personal Finance Curriculum: A Review

I’ve recently had the chance to review a personal finance curriculum geared toward home schoolers/private schoolers called “Triple 1070: Biblical Personal Finance.” It is a 13-week course incorporating biblical principles of stewardship into a textbook, workbook, cumulative tests, and a 6 DVD set that endeavors to create a reality-show about four young people touring America while learning about personal finances. Overall, I appreciate what Triple 1070 is attempting to do. However, this is not a blanket endorsement, as I will explain below.

From a “finance curriculum” standpoint, this series is essentially Dave Ramsey for teenagers, which I mean as a compliment. Dave’s been giving a lot of sound, financial advice for several years, and Triple 1070 has repackaged those principles into a format that is geared toward the “reality-show” generation. The name “Triple 1070” refers to the principle of saving 10%, investing 10%, giving 10%, and living off of 70% of your income. This can help to create an “emergency fund” with the savings, a plan for the future by investing, service to those around you through giving, and paying your monthly bills with the rest. Although this approach is not distinctively Christian, it does follow along well with principles of stewardship laid out in God’s Word.

The advice given to young people is to avoid debt if possible, pay off debt quickly when acquired, buy used instead of new, understand the laws that govern the economy, budget wisely, etc. As with all instructional aids we bring into our homes, we will find ourselves disagreeing with some details along the way, but overall, the Triple 1070 curriculum can provide some great opportunities for us as parents to enter into conversations with our high-schoolers, that might not have happened without provocation.

From a “production” standpoint, I think the DVD’s will be very successful. For all the emphasis we stress on the written word in our home, and for all the internal frustration caused to my inner man by even turning on a TV set, the reality is that when we go to grandma and grandpa’s house, the TV is on and the kids are mesmerized. Neil Postman ruined me, but perhaps if there’s going to be a TV around, we can put it to some productive uses. The production of the Triple 1070 “reality show” is very catchy. The jerky camera movement gives us old people fits, but for some reason that’s the way it’s being done now, and Triple 1070 does this at least as well as anyone else. The cast members are personable, respectful, and seem to genuinely care about the things they are learning. The advisors take principles that can be hard to understand and boil them down for the younger audience. I believe that if you use these videos and books to enter into conversation with your children about personal finances, this curriculum can serve as a catalyst and be of great benefit to your household.

For all of my “yays” there are a couple of “nays.” As I mentioned earlier, this is not a blanket endorsement. This curriculum is intended to be a “personal finance” curriculum as opposed to an “economics” or “history” curriculum, and Triple 1070 has tried to be faithful to that purpose. However, it would be nigh unto impossible to divorce the three entirely, and who would want to? When Triple 1070 moves from finances into macroeconomics, the content of the curriculum leaves much to be desired. Since the curriculum is endeavoring to present the economy from the perspective of “the way things are” as opposed to “the way they ought to be,” much gets taken for granted about the way things actually are. One example of this is in the chapter introducing the Fed. Without going into details here, the only source cited for the chapter is “History of the Federal Reserve, from federalreserveeducation.org.” This website is a product of the Federal Reserve and tends to be highly uncritical of itself.

One other “nay” concerns the “biblical” nature of the curriculum. Since that term can be taken in a number of viable ways, I want to be charitable here, but “biblical” in the sense Triple 1070 is using it is a reference to principles which can be found in the Scriptures, along with bible verses about finances pasted on the TV screen in between segments. When I see the term “biblical”, I tend to get excited about exegesis, so their use of the term resulted in a little disappointment for me personally. This curriculum is nothing like a bible study, but once again, it could be used as a catalyst to get your children to ask some deeper, biblical questions than they may have asked otherwise. Then the exegesis can come from you or another teaching aid.

My recommendation would be that the Triple 1070 Personal Finance Curriculum should follow our children’s initial study of free market economics, rather than being that introduction. If you’re interested in using this curriculum, use it after your student has solid instruction in Austrian macroeconomics rather than before. After all, this is “personal finance curriculum,” not an economics course.

Here’s a link to their Facebook page.

Here’s a link to the company that produced it.

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