Thursday, June 3

The Habit of Thinking

The students in America’s earliest schools, academies, and colleges were educated according to the great traditions of the Christian and Classical heritage—beginning at the Latin School of Plymouth, established on this day in 1623. They were the beneficiaries of a rich legacy of art, music, and ideas that had not only trained the extraordinary minds of our Founding Fathers but had provoked the remarkable flowering of culture throughout Western Civilization. It was a pattern of academic discipleship that had hardly changed at all since the dawning days of the Reformation and Renaissance—a pattern though that has almost entirely vanished today.

Indeed, those first Americans were educated in a way that we can only dream of today despite all our nifty gadgets, gimmicks, and bright ideas. They were steeped in the ethos of Augustine, Dante, Plutarch, and Vasari. They were conversant in the ideas of Seneca, Ptolemy, Virgil, and Aristophanes. The notions of Athanasius, Chrysostom, Anselm, Bonaventure, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Abelard, and Wyclif informed their thinking and shaped their worldview.

The now carelessly discarded traditional medieval Trivium—emphasizing the basic Classical scholastic categories of grammar, logic, and rhetoric—equipped them with the tools for a lifetime of learning: a working knowledge of the timetables of history, a background understanding of the great literary classics, a structural competency in Greek and Latin-based grammars, a familiarity with the sweep of art, music, and ideas, a grasp of research and writing skills, a worldview comprehension for math and science basics, a principle approach to current events, and an emphasis on a Christian life paradigm.

The methodologies of this kind of Christian and Classical learning adhered to the time-honored principles of creative learning: an emphasis on structural memorization, an exposure to the best of Christendom's cultural ethos, a wide array of focused reading, an opportunity for disciplined presentations, a catechizing for orthopraxy as well as orthodoxy, and a broad experience honing the basic academic skills of listening, journaling, thinking, processing, integrating, extemporizing, and applying.

The object of this kind of Christian and Classical education was not merely the accumulation of knowledge. Instead it was to equip a whole new generation of leaders with the necessary tools to exercise discernment, discretion, and discipline in their lives and over their callings. Despite their meager resources, rough-hewn facilities, and down-to-earth frontier ethic, they maintained continuity with all that had given birth to the wisdom of the West.

It was the modern abandonment of these Christian and Classical standards a generation later that provoked G.K. Chesterton to remark, “The great intellectual tradition that comes down to us from the past was never interrupted or lost through such trifles as the sack of Rome, the triumph of Attila, or all the barbarian invasions of the Dark Ages. It was lost after…the coming of the marvels of technology, the establishment of universal education, and all the enlightenment of the modern world. And thus was lost—or impatiently snapped—the long thin delicate thread that had descended from distant antiquity; the thread of that unusual human hobby: the habit of thinking.”

6 comments:

Lawrence Underwood said...

That Chesterton quote is worth its weight in gold. No, it is more valuable.

I shudder when I think of what the 'leadership' of this nation may be in one more generation. The only thing that gives me hope, in an earthly sense, are the children that are receiving a classical education either at home or in a school such as Franklin.

EJN said...

Dr. Grant,
Thanks for your comments, it is applicable to our family as K looks toward the future. Most of these name we never heard of in our youth. Thanks for introducing their lives but habits to our children.
What a blessing-
E&J

Bonnie said...

What do you think of the book Rethinking Worldview by J. Mark Bertrand? Have you read it?

gileskirk said...

Bonnie: Yes, Bertrand's book is quite helpful. I've appreciated his work--especially his Bible blog--for quite some time now.

Bonnie said...

Thanks.
I just ordered it!
Great to have your recommendation!

jwp said...

Thanks Dr. G. I’ve wondered about the need for a more Hebraic focus in classical Christian education. Greek and Latin are so important, of course…We’re predisposed to think in those categories, and they’re such core elements of our heritage. But since Westerners already think so Greek-ly, do you think there’s a need for students to learn more Hebraically, linguistically and otherwise?